{"id":1536,"date":"2021-06-20T08:51:37","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T15:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2021-06-20T08:51:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-20T15:51:37","slug":"remembering-enrique-bolanos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/20\/remembering-enrique-bolanos\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Enrique Bola\u00f1os"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The only decent president of Nicaragua in nearly 25 years, Enrique Bola\u00f1os died on Monday, June 14th 2021 at the age of 93. My family has been friends with the Bola\u00f1os for generations. A few years ago at my Tio Hernaldo Zuniga’s 90th birthday, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with Enrique for an extended period. He was more interested in hearing about me and what I do than talking about himself. As I told him about my creative work and using the internet\/web as a creative medium and the classes that I teach, he got very excited to share his latest endeavor. He had been working with a group of assistants to create an online archive regarding Nicaragua’s history. This is an archive of historical documents and accounts, if I recall correctly a compliment and extension to his book The Struggle for Power<\/a> (2017) that presents a political history of Nicaragua from 1821 to 2007 – ending with his presidency. Enrique described the effort as an online library and indeed named it as such Enrique Bola\u00f1os Bibioteca<\/a>. This online library reflects Enrique’s dedication and love for his country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Vice President to the criminal Arnolod Aleman from 1997 to 2002, it was expected that when Enrique Bola\u00f1os took over the presidency in 2002, he would merely be a puppet of Aleman. (In Nicaragua, presidents may not serve consecutive terms.) Instead of being a puppet, President Bola\u00f1os launched an anticorruption campaign to investigate criminal acts by state employees. In August of 2002, this investigation lead to the conviction of the former president Arnoldo Aleman for fraud, money laundering and misuse of public funds totaling nearly $100 million. Following only six years of a 20 year sentence and largely served as a house arrest, Aleman was pardoned by the far more corrupt dictator Daniel Ortega.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enrique Bola\u00f1os, an incredibly sincere and transparent individual is a surprising persona in the corrupt politics of Nicaragua. His presidency remains a hopeful moment in the country’s recent history as he was nested between a self-serving, obese thief and a maniacal dictator and lunatic vice dictator wife Rosario Murillo. One hopes that a new leader with some of the same qualities as Bola\u00f1os will rise to dethrone the Ortega-Murillo regime this election year. Unfortunately, as I write this, those candidates truly challenging the current dictatorship are being arrested<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only decent president of Nicaragua in nearly 25 years, Enrique Bola\u00f1os died on Monday, June 14th 2021 at the age of 93. My family has been friends with the Bola\u00f1os for generations. A few years ago at my Tio Hernaldo Zuniga’s 90th birthday, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with Enrique for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical_perspectives","category-nicaragua"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}