We received another phone call from the office the Attorney General yesterday because the First Lady, Rosario Murillo, is still receiving emails about our case -- to date she has received more than 1,000 emails! Thank you to all of you who have helped bring our case to the attention of the Nicaraguan government! Since the Attorney General's office has promised to help our case, we have assured both the Attorney General and the First Lady that we will spread the word to our contacts to please refrain from sending more emails to Rosario at this time! We will keep you posted of how you can help through this blog, so check back here regularly.
We are still waiting to receive papers on the lawsuit, and our lawyer believes we can expect to be formally served this Thursday or Friday. In the meantime, we are filing a counter suit and are also filing criminal charges against Pedro Pablo Ruiz Ruiz, the former president of the cooperative Gabriel Cardenal No. 2 which sold us the land. Ruiz has made a formal declaration to the police that he never sold us any land, and we are charging that he gave Yelba Carvajal a title to the land when they both knew it belonged to us. Our hope is that Ruiz will confess that Yelba Carvajal is involved in this fraud with him so that we can file charges against her as well. The only five available and remaining members of the Gabriel Cardenal No. 2 cooperative have gone to the police and made formal declarations that the land was in fact sold to the JHC and that what they authorized the president to do was to sign a title to us, that they never authorized a title for this land to be signed over to Yelba Carvajal. In this process we have found out that she has never paid them the full amount for the land she did buy (where she has since put a housing development), and so we are offering the former co-op members legal assistance in seeking redress for the money Yelba Carvajal still owes to them.
In other news, the Genesis spinning cooperative has been pro-active in trying to hold onto the land where they plan to put their building. Their members run a chapter of the national Union of Self-Employed Workers, and last week requested a meeting with the union umbrella group, the National Workers' Front (FNT) to seek their help. The FNT has promised to use its connections and clout to work on behalf of Genesis to ensure that the case is not corrupted (i.e. no one "buys" the judge off), which is a big concern to all of us. That was a very positive meeting and the Genesis folks are anxious to stay on top of developments to do everything they can in support of the case.
