Ambassador Speeches

Remarks by U.S. Ambassador Robert J. Callahan at American Nicaraguan School Graduation ceremony introducing former president Enrique Bolaños

June 4, 2009

Graduates, parents, teachers, administrators, family, and friends:

It is a great honor – indeed, a double honor – to be here tonight to compliment the graduates of the American Nicaraguan School on their academic success and to introduce one of your featured speakers, a man I respect, admire, and, not incidentally, genuinely like, former president Enrique Bolaños.

Before getting to the introduction, and with your indulgence, I want to take a moment to comment about the value of an international education of the type our graduates today, and many others in this theater, have had.

We – all nations -- practice diplomacy, and spend a lot of money doing so, for one basic reason:  to promote understanding.  And we – all of us, from every nation and for many centuries – have done so with mixed results. There is clearly still a surfeit of suspicion, confusion, and even hatred in the world. We, the world’s diplomats, still have much to learn, still have much to refine in our trade.

But you, the graduates of the American Nicaraguan School, have already learned and refined the art of understanding.  You are, because of your time here, instinctively tolerant, aware of cultural distinctions, familiar with different customs, comfortable in two or more languages. These gifts may have come to you almost subconsciously, but they are as real and as important as what you have learned in math or history or science class.  Whether you become a doctor or engineer, teacher or entrepreneur, you will, because of your education at ANS, forever be among the world’s best diplomats, effective promoters of international understanding. Congratulations on that as well.

Now I turn to a man who has reflected and embodied, in his thought, action, and example, the highest values of diplomacy, statesmanship, commerce, and scholarship.

Enrique Bolaños was born in Masaya to a prominent Nicaraguan family that had distinguished itself in business and politics. After graduating from St. Louis University, a fine Jesuit school in the American city of the same name, he returned to Nicaragua and dedicated himself to building a successful agro-production company.

At the same time, he became an influential member of COSEP, an association of private businesses, and led that group during the tumultuous decade of the 1980s, even spending time in prison for his willingness to defend his principles and state his beliefs.

When his farm was confiscated and his business shuttered in 1985, he mastered computers and built his own computer programming business.

In the decade of the 1990s he rose to prominence in politics, serving as vice president from 1997 to 2001, and then, having won the 2001 elections in a landslide, as president from 2002 to 2007.

As president, and despite a hostile legislature, he successfully negotiated the CAFTA free-trade agreement, launched a campaign against corruption in government, reduced Nicaragua’s foreign debt, and set an example for administrative probity and accountability.
He is the recipient of many awards and recognitions and the author of numerous books and articles on economics, history, politics, and business. He is currently writing a history of Nicaragua’s presidents and establishing his presidential library, which is largely virtual and accessible to the world through the internet. Helping again to set an example of openness and transparency, he has made all his non-sensitive papers and documents available for study and scrutiny. 

Don Enrique was married for almost sixty years to Doña Lila Abaunza, who passed away last year, and they had five children.

Winston Churchill, whom Don Enrique admires, once wrote, "Courage is paramount among the virtues, for without it all the others are impossible."

It is therefore with pride and honor that I present to you this courageous and virtuous man, President Enrique José Bolaños Geyer.