Welcome to the Global Americans interview series. For our second edition we focused on Nicaragua and the evolution of the crisis in the Central American country.
Since April this year, hundreds of people have been killed in what has become a popular uprising against President, Daniel Ortega, and his government, included his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
To understand the origin and evolution of the crisis, we spoke to Richard Feinberg, nonresident senior fellow at the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and a professor of international political economy in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego.
In the past, he also served as special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs and senior director of the National Security Council’s (NSC) Office of Inter-American Affairs. Mr. Feinberg has travelled to Nicaragua frequently over the last 15 years and in a recent report for the Brookings Institution titled “Nicaragua: Revolution and Restoration,” he examines the roots of the current crisis and a possible way out.
We discussed the report in depth, but also talked about why the government responded with such disproportionate force, what other actors are to blame for democratic backsliding in Nicaragua and how a peaceful resolution remains feasible. You can access the report “Nicaragua: Revolution and Restoration” on www.brookings.edu
