Daniel Ortega

“Si mucho te contentas con el orden, se dice, te vas convirtiendo en piedra.” Marcela Serrano Daniel Ortega had already worked thirty-two hours of what was supposed to be a forty-hour workweek and it was only Thursday morning. He turned his old pickup off Paseo and down Cervantes street towards the high school and slowly made his way towards the security gate. What a useless gate, he thought. All the students had to do was bribe the guard with a burrito and he would let them off. They could fire the guard and maybe we could get some new textbooks. But the parents didn’t know about the gate’s inefficacy and thus were sated believing that their children were safe in school all day, which apparently was more important than whether or not they…

Desaparecer On May 30, 1498, conquistador and explorer Christopher Columbus set sail on his third voyage to the New World. After his first two voyages around the Caribbean, the adventurer finally set foot in what would today be modern-day Venezuela. These first steps into the New World would forever change South America culturally, historically and economically. Today, due to the historical prevalence of their previous European colonizers, South America has begun to develop into a growing…

The construction of the Nicaraguan Inter-Oceanic Canal raises several controversial social, environmental, political, and geoeconomic concerns for Nicaragua, its people, and the international community. Opponents are concerned about the potential for irreversible environmental damage, the disruption of indigenous communities, and the involvement of a private Chinese company that was given the 50-year concession to build and operate the canal. Proponents cite the canal as the only viable option…

A half decade after the conclusion of the National Literacy Crusade, Deborah Brandt composed an analysis on the history of Sandinista education entitled, “Popular Education” in Nicaragua: The First Five Years (1985, edited by Thomas W. Walker). Brandt argued the symbiotic relationship between the militia members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front or the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) and the historically disenfranchised rural peasants through popular education…

There are many sides to every story and Robert Persano’s documentary Nicaragua…the Dream of a Generation offers a unique view into the Sandinista Popular Revolution. The film interviews Argentine internationalists who contributed to the revolution in various ways, from providing medical care to fighting on the front lines. The filmmakers themselves talk about their own experiences in Nicaragua and the lasting impact it has had on their work. Most importantly, however, the documentary seeks to…

In Nicaragua, the Somoza family had begun a dictatorship, since 1936, that was disliked by most of the population and only supported by the small percent of the elite (Klerlein). There was so much support from the upper class, which was made up of one percent of the population, for the Somoza rule because the dictatorship tended to favor them and discarded the lower classes. Many of the lower class were made up of farmers who had little to no education and the Somoza regime wanted to keep it…

In a bloody battle with Necho’s Egyptian army in 605 BC, Prince Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nabopolassar, pushed the Egyptian army back across the river and claimed Judah to Babylon. After Nebuchadnezzar departed back to his homeland to ascend to the throne, Judah began to revolt against the Babylonian rule which called for the now King to return to suppress the trouble. Upon his return the King had completed many projects to remind Judah of whom their king was. One of the projects was to take…

Introduction In 605 B.C during Jehoiakim’s reign, the Babylonian’s king Nebuchadnezzar took Daniel and his friends as captives when he besieged Jerusalem. Daniel was taken captive because he fit in the standards, which the king was searching for: young men, good-looking and smart. During the time of captivity, Daniel, the author of the book of the Bible with the same name , writes about the dreams, visions and situations he passed in the course of the captivity. Indeed Daniel’s actions…

The perception of our emotions, and the world we live in isn’t all that it seems. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of social psychology at Harvard has an inquisitive view of the relationship between perceived happiness, and reality. In the chapter “Immune to Reality” from his book Stumbling on Happiness, Gilbert reasons that our psychological immune system causes us to be self-deceiving and as a result, causing us to have the tendency to cook the facts of situations that can affect our happiness.…

Kahneman and Tversky developed the Prospect Theory to describe how people choose different choices that involve risk, knowing the probable outcomes. This demonstrates the way a person feels toward taking risks that involve positive outcomes is very different from the way a person feels toward risks that involve a negative outcome. The decision a person makes reflects on their judgement which can be heavy considering the conditions of uncertainty. For example, if people had a choice of: a) 100%…