Opposition to CAFTA wanes in Nicaragua

CAFTA's cheerleaders here also point out that Asian countries - which are increasingly inking trade deals in the region - will be more inclined to invest in a country with easy access to the US market and a binding commitment to intra-regional trade.

Helena Telles Bermuder, a hairdresser with three kids, could not make ends meet, she says, before she got a job at a new maquiladora (manufacturing plant) in Granada. Today she sews jeans for Woolworth's and other brands, and makes about $175 a month, almost double the minimum wage here. It's about three times more than she was earning before. "I don't understand the economics," she admits. "But I understand jobs. And if CAFTA can help me get one - I am for it."

Nicaragua's dire need for economic gains is beyond dispute. About 78 percent of Nicaraguans live in poverty - on less than $2 a day, according to Adolfo Acevedo, an economist in Managua.

But some economists like Mr. Acevedo question whether CAFTA will help or hurt. Even without CAFTA, he points out, 80 percent of Nicaraguan production is already allowed into the US without tariffs. The trade pact may encourage more investment in maquiladoras in Nicaragua, but he wonders out loud whether it will offset the farm jobs likely to be lost as cheap US agricultural produce sweeps into the country.

"We can't all work in maquiladoras," says Acevedo, "You need basic education. The maquiladoras and those higher-end plans don't signify any development at all for the masses."

Former president and Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega's case against CAFTA is that the US is seeking to exploit the poorest countries to get the cheapest labor. More than that, it is a piece of geopolitical opportunism: "Bush is taking up CAFTA because it is his way of keeping central America from looking south," he said in an interview, suggesting Washington is seeking to splinter Nicaragua's solidarity with the Left in Latin America such as Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela.

Politics, no doubt, will be central to CAFTA's fate in Nicaragua. But, ironically enough, the politics that will count will be the internal workings of Ortega's own Sandinista party - made up, these days, of an increasing number of businessmen.

In fact, one significant sighting at the Crowne Plaza was this: Herty Lewites, a longtime comrade of Ortega's in the Sandinista party who is now running against him for president in 2006, was in attendance at the meeting of business leaders. "Like it or not, CAFTA is coming," said Lewites, who is running first in the Nicaraguan polls. "If we are clever, we can ask for some adjustments - but rejecting it is wrong."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for the Monitor and USA Today.

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