I first met President Jimmy Carter in Nicaragua in the late1980s, when he was years past his presidency. Carter had come to Nicaragua to understand the Sandinista government then in power and talk about his involvement with the Habitat for Humanity program to build homes for some of Nicaragua’s poor.
I was based in Nicaragua as CNN’s Bureau Chief when Carter visited Managua. I covered Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, during their visits there years after they founded the Carter Center in partnership with Emory University in 1982.
These earlier visits to Nicaragua came before his Carter Center began its regional election monitoring visits. But even then, it was “waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope,” the Carter Center motto for its work in Latin America and the world.
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Today world leaders are lauding Carter, who died Sunday at 100, as well as his team at the Carter Center and his neighbors in Plains, Georgia. I am not trying to add to this global eloquence but to give a small picture of my good fortune to have had some encounters with him during his visits to Latin America.
I interviewed Carter several times when he and Rosalynn visited Nicaragua in the 1980s. I joined them on a visit to Bluefields on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast and a small town near Matagalpa in the northern Nicaraguan mountains. Carter prioritized human rights and democracy on his regional agenda. It seemed that he treated the Sandinistas the way he would have wanted to be treated.
Many U.S. politicians came to Nicaragua on one-day “fact-finding” missions where they would meet with all the Sandinista’s political opponents, concluding their trips with a news conference at the Managua International Airport calling for an end to the Sandinista regime. It wasn’t polite—like going to someone’s home and telling them everything you disliked about how they managed their household.
Carter never did that. He talked with everyone and was generally there for at least a few days. Although he wasn’t a fan, he never held an airport news conference to diss the Sandinistas.
I got to attend a couple of cocktail parties held in Carter’s honor, and I remember to this day a lesson from Rosalynn about the best way to distribute and keep track of business cards received. She told me she always wore a jacket with two pockets – she kept her cards in one pocket and those she received in another.
I also closely followed Carter in 1989 when he monitored the elections in Panama. At the time, strongman Manuel Noriega was still in power. The opposition candidate, Guillermo Endara, lost to Noriega’s chosen candidate, Carlos Duque. Carter denounced the lack of a democratic process in Panama at the time, especially after some opposition leaders went into hiding—events that culminated in Endara taking office as the rightful winner of the election.
The Carter Center invited me to participate in two Carter Center election monitoring trips when I was no longer a CNN journalist – one in Venezuela in 2004 and another in Nicaragua in 2006. I was thrilled to be part of a mission headed by President Carter. We watched the polling, filed our reports, and gathered for a session with President Carter to share our findings before heading home. There was always a group photo, and I stood behind President Carter in one of them.
Since President Carter crossed paths with so many people, I don’t expect he ever really remembered me, but I certainly remember him and mourn his loss today.
Courtesy of Ronnie Lovler A group of election monitor participants with President Jimmy Carter (with Ronnie Lovler behind Carter to the right) in Venezuela in 2004.
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Publish date : 2024-12-30 09:59:00
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