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Some question whether the canal would even be commercially viable. Few supertankers and massive container ships now afloat will not be able to pass through the expanded Panama Canal set to open soon. And few ports are big enough to welcome those megaships. In the short term, some experts say, the combination of the Panama and Nicaragua canals would lead to overcapacity and price wars.

At the time of the groundbreaking in December 2014, the Chinese government said it was not involved with the project. This and Mr. Wang’s recent setbacks — he has reportedly lost about 80 percent of his $10 billion fortune — make some experts say the deal is probably dead.

That aspect has prompted protests from farmers, some of which have turned violent. Experts say Mr. Wang will have to pay only the assessed value, or about 5 percent of the market value, for any lands he takes. But many farmers would not be entitled to even that. In a country that is short of adequate roads and government offices, many do not have formal title to the fields they have cultivated for generations.

But the plan is much broader than just a canal. Mr. Wang’s vision includes new airports, new ports on both ends of the canal, new lakes in the mountains to make sure the canal has enough water, and new islands in Lake Nicaragua to dispose of excavated sediment and rock. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A 1,100-page study of the project, conducted by the British consulting firm ERM and issued five months ago, reinforced the notion of how much is at stake. It recommended further studies in many areas before going forward and noted that a wide range of mitigation efforts would be needed, like reforestation and job training.Some see hope in those efforts. Jeffrey McCrary, an American fish biologist who lives in Nicaragua and worked on the study, supports the project, saying Mr. Wang’s company will have to provide money to clean up environmental damage already caused by deforestation, poor land management, crop fumigation and general dumping into Lake Nicaragua.

milo Lara, a member of the Nicaragua Canal Commission, a group appointed by the government to oversee the project, said many critics of the project were political opportunists. Mr. Lara said the canal plan had been adjusted to deal with problem issues, like potential earthquakes, tsunamis and environmental concerns. And people who might be displaced by it, he said, could be moved to small cities with new schools and services they never had before.

In the meantime, speculating about the canal has become a national pastime, though polls show that Nicaraguans grow less inclined to believe that it will be built.“We used to talk about it every day,” said Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of Confidencial, an investigative magazine. “Now we only talk about it every two days.”Some still hope it will lift this country out of poverty.But in Brito and the nearby city of Rivas, those who expect to be displaced are angry. Teresa de Jesus Henriquez Delgado, 31, is one of the residents who used a stencil to paint “Go Away Chinese!” on the outside of her house. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “I will resist with all of my strength when the bulldozers come to tear down my house,” she said. “I will fight until I die. I have to for my children. They can’t take this land from my family.”

They control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects, which has many critics comparing his family to the right-wing Somoza dynasty that Mr. Ortega helped topple in 1979.

They complain they are broke and say the reason they are not more successful is that they do not have international aid, as they did during the Reagan administration.

Though Mr. Ortega enjoys strong support among the poor, he was widely criticized for constitutional changes that repealed term limits, allowing him to run this year for a third consecutive term.

The government denies that politically motivated rebels in the country still exist, despite occasional attacks on police stations and the killings of Sandinistas and known contras

“It is a silent, dirty war that is not recognized,” said Bishop Abelardo Mata, a Roman Catholic leader who has served as something of a mediator between the two sides.

Venezuela has provided Nicaragua with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil a year on preferential terms, and the government acknowledges that much of it is invested in private companies closely tied to the Ortega family and its allies.

“The Ortega-Murillo family is getting richer while the country people starve,” a rebel who calls himself Commander Rafael said about the president and his wife, Rosario Murillo

He said the Ortega administration must be doing something right. In January, the World Bank projected Nicaragua’s economy to grow by 4.2 percent in 2016, one of the highest rates in Latin America.

It is no wonder: 38 percent of the Venezuelan oil is used to fund social projects. More than 35,000 houses have been distributed among the poor in the past two years, according to a government website. World Bank statistics show that the poverty level dropped six percentage points from 2005 to 2009.

“He might have an expensive car, but the other presidents before him had their luxuries but did not help the people,” Veronica Aguilar, 55, said of Mr. Ortega.

The rebels are not buying it. In a sign of the new allegiance the socialist administration has to the country’s richest people, the government has lifted import taxes for luxury items like yachts and helicopters.

In its description, HKND says it will need more than 2,000 pieces of major construction equipment, four billion liters of diesel fuel, one billion liters of bunker fuel for the dredgers, 400,000 tons of explosives, and untold millions of tons of cement and steel. The company would have to import all of this stuff into Nicaragua and build entirely new ports and roads wide enough to fit the big equipment.

On that, Miranda was much more skeptical the canal could be built in five years for a cost of $50 billion.

The section of the proposed canal that stretches through Lake Nicaragua would pass by Ometepe Island, home to an active volcano, Concepción, that spews out ash every now and again.

Right now, ships that want to pass between the Pacific and the Atlantic use the Panama Canal, which is currently undergoing a major $5.25 billion expansion

The rationale behind the Nicaragua Canal, HKND insists, is that it will be able to accommodate the next generation of super-sized container ships that can hold nearly 23,000 containers at a time.

 One company that operates super-sized ships, Maersk, told CNBC that the canal was "not something we have a demand for, and we're not able, at this point, to tell whether we will use it."*

Jorge Huete-Pérez, a vice president of Nicaragua’s academy of sciences, told me that Lake Nicaragua is a national icon — a source of fisheries and tourism, but also a key freshwater reservoir for much of the nation.

Other biologists have pointed out that the canal’s route will slice through a variety of nature reserves that are homes to some 22 species vulnerable to extinction, from tapirs to jaguars to turtles.

One internal assessment obtained by Scientific American said that HKND’s process for acquiring land for preliminary access roads "did not meet international standards."

 The Sandinista government still promises that the project will create thousands of jobs and promote billions in investment, but skepticism is growing.

In June 2013, Nicaraguan officials approved a $50 billion (US) deal with a Hong Kong firm to oversee the construction of a 278-kilometer long canal. The HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company’s proposed project would attempt to link the Pacific to the Caribbean, allowing the passage of container ships
too large for passage through the Panama Canal.

The Nicaraguan Constitution of 1987 recognizes the Indigenous cultures that reside on the land and their right to maintain their languages and cultures. Two additional laws, 28 and 445, grant autonomy and “the use, administration and management of traditional lands and their natural resources” to Indigenous people. Additionally, Nicaragua signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2008 and ratified ILO Convention 169 in 2010, a legally bind- ing document guaranteeing prior consultation before such projects.

The government is reportedly anticipating that 7,000 homes may be expropriated to make way for the 278-kilometer canal. However, an independent report by the Centro Humboldt states that the impact will be much greater. The report found that 282 settlements and 24,100 homes were identified within the direct area of influence, estimating that the number of people anticipated to be directly affected by construction at over 119,000. The canal’s construction will not only bring the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, but also irreversible environmental damage. The loss of Indigenous communities will be accompanied by the loss of some of Nicaragua’s most precious and rich resources: its ecologically diverse lands and waters.

Meanwhile, the social impact assessment conducted by the Nicaraguan government, if being conducted at all, has lacked any transparency. While quick to boast the economic impact of the canal, officials have blatantly disregarded the needs and fears of community members from coast to coast. A coalition of 11 groups including affected In- digenous communities and environmental and legal organiza- tions submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticizing the rights violations inherent in the Canal Law.

The Rama-Kriols hold a communal title not only to the nine settlements where community members live, but also to the 4,843-square-kilometer territory where they fish, hunt, and farm. If current construction plans for the canal go ahead, that territory will be severed in two.

The massive Nicaragua Canal planned by a secretive Chinese billionaire, Wang Jing, and managed by his company, the Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group (HKND), will stretch from the Pacific coast, across Lake Nicaragua, to the Caribbean coast and is destined to wipe at least one Rama village off the map

. The Rama’s fishing grounds will no longer be safe in the path of 400-meter-long megaships approaching the canal.

Aside from the Rama, whose territory will likely be the most impacted, at least four other indigenous groups will face disruption if the canal proceeds. Nicaraguan law explicitly bars indigenous land from being bought or sold; that means the land will be rented, not expropriated, says Kautz. Yet, critics say that because this is not expressly stated in the concession law, the land is vulnerable to seizure.

Acosta filed a legal challenge to the canal concession law on July 1, 2013, just weeks after it was approved. Like the 31 other legal challenges to the law—based on environmental factors, human rights, and national sovereignty—the Rama’s legal case was dismissed. The Supreme Court said the lawsuits were invalid because the law passed the National Assembly with a wide majority and because the major development project took precedence.

According to both international and Nicaraguan law, indigenous people must give their “free, informed, and prior consent” to any project that will affect the community’s territory or way of life.

According to Manuel Coronel Kautz, the president of Nicaragua’s Canal Authority, the National Assembly had documents from the Rama-Kriol government giving permission for the canal to be constructed prior to the vote that granted the concession

McCray was nervous as she read her remarks in Spanish. She cited three articles in the concession law that explicitly give the Canal Commission the right to expropriate indigenous land, and then she accused the government of violating international norms in the way it conducted community consultations, perhaps most blatantly by paying villagers—many of whom are illiterate—to come to the meetings. (Those villagers, Acosta claims, were then pressured into signing documents that they could not understand.)

The following day, McCray and her companions watched in dismay as the law was adopted. “We didn’t get a chance to say anything,” McCray remembers. “They didn’t respect us, they didn’t give us a chance to defend what we were claiming.”

Acosta worries that the Rama will lose their territory—displaced by golf courses and beach resorts—even if the Nicaragua Canal is never built.

The case at the IACHR is probably the Rama’s best chance for meaningful international intervention, but it remains to be seen whether or not this glimmer of hope is enough to protect their territory and keep their culture alive.

His empire also fell victim to the sudden end of both the global commodities boom and a wild exuberance for emerging markets - two forces that attracted investors to Batista's vision.

A former Brazilian finance minister, a former energy minister and a former chief justice of Brazil's supreme court joined the OGX board, bolstering the credibility of the polyglot, European-educated "Brazilianaire".

When Batista raised $4.11 billion in OGX's initial public offering in June 2008, interest in Brazil was feverish. Petrobras had just made giant offshore oil discoveries and Brazil was expected to become one of the world's top five oil producers by 2020.

Record demand from China drove up the price of Brazilian soybeans, iron ore, coffee, sugar and other commodities. Oil rose to an all-time high. EBX had also just sold most of its first listed company, iron ore producer MMX Mineração e Metálicos SA, to Anglo American Plc for $6.65 billion, enriching Batista and his investors.

A lot of the people who invested with Batista were not fools, and his rise and fall has followed that of Brazil.

DeGolyer & MacNaughton (D&G), a Dallas-based certification company, estimated OGX's potential resources at 10.8 billion barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent. That would have been enough - if OGX could figure out how to get it out of the ground - to supply all U.S. oil needs for more than a year and a half.

OGX estimated it would produce 1.4 million barrels a day by 2019, equivalent to 70 percent of Brazil's output, or about half of the output of Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC.

Already Brazil's richest man, Batista bragged he would surpass Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mexico's Carlos Slim to become the world's wealthiest person. Today he does not even make Forbes' top 100 list.

The consequences of Tubarão Azul's failure quickly spread because of the close links between EBX Group companies. EBX shipbuilder OSX Brazil SA was formed to build and lease a fleet of offshore oil vessels for OGX. Power producer MPX Energia SA is developing gas fields with OGX in Brazil's northeast. Port operator LLX Logística SA is home to OSX's shipyard, a place to store and process OGX oil and to ship Anglo American's iron ore.

Batista may also have been hurt by Brazil's efforts to help his and other companies weather the 2008 U.S. financial crisis and the world economic slowdown that followed. As Brazilian stocks, currency and bonds plunged, EBX stocks briefly fell to levels that were only broken this year.

EBX was one of the main beneficiaries of cheap capital that Brazil's government pumped into the economy to fight the downturn.

In Batista, the government was pursuing its then-fashionable strategy of creating "national champions" while making up for delays in its own infrastructure projects. It encouraged Batista to speed up just as Brazil's boom was about to end.

Batista and Brazil, though, have struggled since. As China slows, commodity prices are falling. In the last year Brazil's Bovespa stock index was the worst performer among the world's 28 largest indexes and the only one to fall in the period.

managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.

The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.

the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.

the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.

Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade

Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,

They slaughtered or captured an entire British army

, that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,

This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.

Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game

Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory

Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region

Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this

Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:

Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's

However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.

Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.

they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.

uled as an illiberal democracy, meaning that the constitution, laws, property rights, and free speech are curtailed whenever it suits the rulers.

First, he has signed a deal with a Caribbean-based Hong Kong company to dig a canal to rival the Panama Canal. It is unclear to what degree the Chinese government is party to the deal, but state-owned enterprises are involved. That means the government is involved, so of course we should expect Ortega and his cronies to benefit. Read the piece linked above for more details about the questions being raised over the dubious cost calculations ($40 billion? $50 billion? More?), impact on the environment, impact on private land ownership, and the forceful tactics of the authorities against citizens trying to get information about the project, or simply trying to protect their homes from intrusion by officials escorting Chinese researchers and contractors into their villages.

Ortega is once again trying to build up his military for no good reason.

If Ortega’s efforts to strengthen ties with Russia and China were simply about commerce and improving his economy, it would make sense. Poor countries regularly try to do such things.

Now the Ortegas and their allies control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects.

She went public with rape accusations in 1998. But her mother, who has had seven children with Mr. Ortega as well, stood by him.Joined by Mr. Ortega and their adult children, Ms. Murillo held a news conference calling her eldest daughter a liar who suffered from psychological problems.

her loyalty to Mr. Ortega and her public defense of him were rewarded in the influence she has gained across the country.

war raged in Nicaragua as the victorious Sandinista revolutionaries fought insurgents known as the contras, who were backed by the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Ortega officially became president in 1984 and left office in 1990, when Nicaragua took steps toward peace.

The National Assembly and the courts were stacked with allies. The law was changed so that Mr. Ortega could run indefinitely.

Supreme Court banished a leading opposition figure from his own party, the Liberal Independent Party, preventing him from becoming an opponent in the November election.

even more power will be consolidated in the Ortega family.

“If a private company does not allow a married couple to work together, how is that allowed for a nation?”

“This is a movie we already saw, and we know how it ends,” said Mr. Ramírez, the former vice president. “It ends badly.”

President Bush could go a long way toward restoring peace in Nicaragua, and U.S.-Nicaraguan relations, if he proposed to use his influence and support--together with other heads of state, the World Bank and various other international agencies--to help launch a resettlement program, in Nicaragua

Nicaraguans who have sought asylum abroad would be enticed to return home. However, such a project to restore our dignity as Nicaraguans can be possible only if the Sandinista regime takes a sincere decision to adopt democracy.

it was its purpose as well to establish an international presence in the country and serve as a deterrent to those who might attempt again to disrupt democrac

This conflict prevention and management program helped Guatemalans address ongoing social and political tensions by providing them with training on negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution skills.

Secretary General was asked to take urgent action to defuse a conflict in Nicaragua that threatened to upset the institutional order.

Experience in Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti and Nicaragua showed that the OAS played a decisive role in resolving the political and institutional crises in those countries, and took an active part in overcoming various situations that threatened democratic stability.

the digital divide in Latin America, even in an international context, always has been about more than just access to the Internet, or a computer.

a big majority of poorer areas within countries—the periphery of the periphery—continue to live in the dark, some with the equipment (machinery) but not the tools (knowledge) to promote  the same socioeconomic empowerment of their richer counterparts

a majority of the targeted populations have not become integrated like their more affluent neighbors

a problem of knowledge and sustainable innovation

over the last 10 years, the digital divide has been shrinking in terms of accessibility based on the numbers of fixed phone lines, mobile subscribers, and Internet users around the world.

Few reports can be found focusing on specific countries within the region, leading most international analysts to base their generalizations based on the experience on similar groups of countries

Unprecedented economic growth now gives Latin America the opportunity to address some of its most pressing need

opportunities in Latin America for sales growth are considered massive, especially for equipment manufacturers and as well as for telecom services providers

government-sponsored programs focus mostly on expanding access

computer ownership continues to rise with unprecedented speed, even if Internet access proliferation follows at much reduced speed.

policy initiatives have remained access-obsessed without evolving to tackle some of the effects of persistent inequality characteristic of the region

Dr. Sanabria successfully managed to implement ICTs to give medical advice to remote, marginalized communities

an understanding of how technology penetration works can, with some innovation, breed sustainable and meaningful development

the work of Fundación Proyecto Maniapure and other organizations like it are having a more lasting impact in alleviating poverty, health deficits, and inequality, than perhaps some nationally sponsored projects that are bringing more technology to communities, but are not quite putting it to its full possible use.

Fixed broadband and mobile Internet (measured by both adoption and speed) and overall data traffic in Latin America are all projected to grow,

Latin America is closing the gap, especially in mobile, with the rest of the developed world and nearly 400 million people will be connected in the near future.

Internet penetration by percentage of the population across all of Latin America is at least over 50 percent by now, which is higher than the world average

an emerging digital divide in the next phase of the Internet, ironically hidden by Latin America's current booming adoption of the consumer Internet.

Latin America isn't expected to make much progress over the near-term in the number of connected devices, especially of the M2M-variety.

But in Latin America, leading countries like Brazil and Mexico are expected to reach 32 percent by that year, falling behind the global average by about the same amount that the region as a whole currently surpasses global average Internet penetration today.

Then imagine 50 billion objects being connected together, from consumer goods to manufacturing systems, to appliances, healthcare systems, infrastructure, mass and personal transportation -- and the list goes on and on. In the future, IoT is what most of the Internet will be, and anyone left behind will be at a huge disadvantage

Officials estimate that between 30,000 and 120,000 people will be displaced in total by the canal.

They say that the planned route will displace the entire communities of Bangkukuk Taik, Monkey Point and Wiringay, while most other local communities will be indirectly affected by canal support projects.

“They keep saying that we don’t need a legal advisor,” Allen Claire-Duncan, the leader of the Monkey Point Kriol community, told Mongabay. “Many people do not know how to read or write, and if the [government negotiators] come to the community they will speak in terms that the people don’t understand.

the Nicaraguan government must obtain consent from the nine community leaders as well as the 18 members of the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government (GTR-K) before construction can begin.

Community leaders are emphatic about their desire not to sign over their lands, but some leaders say they have been pressured into signing documents of an uncertain nature

But in May, government officials transferred 16 members of the GTR-K to Managua where they signed more papers. Shortly after the meeting, Nicaraguan state media reported that the indigenous territories had officially granted consent for the canal

Corporate and governmental secrecy have prompted concern from human rights organizations, environmental groups and the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua.

The question is not so much about his results but his methods. He has a reputation for being merciless and brutal, and as the accolades have stacked up, he has cracked down on his own people and covertly supported murderous rebel groups in neighboring Congo

In some areas of the country, there are rules, enforced by village commissars, banning people from dressing in dirty clothes or sharing straws when drinking from a traditional pot of beer, even in their own homes, because the government considers it unhygienic. Many Rwandans told me that they feel as if their president is personally watching them. “It’s like there’s an invisible eye everywhere,” said Alice Muhirwa, a member of an opposition political party. “Kagame’s eye.”

why has the West — and the United States in particular — been so eager to embrace Kagame, despite his authoritarian tendencies?

Kagame has become a rare symbol of progress on a continent that has an abundance of failed states and a record of paralyzing corruption. Kagame was burnishing the image of the entire billion-dollar aid industry. “You put your money in, and you get results out,” said the diplomat, who insisted he could not talk candidly if he was identified. Yes, Kagame was “utterly ruthless,” the diplomat said, but there was a mutual interest in supporting him, because Kagame was proving that aid to Africa was not a hopeless waste and that poor and broken countries could be fixed with the right leadership.

Though Rwanda has made tremendous strides, the country is still a demographic time bomb. It’s already one of the most densely populated in Africa — its 11 million people squeezed into a space smaller than Maryland — and despite a recent free vasectomy program, Rwanda still has an alarmingly high birthrate. Most Rwandans are peasants, their lives inexorably yoked to the land, and just about every inch of that land, from the papyrus swamps to the cloud-shrouded mountaintops, is spoken for.

much has improved under his stewardship. Rwandan life expectancy, for instance, has increased to 56 years, from 36 in 1994. Malaria used to be a huge killer, but Kagame’s government has embarked on a wide-scale spraying campaign and has distributed millions of nets to protect people when they are sleeping — malarial mosquitoes tend to feed at night — and malaria-related deaths plummeted 85 percent between 2005 and 2011.

Kagame hopes to make more money from coffee, tea and gorillas — Rwanda is home to some of the last remaining mountain gorillas, and each year throngs of Western tourists pay thousands of dollars to see them.

aid flows to Rwanda because Kagame is a celebrated manager. He’s a hands-on chief executive who is less interested in ideology than in making things work. He loves new technology — he’s an avid tweeter — and is very good at breaking sprawling, ambitious projects into manageable chunks. Rwanda jumped to 52nd last year, from 158th in 2005, on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business annual rating, precisely because Kagame set up a special unit within his government, which broke down the World Bank’s ratings system, category by category, and figured out exactly what was needed to improve on each criterion.