Dry Canals vs. Communities:
Environment and Land Rights in Nicaragua

Charles Warpehoski
Nicaragua Network, USA

From Philadelphia to London, consumers demand inexpensive blue jeans and hairdryers. United States and Europe fill their lust for inexpensive consumer products by relying on cheap labor, especially from East Asia. The trick is getting the goods from the eastern labor markets to the consumer markets in the eastern United States and Western Europe. The Panama Canal formerly filled this role, but it cannot handle the high shipping volume that consumers crave.

Enter the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). A key component of the PPP is the construction of East-West transportation corridors as alternatives to the Panama Canal. At least five such corridors or “dry canals” are proposed along Central America's isthmus, including southern Mexico (Oaxaca), Honduras and El Salvador, and as many as 3 proposals being considered for Nicaragua.

A dry canal is a high-speed freight rail system with deep-water ports on each end. While promoters of these dry canals promise new jobs and economic development, the canal will bring environmental destruction, violations of indigenous rights, and precious few jobs for Nicaraguans.

Two separate dry canal proposals for the Southern Autonomous Regions of Nicaragua (RAAS) supported by the Nicaraguan government are currently being bid for by the U.S. corporations CINN and SIT Global. These proposals include a 500 foot-wide track would create a formidable barrier for the migration of pumas, jaguars, and other animals that rely on the isthmus of Central America as a north-south migratory route. Indeed, this cut would occur where Nicaragua’s rainforests already face the greatest threats and where what remains of them is most precious.

Furthermore, the influx of families into the forests of eastern Nicaragua would increase the pressure on local ecosystems. Increasing numbers of Nicaraguans searching for firewood, building materials, and dinner meat would surely spell the death-knell for large sections of Nicaragua’s rainforests.

While the environmental arguments themselves are damning, the effects on Nicaragua’s indigenous and Afro-Nicaraguan communities are abominable. Under Nicaragua’s Constitution and Autonomy Law, the traditional lands of the indigenous and ethnic communities of eastern Nicaragua are protected communal lands that cannot be bought or sold.

While the Constitution protects indigenous lands, there has never been demarcation of their lands to grant communal titles. Without this crucial step, the promises of the constitution and autonomy law remain just words on paper.

Dry canal advocates are as willing to ignore the Constitution, as they are the people living on the land to make their mega-project a reality. Canal proponents claim that new jobs will offset the destruction of the rainforest and the violation of land rights. However, most of these would be temporary construction jobs that will disappear after the ecosystems and communities are destroyed. In a recent meeting with affected indigenous and Afro-Nicaraguan communities, a representative of one of the canal consortiums declared that the project would begin “with or without demarcation [of indigenous land].”

The indigenous and ethnic communities of Nicaragua oppose such disregard for their land rights. At that same meeting, an indigenous community leader declared, “To say that the project will be carried out with or without demarcation is an outrage. . . . If we don’t have demarcation, we can’t say that this project will continue.” Northern solidarity must support these demands for land rights and autonomy.