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Nicaragua, Ortega and a Canal: Past, Present and Future of an Uncanny Dream

Vortrag im Rahmen des Anthrolabs

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In this presentation, I take a look at the complex interconnections of socio-political transformations and anticipated futures in a global landscape of conflicting interests and (sovereignty)rights. In 2013, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, former leader of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, signed a contract with the Chinese construction company HKND to build the 278 km long Gran Canal Interoceanico de Nicaragua. Six years later, in the context of an increasingly dictatorial and violent regime, anticipations of the Canal continue to divide the country, threaten indigenous rights and evoke protest movements and lawsuits. The present absence of a megaproject that still needs to materialise, I argue, invites us to think about historical continuities of injustice, lost hopes and revolutions.

Dr. Katja Seidel
Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, Universität Wien