Remarks by Ambassador Callahan

AMCHAM Reception

Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Barceló Hotel, Managua

Good afternoon.  I want to express my gratitude to the American Chamber of Commerce for organizing and hosting this event.   I know it requires a lot of work and I do appreciate your efforts.  And I want to thank all of you in attendance for honoring me with your presence.  I realize that you have many commitments and that you have chosen to spend some of your valuable time listening to me.  Thank you all.

It was just about a year ago, on October 15, that I delivered my first formal speech in Nicaragua, and that too was under the auspices of the Amcham.  Today I want to reflect on what has happened in our world over the past year and what I have seen and heard and learned in Nicaragua. 

I really don’t have a central theme for my talk; rather, I’ll offer my observations on the new American administration and its policies toward Latin America and a few thoughts and impressions about Nicaragua.  These last are personal and based on my extensive travels throughout this lovely land.

Before beginning my talk, and anticipating your questions and interests, I’ll take a moment to reiterate my government’s view of the Supreme Court decision on the re-election of the president early last week.  I do this in the spirit of open communication.

As the State Department spokesman said last week, “We are concerned about the manner in which the Constitutional Chamber of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court reached a decision on October 19 regarding re-election for Nicaraguan officials, including the President.  We share the concern of many Nicaraguans that this situation is part of a larger pattern of questionable and irregular governmental actions, beginning before the flawed municipal elections of November 2008, that threatens to undermine the foundations of Nicaraguan democracy and calls into question the Nicaraguan government’s commitment to uphold the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

Speaking for himself, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former presidential candidate John Kerry, expressed the same concerns, but in blunter language.

Let me put this in context.  First, we would argue that every country has the right to amend or alter its constitution, and that includes changing the terms and conditions of electing a president.  We Americans did it ourselves.  The twenty-second amendment, ratified in 1951, prohibits anyone from being elected more than twice to the presidency.

In order to amend our Constitution, two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate has to vote to propose an amendment and three-quarters of the states, usually through their legislatures, must vote to approve it.  It is a long, public, and complicated process.

What concerns us, in the context of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, of which Nicaragua and the United States are both signatories, and through which every nation may monitor compliance, is the manner in which the decision was taken in Nicaragua.  The Charter in Article Two calls for the “responsible participation of the citizenry” in important decisions, in Article Three for “separation of powers,” and in Article Four for “transparency in government activities.”

In our view, the Nicaraguan Supreme Court acted in undue and uncharacteristic haste, in secret, with the participation of judges from a single political movement, and without public debate or discussion.  We think that an issue this momentous, that concerns the future of Nicaragua’s democracy, deserves due deliberation and diligence.  We hope that all Nicaraguans have an opportunity to express themselves, either directly or through their elected representatives, on amending the constitution to allow the re-election of the president.

When I stood before you a year ago, the electoral campaign in the United States was approaching its end.  A few weeks after I spoke, we Americans chose Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, as our president.  His victory was important for many reasons, not least for its racial implications and its profound symbolism, for us and others. 

As an American who had lived through the wrenching racial conflicts of the 1960s and 70s, who knew the country’s bitter and often violent racial history, I was both proud and encouraged that we had elected a black man to the nation’s highest office.  If Americans could somehow transcend a history of slavery and oppression, could overcome a past scarred by hatred and bigotry, then our other problems would surely yield to discussion, determination, and good will.  Maybe not quickly.  Maybe not easily.  But if we are persistent and constant, I thought, we will chip away at our most intractable problems, make progress, and eventually solve them.

In fact, President Obama has invoked precisely those sentiments in many of his public declarations.  At the United Nations last month, he said, “As an African American, I will never forget that I would not be here today without the steady pursuit of a more perfect union in my country.”  He went on to note that “transformative change can be forged by those who choose to side with justice.”

Like some of you, I read President Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams from My Father.”   It struck me as a quintessentially American story.  To be sure, in the special circumstances of his life – he grew up biracial in Hawaii and later Indonesia and barely knew his father – he was certainly different from most Americans. But in the values he absorbed, in the beliefs he cultivated, in the aspirations he developed, he embodied and reflected the best of what America promises.

Barack Obama, as he has said and written, subscribes sincerely to those principles articulated first in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:  freedom, equality, opportunity, tolerance, diversity, and democracy.  He is also a deft politician, pragmatic and persuasive, and an able statesman, wise and realistic.

It is therefore no surprise that he has designed and pursued policies that promote our core values and that solidify relations with our allies and friends.  But, at the same time, he has expressed, and demonstrated, a willingness to have senior officials in his administration meet with representatives of governments traditionally hostile to our interests and principles. At least in part for those reasons, I would surmise, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year.  And despite many competing claims on his time and travel, he and his administration have devoted considerable attention to our neighbors in the hemisphere. 
He visited Mexico shortly after taking office and then again in August.  He attended the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, where he met and talked with leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean.  Vice President Biden has been to Costa Rica and Chile.  Secretary of State Clinton has traveled several times to Latin America, including once to El Salvador and Honduras.  Other cabinet officers have visited countries throughout the hemisphere.  In other words, our neighbors to the South matter to this administration.

As a tangible expression of that interest, the Obama administration has refined the Merida Initiative, which makes available to Mexico and to the Central American countries hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming years to combat those transnational threats, such as drug trafficking and gang violence, that menace all our people.

His administration has made travel to and communication with Cuba easier and opened discussions on direct mail delivery between the two countries. 

The American government recently signed an agreement with Colombia, which will give American military limited and clearly defined access to Colombian bases in order to support the Colombian armed forces in their fight against drug trafficking and international crime.

The Obama administration is working with Congress to expand our hemispheric programs on food security, the environment and energy, and a newly designed Global Health initiative, which will develop innovative ways to address malaria, AIDS, and other diseases.  It continues promoting free trade through NAFTA and CAFTA-DR and has announced that he hopes to secure Congressional ratification of free-trade agreements, once certain issues are resolved, with Panama and Colombia.  It has enhanced the Pathways to Prosperity Initiative, launched in 2008, that will improve the quality of life for all people in our hemisphere through social justice, democracy, and commerce.

All these programs and initiatives are multilateral in design, another hallmark of the Obama administration.  For example, we have supported the OAS in its efforts to find an answer to the constitutional crisis in Honduras, backing our words with deeds.  We think that a hemispheric problem should have a hemispheric solution. 

The president has declared many times that America cannot, and does not want to, act alone.  The problems that confront us – climate change, illegal drugs, poverty, disease, and terrorism -- do not respect borders or national sovereignty.  If we are to solve them, we will have to work together. 

This does not mean, however, that the United States has abandoned its bilateral programs.  To the contrary, the Obama administration has continued our varied and substantial cooperation on health, education, democracy, and infrastructure development in many Latin American countries.

These programs, both multi- and bilateral, seek to support our neighbors as they develop their economies and strengthen their democracies.  The process is open and transparent and the programs benefit Latin America and the United States.  Our goal is a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous America, from the Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, and we will earnestly pursue it. 

Let me now turn to Nicaragua.  Here, our bilateral support, not including what remains to be spent from the Millennium Challenge Account, will exceed fifty million dollars this year. 

In a program that cost about 5 million dollars, the hospital ship Comfort spent almost two weeks in Corinto in July.  In that time medical professionals – doctors, nurses, technicians, and aides – from the United States and a half dozen other countries, including Nicaragua, treated almost 20,000 needy Nicaraguans.  They performed 277 delicate surgeries, most notably over 70 for children with hare lip and cleft palate.  They removed cataracts and gall bladders.  They distributed 6000 pairs of eye glasses.

I visited the eye clinic in a school in Chinandega that the staff from the Comfort had established.  As I was walking in with Vice President Morales, the people who were waiting to be seen, probably over fifty of them, recognized us.  They stood and applauded.  Nicaraguans, perhaps some in this room, have asked me if we have been thanked for the Comfort visit.  I reply, “Yes, yes indeed we have, in the most gratifying and inspiring way imaginable.”

In other efforts, we are working with Nicaraguans on getting more and better health care to the entire population, especially the poor, and have several programs devoted to education on the primary and secondary levels.  Every year we send hundreds of Nicaraguan students, teachers, artists, journalists, and military officers, among others, to the United States on educational and cultural exchange programs.  Finally, we work with all interested Nicaraguans, without regard to party or ideology, to help strengthen democratic institutions and practices.

This last program has come under criticism here.  Some have accused me and other embassy officers of meddling in internal politics.  They have claimed that we travel with opposition leaders, fund their activities, and seek to undermine the governing party.  They have urged publicly that I be declared persona non grata.  One even alleged that my meeting with the opposition was sufficient cause to expel me.

Well, we do meet with the opposition.  That is not only our right under the Vienna Convention but our obligation as professional diplomats.  If our counterparts in Washington are not meeting with Republicans, they are not doing their jobs.  If we were shunning the opposition here, and meeting only with the government, we would be derelict in our duty.  Engaging people across the political and social spectrum is an essential part of our work and entirely proper.

So, let me be clear:  we do meet with the opposition and we will continue to meet with the opposition, and many others, including members of the governing party, when they agree to see us.  For example, I talk regularly with the Chancellor and several other ministers.  Over the past year I have met the fairly elected Sandinista mayors of Ocotal, Matagalpa, and Corn Island and made modest donations to their efforts to improve their cities.  And I have had Sandinista deputies to my house for receptions. 

We meet with virtually everyone who will meet with us.  But we do not engage in partisan politics or matters of exclusive interest to Nicaraguans.  We do not travel with opposition leaders.  We do not provide money to anyone or to any party.  When NDI and IRI, two organizations that receive American money, undertake a program or seminar, they invite representatives from all political parties, fronts, alliances, and coalitions.  If those representatives choose not to attend, that is their prerogative.  We can support that statement with evidence.

I would ask only that our critics, who accuse us of all manner of skullduggery, also produce credible evidence to support their charges.  I say that in full confidence that no such evidence exists.  Why?  Because we do not engage in partisan politics or inappropriate activities.

A year ago, when I stood before you, a financial crisis, which would get much worse as the year wore on, gripped the world.  At that time I noted that democratic capitalism, that combination of open markets and free government, was the best of all systems.  Not perfect, as the economic crisis showed, but better than the alternatives.  I mentioned that I was confident that democratic capitalism would prove its resilience and recover.  Well, we are in the process of an international economic rebound.  Stock markets have rallied.  Employment has stabilized.  Trade is growing throughout the developed world.  It has required extraordinary measures and a lot of international coordination and, yes, the recovery will happen only gradually, with reversals and stumbles.  But of this I am certain:  it will come to pass.

If someone doubts that free markets are the most efficient way to produce and distribute goods and services, I would ask them to cite another system that has done as well.  If someone questions the wisdom of liberal democracy, I would urge them to provide an example of another type of government that has been more rigorous in protecting individual liberties, ensuring equality of opportunity, administering justice in a fair and impartial way, and producing creative, confident citizens.

In this last regard I would mention simply that in the most recent round of Nobel Prizes, every laureate grew up in a country that subscribes to democratic capitalism and, with the exception of Herta Muller, a German who earned the prize for literature, they are all American citizens.

To paraphrase the great American writer and humorist Mark Twain, “Reports of the demise of democratic capitalism have been greatly exaggerated.”

The key to the success of democratic capitalism, it seems to me, is the diffusion of power and the belief that the people are capable of deciding what to buy, where to work, and how to vote.  If more people have money, if more people are involved in political decisions, if more people exercise the levers of executive, legislative, and judicial authority in an independent fashion, then it is more difficult for any one party or individual to gain absolute control. 

And as Lord Acton, the British historian of the 19th century, noted prophetically, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  When he wrote that, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were still to come.

Totalitarians of whatever stripe, although endlessly invoking the people, in practice do not trust the people.  They, those in the vanguard, are the anointed ones.  They believe that they have a monopoly on truth, vision, and competence.  Those that oppose them are evil and selfish, greedy and vain.  They are traitors or, worse, apostates.  For that reason, they regard dissent as disloyalty, disagreement as disrespect.  Tolerance disappears and society becomes polarized.

It is true that democratic capitalism does not function flawlessly.  It is also true that the rich and influential can manipulate and do exploit the system.  But when political and economic power is shared among the greatest number of citizens, as is the case in the wealthy democracies, that influence is limited and those abuses are exposed and punished.  There is a reckoning of accounts, and everyone, no matter how rich or powerful, must answer to it.  History has shown that democratic capitalism, despite its faults and failures, remains the best route to enduring freedom and prosperity.

When I stood before you a year ago, I had traveled no farther than Matagalpa in the north and Rivas in the south, and once to the Caribbean coast, to Bluefields.  Today I can claim to have visited every department and autonomous region in Nicaragua, many of them several times.  

Exactly one month ago, on September 28, through the courtesy of the Nicaraguan armed forces and with the commander in chief of the navy, Admiral Estrada, I boarded a launch in San Jorge, crossed the lake, stopping to see Ernesto Cardenal’s artist compound on Solentiname, and entered the river at San Carlos.  From there we headed east.  We visited El Castillo and spent the night in rustic cabins in Bartola, where we ate river shrimp and listened to the howling of monkeys.  The next day we traveled to San Juan de Nicaragua, toured the cemeteries of Greytown, and explored some of the tributaries and creeks off the river.  On the third day we boarded a navy coast guard boat in the Caribbean and sailed north to El Bluff.  From there we again got on a powerful launch – three engines of 200 horsepower each – and sped up the Rio Escondido to El Rama, where we got in our cars and drove home. 

We traveled over 1000 kilometers in three days, 600 of them by water.  I saw nature in its most wondrous forms – jungle, forest, lakes, islands, and rivers; monkeys and birds and snakes, but no caimans.  I have never seen anything more pristine, and I have lived in 9 countries and visited fifty others.  I saw young Nicaraguan soldiers and sailors perform their duties with spirit and high competence.  I saw Nicaraguans of every color and creed working and living together, on the river and in the towns and cities, and I spoke to many of them.

On other trips at other times, to Corn Island and later to Bilwi and Santa Marta in the RAAN, to tiny hamlets in the mountains of Nueva Segovia and Madriz, to coffee plantations near Matagalpa and cattle ranches in Chontales, on Ometepe and in Corinto and San Juan del Sur, I saw and studied Nicaragua and Nicaraguans.  In the process, I think I have learned something about this country and its people.

I have looked at Nicaragua and marveled at its potential.  It is large and fertile and the people are industrious and committed.  Natural resources abound on land and in water.  It is ideally located, between the three giant economies of North America and the robust markets of Colombia, Brazil, and Chile to the south, with coasts on the Pacific and Atlantic, navigable rivers, and large lakes.

Yet, somehow, Nicaragua remains poor.  After Haiti, it has the lowest per capita income in the hemisphere.  Many people struggle every day to find food for their families and secure an education for their children.  By some estimates, 60% of the population is unemployed or underemployed.  Over a half-million Nicas, many of them among the brightest and most ambitious, work abroad, principally in Costa Rica and the United States.

Many roads, some of which I’ve traveled on, are rutted, pitted, and impassable during the rainy months. I have visited, and talked to, people who have no access to clean water and proper sanitation facilities, and this leads inevitably to chronic illnesses.  And when they seek medical attention, it is unavailable or inadequate.  I have seen numerous schools that lack books and even desks, not to mention computers and science labs. 

But I have also met Nicaraguans who are determined to address these problems.  I have attended events where this Chamber of Commerce, collaborating with the Zamora Teran Foundation, has distributed personal computers to every student in a school, part of the “One Laptop per Child Program.” 

I have visited a small hydroelectric plant on Ometepe, built for slightly more than a half-million dollars through the foresight and determination of one young Nicaraguan.  This modest operation generates electric power for 5000 people who had never before had it.  One woman said that she had never expected to live to turn on a light in her own home.  She is 93.

I have seen employers at a cigar factory in Estelí, on a coffee plantation in Matagalpa, at a dairy and ice cream operation in Managua, at a rum distillery in Chichigalpa, and at a textile plant in Masaya who pay and treat their employees well and maintain the highest standards of safety and cleanliness.  I have chatted with their employees, and they are happy, healthy, and productive.

I have visited an art gallery in Leon and an archeological museum in remote Ometepe that are the creations of one family or one man, done to provide people with a sense of place and time.  I have met mayors in small towns who have improved their parks and libraries and rebuilt their streets and sewer systems.  I have toured churches with priests who have restored their buildings, many of which date to colonial times, and this has given their fellow citizens a sense of civic and religious pride. 

I have inaugurated a project that brought latrines to a tiny town near El Mozonte, opened a distribution center for agricultural produce in Tomatoya, and cut the ribbon at a bean-processing plant in Sebaco, all built with money from the American taxpayer. 

And I have come across, and talked at length with, hundreds of volunteers, many of them Americans, who are here in Nicaragua to lend their expertise and efforts to improve the lives of the poorest people.  On Solentiname, for example, I talked to a young American couple, recent college graduates, who had learned about the island on the internet and come down at their own expense to teach English at the local school.  They lived in a small house with no electricity and bathed in the lake.  They loved the local people, who watched over them, and they were happy beyond description.

Like many people who have come to know and grow fond of Nicaragua, I have asked myself, what explains this paradox?  Why would a country rich in natural and human resources, with many enlightened people and ample foreign aid, remain so poor for so long?

I am not competent to answer that question.  But experts in development, drawing on anthropological studies, divide societies into “Cultures of Progress” and “Cultures of Survival.”

According to them, people who live in cultures of survival often see society as static.  They dwell on the past, blame others for their failures, refuse to compromise, and believe that another’s gain is their loss.  They have little social conscience and little regard for the general welfare.  This thinking tends to produce unresponsive governments and suspicious and pessimistic people. 

To the contrary, people in cultures of progress look optimistically to the future.  They see society as dynamic, ever changing.  They are self-confident and self-critical, admitting their errors and then trying to correct them.  They will compromise for the common good and believe that by sharing fairly in the country’s bounty, they too will profit.  They put a great emphasis on education and community and respect the views and opinions of others, even if they disagree with them. 

Every society of course has elements of both these cultures.  But in successful countries, the culture of progress predominates.  In countries that consistently fail to provide their citizens with their material requirements and political freedoms, those who cling to the idea of a static society, to a culture of survival, have more influence.

This explanation may be too facile.  It may reflect the biases of authors from wealthy countries.  It may just be plain wrong.  But I do think it posits some interesting hypotheses and gives us something to contemplate.

But whatever the case, and in the final analysis, we -- all of us, every day -- have to decide what kind of society we want to fashion and bequeath to our children, and what we can do to bring it about.

As President Obama said in the UN speech I cited earlier, “The test of our leadership will not be the degree to which we feed the fears and old hatreds of our people.  True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents.  The people of the world want change.  They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.”  

Thank you.