6 February 2008 - Background Info & Ways to Help

The Jubilee House Community, Inc.'s project in Nicaragua, the Center for Development in Central America (CDCA) urgently needs your voice NOW! Someone is trying to steal our land, and we need you to write in our support! We normally don't post this kind of dated information online, but this time it's critical that you know now, pass the word, and respond. The volume of international response will have a strong effect.

If you are already aware of our situation, and are looking for a sample letter to write,
please click here for an English version, and here for a Spanish version.

In the last few days we have been summoned to court to respond to a demand on the part of Señora Yelba Carvajal, a person well known here in Nicaragua to be involved in several fraudulent land deals. We have been investigating, and have managed to find out that she is claiming in the courts that she is the legitimate owner of the property where we are located, even though we have legal title. On the basis of a typographical error in the title, Señora Carvajal is asking the court to invalidate our title and recognize her as the legitimate owner of the property. You will remember that we originally purchased our land from a cooperative in the 1990s, and she later purchased the rest of the land that the cooperative owned. It would appear that this is an open and shut case in our favor; however, as Father Miguel D'Escoto once said to us about land issues in Nicaragua, "You can have the law and justice on your side, and it's still not enough."

What does this mean? It means that the Nueva Vida women's sewing cooperative, the Fair Trade Zone, is in danger of losing its land, building, and free trade zone status, therefore putting 50 people out of their jobs that they have worked so hard to maintain for the last nine years. It means that the fledgling Genesis spinning plant cooperative, only days away from setting its first post in the ground, is in danger of losing the land where they will build their factory, all the work they have put into their project for the last year, and the opportunity to create full-time employment for 60 people and their families. These are only two examples of the negative impact that this would have, resulting in the closing of all of the CDCA's projects in Ciudad Sandino.

What can you do? We are asking you to send an email to the First Lady of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, requesting that she, as a strong defender of poor women throughout this country, investigate this attempt to steal from these cooperatives that are made up in their vast majority of poor women who have worked so long and so hard to better the lives of their members. Please look at the examples of an email in Spanish and in English that we have linked above, on which you can base your message. If you have the time, we ask that you personalize your message as we feel it's important that she receive individual emails. (Feel free to send an email in English only if you do not speak Spanish.)

Please send emails to rosario@presidencia.gob.ni and sign your name and address including country.
Please copy us on the email at jhc@jhc-cdca.org