2017 AGM Links with Tisma and Chris Williamson
This is a report back on Tisma to the AGM. Click here for current Tisma Project news
Viva!’s AGM with Chris Williamson and new Bradford community links with Tisma in Nicaragua
Sunday 9th April 2017, 1-4pm, Kirkgate Community Centre, Shipley, BD18 3EH
All are welcome.
1.00pm Lunch (please bring a dish to share. We will provide plates, cutlery, drinks)
2.00pm Business and report of 2016 (2-page photo-report)
2.10pm Report from Tisma in Nicaragua summary below, and 10-page report here, and Appeal from women of Tisma
Bradford’s lively links with the town of Tisma in Nicaragua during the 1980s faded but could be reignited. Report on change and social projects from Ludi Simpson after a visit in February, with photos and anecdotes. See more information below.
2.50pm Chris Williamson, update on Latin America
Chris Williamson is chair of the national Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, and of Labour friends of progressive Latin America: “Labour parliamentarians & supporters building solidarity with social progress & progressive movements across Latin America & rejecting external intervention”. He was MP for Derby North 2010-2015.
3.30pm General discussion and plans for 2017
4.00pm Close
Community links with Tisma in Nicaragua – news
Bradford district’s Latin America group Viva! is remaking community links with the small town of Tisma in Nicaragua, Central America. Ludi Simpson visited in February for a few days. Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign had asked him to write a ‘Then and Now’ report, and to interview people about the impact of climate changes on their lives. He will report back to the Viva! AGM on April 9th.
Ludi has found social projects that Bradford might link with, learn from, support and exchange experiences with. One project involves supporting women starting new businesses in La Perla, one of the poorest agricultural settlements on the edge of Tisma. He took £250 in donations from Viva! and individuals, half of which has been spent on school equipment for the children of families who have not been able to afford it this year. Diane Kitchen, a Spanish teacher in Ilkley, sent letters from her students and has received replies from Tisma’s secondary school. In Tisma the main link is with Sheyla Aburto, a Tisma community activist who has trained as a lawyer. You can read Ludi's 10-page report here.
Many in Bradford were involved in the lively community link between Tisma and Bradford in the 1980s. Tisma Drive in BD4 is lasting evidence of that link. The link was very active for five years but faded in the time before the internet and when the Sandinistas who had supported international links lost the government in 1990, after suffering from military attack in Ronald Reagan’s era. The Sandinistas regained the government in 2007 and increased their support to 72% in the presidential elections of 2016, after investment in Nicaragua’s infrastructure, with policies that have created greater equality. Tisma has benefitted from that. The mayor of Tisma has been Sandinista since 2001. Tisma includes its main town of ten thousand people and a further ten thousand in the villages around it. The area is agricultural, growing cotton, watermelons and tomatoes and farming cattle. It is about 30 miles from the capital Managua. It has a lagoon for fishing, lying between the two great lakes of Nicaragua. Tisma’s lagoon is drying out, partly due to climate change, partly due to water taken for industrial use. Tisma’s council has a photo-website at https://www.facebook.com/tismaalegre/photos/.
