Palm trees in the tiny fishing village of Brito. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American steamship and railroad tycoon, developed a route across the Nicaraguan isthmus, and his passengers transferred from stagecoach to steamship here. Photograph by Jehad Nga.

When Xandari joined Raxa Collective in December, the Central America map became important in our office, and in our news tracking. Several contributors to Raxa Collective got their start in Central America in the 1990s, as did most of Xandari’s staff, most of whom have been working their for nearly two decades; so goings on in that region are of special interest.  Big goings on are of big interest. Especially when the socio-economic costs and benefits are understood in relation to ecological impact. In case you never heard the campaign slogan dating back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s time–A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama–it is worth noting it is a palindrome, a sort of word puzzle in that it reads the same forward and backwards.   In this week’s issue of the New Yorker, another kind of puzzle related to another Central American canal is reported by Jon Lee Anderson who profiles one (or more) man’s plan to:

…“launch the largest civil engineering and construction project in the world: a new transoceanic canal across Nicaragua.” The canal is a pet project of Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua, who has argued that an Atlantic-Pacific shipping route “will bring well-being, prosperity, and happiness to the Nicaraguan people.” But while the canal’s supporters have praised its economic potential—Nicaragua is Central America’s largest and poorest country, and nearly half its population lives below the poverty line—opponents have criticized the lack of public input on the plan, which is expected to cost at least fifty billion dollars. They also argue that the project represents an affront to Nicaragua’s sovereignty: the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, an obscure Chinese firm that holds the concession to build the canal, has been granted broad rights throughout the country, including the right to expropriate and develop private property. Continue reading →