2 research outputs found
Ill fares the land: the legal consequences of land confiscations by the Sandinista government of Nicaragua 1979-1990
This thesis analyzes the consequences of property confiscations and
redistribution under the Sandinista (FSLN) government in Nicaragua of the
1980s. It covers the period from the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza
Debayle in 1979 to the February 1990 FSLN electoral defeat and the
following two months of the Piñata, when the outgoing Sandinista
government quickly formalized possession of property by new owners, both
formerly landless peasants and the elite. It also examines subsequent efforts
to resolve outstanding property claims, with the focus on the Chamorro and
later presidential administrations to 2007, when Sandinista leader Daniel
Ortega and the FSLN returned to power. The main argument is that
Sandinista leaders, largely from the same families that have dominated
Nicaragua since the Colonial period, followed Nicaraguan traditions of using
influence to distort the legal and political system to gain title to valuable
properties.
In contrast to partisan arguments in favor of one regime or another, here the
methods of property transfer are analyzed by investigating in detail
documentary evidence of illustrative cases that show the steps and
individuals involved in these transactions, as well as more generally
surveying other cases and the overall situation with property. The argument
is tested by examining how the selected claimants’ properties were taken and
who obtained them. The results indicate that Sandinista elites did obtain
properties for their personal benefit, often in violation of their own
legislation, but that this was largely consistent with the practice of other, non-
Sandinista governments. After their electoral defeat, ongoing Sandinista
influence in the organs of government influenced the restitution process, with
claimants typically settling for compensation at a fraction of the market
value, with the Nicaraguan state and people bearing the cost of paying for
compensation bonds over the coming decades. Political influence
undermined the restitution mechanism
Beyond Point Masses. II. Non-Keplerian Shape Effects Are Detectable in Several TNO Binaries
About 40 trans-Neptunian binaries (TNBs) have fully determined orbits with about 10 others being solved except for breaking the mirror ambiguity. Despite decades of study, almost all TNBs have only ever been analyzed with a model that assumes perfect Keplerian motion (e.g., two point masses). In reality, all TNB systems are non-Keplerian due to nonspherical shapes, possible presence of undetected system components, and/or solar perturbations. In this work, we focus on identifying candidates for detectable non-Keplerian motion based on sample of 45 well-characterized binaries. We use MultiMoon , a non-Keplerian Bayesian inference tool, to analyze published relative astrometry allowing for nonspherical shapes of each TNB system’s primary. We first reproduce the results of previous Keplerian fitting efforts with MultiMoon , which serves as a comparison for the non-Keplerian fits and confirms that these fits are not biased by the assumption of a Keplerian orbit. We unambiguously detect non-Keplerian motion in eight TNB systems across a range of primary radii, mutual orbit separations, and system masses. As a proof of concept for non-Keplerian fitting, we perform detailed fits for (66652) Borasisi-Pabu, possibly revealing a J _2 ≈ 0.44, implying Borasisi (and/or Pabu) may be a contact binary or an unresolved compact binary. However, full confirmation of this result will require new observations. This work begins the next generation of TNB analyses that go beyond the point mass assumption to provide unique and valuable information on the physical properties of TNBs with implications for their formation and evolution