Nicaragua
/Add up the trouble spots, and things are bleak. Yemen, Syria, Iran, Israel/Occupied Territories, Zimbabwe, Turkey - let alone the varied horrors of Trump and Brexit. But for me there's a further heartbreak, occasioned by my daughter's links with Nicaragua. Way back in the last century she opted to write about Nicaragua as an A level History topic, and she's been absorbed in it ever since. she's been there numerous times, read about it, written about it, worked there - and now she's watching helplessly as it tears itself apart.
Yet again it's the students who are at the centre of it - young people demonstrating for their freedom and their future, in the face of repression by police, army and various gangs of government-sponsored militia. And against them is Ortega, the current dictator and autocrat - but also the charismatic Sandinista leader who forty years ago was on the other side, doing what they're doing. He's got used to power, his ditched his ideals for deals - some of them really sordid - and he doesn't plan to budge an inch. community leaders and the church are trying to broker some kind of peace, but it's really hard to see how this might have a happy ending, and external powers who might have intervened in the past are far too busy elsewhere.