Carlos Midence
Nicaragua’s Ambassador
The concept and practice of integration in Nuestramerica and, in particular in Central America, has been a dynamic and multifactorial process supporting the organization of its inhabitants for commercial, political, cultural or national reasons under the same objective.
Our region has sought integration to promote the capacity of each nation and, in the joint work, to improve the situation of their citizens. We say this because Central America is one of the territories with the best timing when it comes to joining forces in order to achieve the same goal. Before the conquest, it was united by a process of Nahuality, an identity and cultural element. This created the unification of its multiple ethnic specificities, up to the point of being, before 1492, one of the most organized areas of the continent. Mesoamerica, as it is anthropologically known, has been a unity model. Nevertheless, we must clarify that unity does not entail uniformity, but agreement. This area was called by its ancestors: Abya Yala, land in its full maturity, a maturity supported by that unity within diversity.
How much of that Nahuality has been inherited by contemporary times and their multiple attempts of unity? We must not forget that the so-called conquest brought together the territory under the command of a military district, and, once independence was achieved, a federalist process was initiated, whose objective was also unity. Hence, closer to us: the Central American Court of Justice created at the beginning of the 20th century, the Central American Common Market, the CABEI, as functional mechanisms promoting unity in its different expressions.
These actions take us to a unity whose history is established in specific mechanisms that, although not as fast as required, have been strategic factors as regards an integral region or block. We are referring to different supranational organizations that have been implemented, which ensure endless actions sustaining integration, such as economic integration, for example, or common market, trade and free circulation. This has defined and comprised a group of movements, which try to bring together the countries of Nuestramerica and Central America respecting the essence and identity signs of each of them.
Facing this, it is fundamental to highlight the integrationist/unionist spirit of the Government of Nicaragua, under the leadership of the president Daniel Ortega and the vice-president Rosario Murillo, who prove it through endless gestures and actions. Examples: their most recent speech at PARLACEN, where they specifically advocated Central Americanism, the stance in the recent meeting of Chambers of Commerce of the US and Latin America where the region was showed as an important business platform, the removal of the patriotic tax on Colombia, whose support was that Nicaragua is a nation in favour of the integration of twin towns, or when it was recently affirmed that we must be: in favour of the unity that can go beyond with a fair globalization. From that point of view, we design integration through a coordinated effort, joint planning and peaceful coexistence between the sectors making up the region. There is a path here defining the way in which the parts can come together as a whole, without losing their singularity.
16/03/2017. © All rights reserved.