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Bureaucrats for Hire:
The Profitable Consultancy Industry
Our country deserves an in-depth reflection
on the growing development consultancy industry.
The following effort is based on my observation,
from both outside and inside, of the abundant
fauna of consultants in todays Nicaragua,
though it probably wouldnt be accepted
as part of a consultancy study...
The consultancy industry in Nicaragua is worth mil-
lions a year. The money spent on salaries and other
remunerations for the studies and technical advice
emanating from these passing posts represented a sizable
percentage of the annual budget of many state institutions
in 2003: 45% in the Municipal Development Institute, 38%
in the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry and
27% in the Supreme Electoral Council. The situation is
similar among the NGOs, universities, media and churches
that are plugged into international aid in this era of transfu-
sion.
So many of us are living in the foreign aid bubble. Somany of us have some direct or indirect link into the long
consultancy market chain. The fieldwork of NGOs or minis-
tries must be evaluated by an adviserbest if he/she is Swed-
ish, Dutch or Danishwho will clean up the ideas expressed
by interviewed natives, add data provided by surveyors and
statisticians and, with other support from a sociologist,
present some notes to an analyst to whip into shape in some
illegible report whose cracks will be plastered over by an
JOS LUIS ROCHA
editor before being presented by a good communicator in
Power Point. Its the same old story day after day all over
Nicaragua.
Our permanent crisis offers
endless opportunities
Policy designers and editors, advisers and strategic planners,
translators and logical framework specialists, presenters in
suits and talk-givers in loose cotton shirts all sup from the
foreign aid cornucopia, which appears to be endless and un-
restricted. They all have a place, small or large, in the inter-
national cooperation pyramid. They all have their limited
or extensive role to play in this comedy of the merry wives
and happy husbands of consultancy. Many people in the world
work as consultants, but not all of them understand it.
Consultancies are responsible for the only element of
reverse migration in Nicaragua. Professionals return after
many years living in Germany, England and other industri-
alized countries because theres money to be made here.
14
envo
NICARAGUA
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15
january 2005
In a country like Nicaragua, this
bureaucrat-for-hire system is like an
equation with three variables: Tom, a
first world government or cooperation
agency, hires Dick, that confident Jack-
of-all-trades consultant willing to try his
hand at any issue, to work for the
benefit of Harry, almost always a state
institution or an NGO
Whereas the 1972 earthquake represented a revolution of
opportunities for Somoza, todays ongoing crisis has turned
Nicaragua into a land of opportunities for bankers to profit
from the high interest rates on state bonds and private secu-rity companies to profit from the lack of police response in a
context of poverty and anomy that encourages crime. Other
beneficiaries include the judges who reap great dividends
for their lack of morals and the powerful Pellas family, which
only has to place a call to halt any audit threatening to reveal
a tax evasion case by one of the companies in its economic
group. At the end of the line are the consultants, continually
offered an infinite and never obsolete range of subjects on
which to advise and charge. Many suffer the current crisis,
but some fat cats feed off it.
Fleeting posts of a fly-by-night bureaucracyIn a country like Nicaragua, this bureaucrat-for-hire system
is like an equation with three variables; lets name them
Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom, a first world government or
cooperation agency, hires Dick, that confident Jack-of-all-
trades consultant willing to try his hand at any issue, to
work for the benefit of Harry, almost always a state institu-
tion or an NGO.
In this system, Dick is the dependent variable: the more
dramatic the countrys prostration the more consultants
there will be, because foreign cooperation will provide more
funds, state officials will be more ill-prepared and there will
be greater cronyism in the consultancy market.
The consultancy system has ushered in a new kind of
bureaucrat here and in other countries: the fly-by-night kind,
completely mobile and flexibly loyal. The fleeting posts in
this bureaucracy no longer impose any kind of specializa-
tion: todays sewer inspector is tomorrows museum adviser,
and to hell with anyone who cant see the link. Generally
speaking, consultants are formally and physically discon-
nected from both the institution that pays them and the one
they work for, a situation that rather than guaranteeing ideo-
logical independence, actually forges other kinds of connec-
tions: string pulling, theres no other choice inertia, pres-
tige, marketing... all of which are sometimes blessed by real
or fictitious application processes.
Postmodern bureaucrats working from home
This system breaks with the traditional bureaucratic model.
In conventional bureaucracies, according to sociologist Max
Weber, the group of stable public officials, the work instru-
ments and the filed documents corresponding to any par-
ticular jurisdictional domain were located in one office. In
the current bureaucrat-for-hire model, these are all dispersed
and theres often minimal contact among them. Theres no
office where the scribes are concentrated, or linkage between
them and their files. There are as many offices and archives as
the number of consultants contracted by a given institution.
The consultants temporary link with the institution is
measured in the commitment to a block of days into which
the task must fit rather than to a task that takes as many
days as required. Each contracted assignment needs to be
adjusted to standards and objectives, which are set out in
terse terms of reference. In addition, consultants must fol-
low certain tacit rules for managing their image in society
and others on which their future in that market relies. But
they are not rules of loyalty to an institution in return for a
secure existence. The consultant sacrifices the future secu-
rity that a stable job offers to the attraction of greater in-
come today.
Modern civil service had separated the office from the
officials private home, with bureaucracy generally consid-
ering official activity to be independent of private life. In
postmodernity, however, bureaucrats often work out of their
home, with work life and private life sharing the same physi-
cal space. The consultants personal funds and equipment
are always at the disposition of their labor obligations. Pri-
vate and public assets, correspondence and even friendships
are tightly interwoven. And just as private belongings and
spaces fuse with those of business service and public utility,
so the consultants public time and private time tend to
become an indiscernible amalgam. All this means that con-
sultants have opted for a way of life much more than an
occupation.
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16
envo
NICARAGUA
The instrumentalizing of human
relations is a vice into which many
consultants slip, apparently unaware of
how much hypocrisy reduces the
quality of life
From Fernndez de Oviedo to disasterologists
Consultants are not new to Nicaragua, although in past eras
there were fewer of them, they were generallycheles [light
complected foreigners] and they tended to be a lot moreefficient than the current crop. Perhaps the first was Gonzalo
Fernndez de Oviedoachele, of coursewho came in 1527
as an overseer for the Spanish Crown, long before the Span-
ish International Development Agency started up. He was
followed by others who were less literarily endowed. Al-
though they never formed a critical mass, they eventually
did begin to flow more profusely. Nicaraguas inter-oceanic
canal potential had lot to do with this. First world govern-
ments sent dozens of engineers to the Ro San Juan to assess
the viability of exploiting this river that connects Lake Nica-
ragua to the Caribbean Sea.
One of the most illustrious consultants was W.W.
Cumerland, contracted to study the Nicaraguan economy inthe twenties. There has also been no shortage of consultants
on the perennial problems with the countrys electoral law.
As historian Knut Walter explained, In 1921, Dr. Harold
Dodds, a university social sciences professor, was contracted
by the Nicaraguan governmentunder strong pressure from
Washingtonto analyze the electoral law in force at the time
and propose necessary reforms to guarantee its impartiality.
In April 1923, the Nicaraguan Congress approved a new elec-
toral code, whose contents were adjusted to Dodds propos-
als, with a few minimal modifications. That electoral re-
form represented the formal institutionalization of the two-
party system in Nicaragua. Consultancies were beginning to
bear fruit.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw visits from many po-
litical scientists, economists, engineers and naturalists. One
notable difference between those consultants and the cur-
rent lot is that the recent ones rarely produce even semi-
digestible texts. In contrast, Karl Bovalius and Paul Levy
had sharp analytical pens and could lucidly describe pictur-
esque details. Another difference is that the former consult-
ants tended to have more mundane professions: biologist,
engineer, lawyer. Some of the new batch try to create spe-
cializations that verge on the ridiculous. After HurricaneMitch, the United Nations Development Program contracted
a consultant whose card announced that she was a
disasterologist. We can only hope that rather than pre-
dicting disasters, she did at least know how to mitigate them.
And though it may seem worthy of Garca Mrquez, Nicara-
gua has even played host to an angelogist and a master in
divinity. How long before local universities start producing
corruptologists and Orteg-ologists?
A way of life more than an occupation
The most obvious difference between the consultants of old
and those of today is that being a consultant has become away of life. The condition of being a consultant soaks into
many spheres of existence because it carries with it multiple
demands, such as attending any reception that gets orga-
nized, cultivating specific relations, hanging out at a par-
ticular bar, dining at a certain restaurant Commercial life
and family life become superimposed. Business is even bet-
ter if the spouse is achele and has ethnic-friendship-profes-
sional links with embassies, agencies and international NGOs.
The relations cultivated along the way can always be
useful. The consultant has to sow, water, fertilize, earth up
and fumigate such relations so theyll bear fruit in the fu-
ture. The instrumentalizing of human relations is a vice
into which many slip, apparently unaware of how much hy-
pocrisy reduces the quality of life.
Such exploitation is not the exclusive reserve of consult-
ants, of course, but some have taken it to extremes of corrup-
tion with certain counterparts when they find themselves in
positions of power. Four years ago, an official from the now
rightly questioned Augusto Csar Sandino Foundation no-
ticed that a top Oxfam America official who occasionally su-
pervised operations in Nicaragua when he came from El Sal-
vador on specific missions was fast-tracking friendly rela-
tions with him. Once he had prepared the ground, the offi-
cial made his move: Ill hire you as a consultant for the next
Oxfam studies and well split the earnings 50/50.
Dry, repetitive and insipid texts
The consultants lifestyle demands disguises and poses. Fran-
cisco Umbral rightly said that thinking also has its tailor-
ing. And where there is little thinking, there has to be a
great deal of tailoring. Consultants must look presentable,
lordly and glamorous. They must be magnificent exponents
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17
january 2005
of the make an appearance syndrome, hawking themselves
at every opportunity. My best friend gave anthropology classes
every Saturday and one of her students was a big fish in the
consultancy world, as he felt the need to demonstrate in afootnote at the end of every exam. His work was a constant
excuse for his absences. As youth gang members wisely put
it, he wanted to pass the course on pure impression. But
the most impressive thing of all was his absolute inability to
write a single line without massacring the rules of grammar
and running roughshod over spelling.
Evidently, gestures and language are more important
than grammar and spelling, even more important than cloth-
ing. Those who devote themselves to the consultancy indus-
try have to become polyglots fluent in ECLA language, FAO
jargon, politicking slang and dozens of NGO dialects, includ-
ing the lavish use of the @ sign to replace the masculine o
or feminine a at the end of gender-specific words in Span-ish to suggest a trendy gender-neutral ending) They have
to know how to troll for fish in all waters, seduce with lan-
guage, employ hallowed concepts and show off their mastery
of the key terms, knowing which are valid in certain areas
but not in others.
My work as a researcher, which I now do more as a con-
sultant, has forced me to take note of the conventions and
keep my literary urges under control. I generally come up
against clients who want everything repeated a thousand
times. I have to write in the most dry and inoffensive way
possible, moderating and desiccating phrases, shriveling and
crumpling them up. The text has to be meticulously gone
over to extirpate rash adjectives and names that should re-
main anonymous and to employ a vocabulary restricted to
about a hundred words that, like a Lego set, constitute the
only bricks in the verbal architecture of consultancy reports.
In the effort to castrate the texts, it becomes almost
essential to use an abundance of the kind of impersonal re-
flexive verbs that we liberally employ in Nicaragua when we
want to avoid mentioning the guilty party, particularly if its
us. So just as in everyday colloquial speech we say it fell
instead of I dropped it or it broke rather than I broke
it, consultancy reports use it is intended rather than
here we intend... This is perhaps Nicaraguan colonial
languages most notable contribution to the professional
development cooperation idiom.
A consultancy report should be dry and turgid to give
the impression of being serious. All the better if it is situ-
ated at the opposite extreme to the pleasure of text de-
scribed and analyzed by Roland Barthes. This particular
sphere employs a stiflingly leaden and reiterative prose. Four
concepts are endlessly repeated in a limitless succession of
combinations and permeations, because in the happy uni-
verse of the consultants, as in HuxleysBrave New World, a
phrase repeated again and again finally becomes truth. The
basic work mechanism is cut and paste. Repeating the same
topics in the same tone with identical concepts somehow
makes consultants look more competent.
its not in the blood,
You have to work at it
Consultants, particularly those who have achieved certain
renown, have developed gradually. Rookies who throw them-
selves into the ring with no real credentials find it hard to
triumph. Being a good consultant isnt in the blood, you
have to work at it. Since Ive gotten a close-up view of this
system Ive been wondering about the formation of these
eminences always sought out by journalists for interviews
when a subject they are supposedly experts on hits the lime-
light, or are repeatedly contracted by the institutions them-
selves. Although the answer would involve a whole new study
and reflection, there are certain indications of where they
came from and how they were formed.
One type consists of those manufactured in US universi-
ties, be they nationals or foreigners. They are the preferred
choice of state institutions and some multilateral organiza-
tions because they have the right academic and ideological
curriculum. Another type is made up of the crafty old foxes
dedicated to a certain area, who fossilized into a field where
nobody else was at the time and now couldnt muscle in.
Competitors do emerge these days, but tradition and inertia
is an immovable comparative advantage.
Then there are those who were molded in the eighties:
Those who devote themselves to the
consultancy industry have to become
polyglots fluent in ECLA language, FAO
jargon, politicking slang and dozens of
NGO dialects, to seduce with
language, employ hallowed concepts
and show off their mastery of the key
terms, knowing which are valid in
certain areas but not in others
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18
envo
NICARAGUA
top officials from the Sandinista government, including cer-
tain revolutionarycomandantes, both male and female. Firstthey were radicals who wanted to turn the world on its head.
Then they became platonic Marxists, if that, and soon flush-
ing down the toilet all the Konstantinov they had lapped up
in the seventies or eighties, either directly or through Martha
Harnecker. They went from Marxist fundamentalism to tech-
nocratic fundamentalism, crossing over from revolution to a
happy adaptation to the given conditions, sometimes vacil-
lating, emotionally ambivalent toward the FSLN, but al-
ways with resigned pragmatism or underhanded opportunism.
Privileged freelancers feed off misery
All of these different groups contain both talented intellec-
tuals and mediocre professionals, with the wheat and the
chaff mixed together. Unfortunately, they have all opted for
a fictitious freedom, a quick buck and individual adventure
instead of feeding themselves to the famished national
institutionality. Many institutions could use their dispersed
energies, but a university will never pay its lecturers, a rural
municipal government its officials or a media company its
journalists what the UNDP, the IDB, DANIDA, SIDA or the
SDC pay their consultants. And these people share an over-
whelming, almost unanimous desire to improve their own
personal economic situation.
Setting up a consultancy company is the in-trade for-
mula for closing ranks against competitors. This is the temp-
tation for many new professionals who launch themselves
into the stormy waters of the labor market. But it rarely
gels in this country. The memory of a group of friends who
started up one such company is still fresh in my mind. They
were alland still arewell positioned in foreign coopera-
tion: one spoke German, another had been an FAO consult-
ant for over a decade and yet another had worked in a num-
ber of organizations. But despite their enviable social capi-
tal, they were at each others throats in less than a year.
Consultants prefer to go freelance and seek temporary alli-
ances. At the end of the day, other consultants are rivalsafter the same funds rather than colleagues with whom to
share ideas, exchange information and plot a better Nicaragua.
Their main rival, however, is necessarily their main ally.
The historical confrontation between the interests of profes-
sionals and those of workers and peasants has occupied the
attention of generations of sociologists, but has never before
reached such colossal levels of cynicism. Never before have
professionals so parasitically lived off the poor. We have
become a new aristocracy feeding off the misery we research,
quantify, diagnose, analyze and dissect, with a prosperity
that is in some cases directly proportional to the poverty of
our fellow citizens.
Cut and paste, paste and cut...
no time to think
This subterranean conflict of interests would not be so harm-
ful if the bureaucrats-for-hire system guaranteed quality and
continuity in the consultants products. On the contrary, it
favors mediocrity and repetition. Consultants are offered
up to US$10,000 a month, which in practice can be whittled
down to 15 working days or less because consultants are
often involved in several jobs at the same time. In this record
time, the contracted consultant has to honor terms of refer-
ence that look like a grocery list, everything about every-
thing, requiring the consultant to know more than the ex-
perts who have worked full time on the subject under study.
Theres no time to get to know the place being studied; no
time even to think.
If absolutely necessary, the consultant subcontracts low-
paid assistants with little experience to do the dirty work
(read field work) and even part of the other, cleaner work,
with an inevitable effect on the overall quality. But another
solution relies on a more providential factor: the system also
foments repetitionI would love to writeBosaws, the re-
serve of a thousand studiesso consultants cut and paste,
thus recycling their old studiesor even other peoplesto
get out of a tight spot. This rehashing is completely legiti-
mized by the system. In fact, many original pieces of work
are a recycling of stale phrases, a hodgepodge of patched
together idea snippets from the same ideological scheme.
And their friends in foreign cooperation allow this. Employ-
ers who are not their friends will never know everything
previously written about a subject or place because there is
no single national information clearing house containing the
thousands of consultancies that have been conducted.
We have become a new aristocracy
feeding off the misery we research,
quantify, diagnose, analyze and
dissect, with a prosperity that is in
some cases directly proportional to the
poverty of our fellow citizens
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19
january 2005
Unnecessary experience and cronyism
Cronyism is one of the Nicaraguan cultural institutions that
has most contaminated the consultancy market. Its part of
our contribution to the national configuration of theconsultancy model, not the only one or the most visible one,
but the one through which we have managed to contaminate
even foreigners. Or is it rather a universal feature that we
have merely updated in Nicaragua, as the audacious unmask-
ing of French corruption by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would
suggest?
Around eight years ago, a haughty Swiss official met up
with a bright French consultant in a well-known Managua
bar. The Swiss official represented the official Swiss devel-
opment cooperation and the Frenchman was heading up a
group of researchers in a well-known Nicaraguan university.
Both enjoyed each others company at social gatherings, din-
ners and wine and cheese dos.Over drinks, they negotiated US$250,000 as the fee for
ten research studies on Nicaraguan finances: bank spreads,
savings in micro-finance companies, institutional consolida-
tion and other more or less vague issues. Even the clock-
work-precise Swiss and the very Cartesian French can go tropi-
cal and slide towards the delicious laxity of our laissez faire
and dolce far niente codes. Its not often mentioned that
cultural insertion has its price.
What was so light-headedly negotiated had almost hal-
lucinogenic results. A full year after the glittery stuff was
disbursed, Swiss cooperation received a collection of studies
of the most diverse quality and subject matter, including
reforestation, fair-trade coffee and agro-ecological zoning,
among other even more striking fare. The institute belong-
ing to the rather un-Pascalian Frenchman had interpreted
the agreement and assigned the money with gay abandon.
Although the Swiss official subsequently acted in the best
tradition of a Swiss army knife, the damage was done and
couldnt be put right.
In the consultancy market, the same people entrust
consultancies to the same people. Simulating bids is such a
well-worn mechanism that it offends no one anymore. Con-
sultants only have to be hip to the new issues in vogue to
transmogrify themselves or adapt their old refrains and spe-
cialties to them. Specialists on Nicaraguas Caribbean Coast
thus now offer the following catalogue: identity and gender
in Bilwi, migration in Kukra Hill, local governments of the
South Atlantic Autonomous Region, deforestation in Bocana
de Paiwas, ecotourism in Pearl Lagoon and the environment
in Bismuna, among many others.
As one consultant who worked with her husband told
me, We cover everything. And, as far as I can tell, she
wasnt exaggerating. Theres no need for experience in bu-
reaucrats-for-hire, no need to bring on board the right people
for a given issue. Its more profitable to create and cultivate
a network of social relations adequately distributed in key
positions. Specialization tends to be improvised, as in thecase of an economist friend of mine who soon became an
expert on masculinity and was contracted by a national NGO
for US$2,500. One of his colleagues and fellow graduates is
still looking for work after stubbornly insisting on being an
economist.
Ephemeral + anonymous + routine = low quality
So, does the bureaucrat-for-hire model represent a gain or a
loss? Thats the million-dollar question. Like all changes,
it has its pluses and minuses. Although not a lot seems
positive to me, one apparent virtue does spring to mind.
Although the principle of he who pays the piper calls thetune continues to enjoy unquestionable validity, the rela-
tionship between consultants and their employers is more
democratic and is not determined by the rigidly structured
hierarchy that characterizes traditional bureaucracy.
But then, how, or to whom, can one appeal if the work is
not up to scratch? Is there no chance of rectifying it? This is
hard, because the consultants relationship to beneficiaries
tends to be very distant, ephemeral and weak. Sometimes
their work develops with very poor knowledge of the reality
they are writing about or, even worse, acting upon. The brief
period they are contracted for doesnt allow them to delve
deep, and they end up with no possibility of following up at
the end of the consultancy; both the post and the function
disappear when the contract expires.
The consultants anonymity reinforces these weaknesses
and creates others. As there are consultants for all occa-
sions, those who get their hands on some funds become con-
The brief period consultants are
contracted for doesnt allow them to
delve deep, and they end up with no
possibility of following up at the end ofthe consultancy; both the post and the
function disappear when the contract
expires
7/30/2019 Bureaucrats for Hire Dic2004 JLR
7/7
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20
envo
NICARAGUA
tractors. Thus monks and nuns, intellectuals, businesspeople
and state officials stop doing their work to become financial
managers because they believe that this position in the pyra-
mid is closer to the pinnacle and shines with dazzling intensity.
If there are many defects, there are also many possible
remedies. Foreign cooperation understands that the prob-
lem is not limited to the fraud, chicanery, crookedness and
other undesirable animals lurking among the consultancy
fauna. The system is intrinsically perverse and its perver-
sion is consubstantial.
As none of the consultants know when the next
consultancy will come along or how much it will pay, they
have to accept anything that comes their way, working flat
out and subcontracting professionals with limited experi-
ence to the detriment of the final products quality. If they
get a juicy offer, it seems silly to let it go. They face a lot of
pressure in the circles they travel in to maximize their in-
come, whether to match their employers consumption level,
send their kids to the best school, buy the latest computer,
organize parties to cultivate milkable relations, or simply,
and more wisely, sock something away for the lean times.
Such are the daily weaknesses that pave the way to big-time
corruption.
The fact that consultants are disconnected from institu-
tional time and spaces makes it difficult to guarantee their
full working capacity. Some are linked to institutions where
they have a fixed job and a regular salary, but they obtain
their greatest income from consultancies, which often eat
into the time they should be dedicating to their institution.
The main problem is that many institutions have no policy
for handling consultancies, or if they do its hardly compat-
ible with the aspirations of workers who want to be well
remunerated for their extra efforts. That weakness multi-
plies their susceptibility to outside offers and damages the
labor culture. Its preferable to reach an agreement to guar-antee quality.
The remedy: Some minimal actions
In the case of Nicaragua, a country with such weak
institutionalityimprovement of which is supposedly a goal
of international cooperationits outrageous that funds ear-
marked for consultancies arent used to strengthen the in-
stitutions themselves. If these consultants are so good, why
not invest in keeping them for long periods in municipal
governments suffering financial difficulties?
How can we invest in doing real research instead of that
devalued substitute represented by the prepackaged cut-and-paste analyses, the supposedly scientific investigations
spattered with androgynous @ endings and subculture
phraseology rendered meaningless by endless repetition?
Why not invest in permanent posts in key state sectors that
are compatible with a long-term vision and subject to par-
ticipatory evaluations?
The metamorphosis of the public servant into a profes-
sional service provider ethically changes the concept of works
motivation and execution. Although this change isnt neces-
sarily reflected in worse practices than before given that
what passes for public servants are often wolves in sheeps
clothing, it is worth defending the principle that foreign aid
should be put to the service of Nicaraguans as a whole and
not fought over by bureaucrats for hire.
Finally, there is an urgent need to create a clearinghouse
of consultancy reports so as not to continue paying for more
of the same. Everything has to have been explored by now in
the Bosaws reserve, right down to the last pebble, endan-
gered beetle and neighborhood scuffle since it has been the
subject of numerous studies, each of which ignores the con-
tents of others and therefore actually adds very little. It is
the responsibility of foreign cooperation to keep an archive
of all the reports and make them available to the public.
Many benefit from the current disorder, but many more are
harmed. These are just a few possible actions, although it is
admittedly a minimal contribution because the system will
need many reforms before people stop having to choose be-
tween losing work or losing their souls.
Jos Luis Rocha, as well as being a consultant, is a
researcher for Nitlapn-UCA and a member ofenvos
editorial committee.
If there are many defects, there are
also many possible remedies. In
Nicaragua, a country with such weak
institutionalityimprovement of which
is supposedly a goal of international
cooperationits outrageous that
funds earmarked for consultancies
arent used to strengthen the
institutions themselves