Indian Girl

Well, Mick had an emotional stake in Nicaraguan politics because of Bianca… and Jade, their only daughter...
This song is mainly about the Nicaraguan civil war of the late 70's, where the rebel communist Sandinistas were attacking the American-supported presidency of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (who was later assassinated in exile in Paraguay). Much intense fighting took place in the Nicaraguan town of Masaya. (Masaya is located between the Nicaraguan capital of Managua and Granada, probably the "Nueva Granada" the "Indian girl" is from). Latin American communism included Latin American communists fighting in Angola, Africa (Castro had 50,000 men fighting there)...

Bianca Jagger is Founder and Chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council, Amnesty International, USA. For over three decades she has been a voice for the most vulnerable members of society, campaigning for human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice and environmental protection throughout the world.
She has been the recipient of many prestigious international awards for her human rights and humanitarian work. In 2004, she received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “alternative Nobel prize” for “her long-standing commitment and dedicated campaigning over a wide range of issues of human rights, social justice and environmental protection, including the abolition of the death penalty, the prevention of child abuse, and the rights of indigenous peoples to the environment that supports them and the prevention and healing of armed conflicts.” In 1997, she received the Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership, “in recognition for her work on behalf of human rights around the world, exposing and focusing attention on injustice.” In 1994, she was awarded the United Nations Earth Day International Award for “her successful efforts to protect the livelihood of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, stopping the rain forest destruction in Nicaragua and Honduras.” She received the World Citizenship Award from The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 2006 and World Achievement Award, presented by Mikhail Gorbachev in 2004. For her environmental campaigning, she received the Green Globe Award from the Rainbow Alliance in 1997, and the United Nations Earth Day Award in 1994. For her work towards the abolition of capital punishment, she was awarded the American Civil Liberties Union Award in 1998, for “her commitment to international human rights, opposition to capital punishment and the promotion of civil rights.”

Bianca Jagger has been awarded three doctorates, honoris causa: a Doctorate in Law from the University of East London in 2010, a Doctorate of Human Rights from Simmons College, Boston in 2008; and a Doctorate of Humanities from Stonehill College, Massachusetts in 1983.
She was born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in 1950, in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. After her parents’ divorce, she was raised by her mother. Witnessing the discrimination of a patriarchal society against a single working woman inspired the young Bianca to become an instrument of change in the world. She was determined never to be regarded as a second-class citizen because of her gender.

As a teenager, she participated in student demonstrations against the terrors inflicted by President Anastasio Somoza's National Guard. This inspired her to pursue her interest in politics. She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Science. It was there that she discovered the value of freedom and democracy, the rule of law, judicial review, habeas corpus and respect for human rights - concepts she had only dreamt about in Nicaragua.
In December 1972, she returned to Nicaragua to look for her parents after a devastating earthquake destroyed her home town of Managua, fortunately her parents survived. She discovered that aid, from the U.S. and elsewhere, was not going to the victims but was being misappropriated by the Somoza regime. It was these ruthless acts of pillage that eventually fuelled the Sandinista Revolution and motivated her to fight repression, corruption and injustice. After her visit to Nicaragua, Bianca Jagger urged the Rolling Stones to do a relief concert. In 1993 they performed one of the first relief concerts in L.A to raise funds for the victims of the earthquake.

In the spring of 1979 she joined forces with the British Red Cross to raise funds for the victims of the conflict in Nicaragua; she then flew to her homeland to join the International Red Cross to help on the ground. 1979, the year of her divorce, coincided with the fall of the Somoza dictator.
In 1981 Bianca Jagger travelled to Honduras on a US Congressional fact-finding mission, visiting a UN refugee camp, 20 km from the border of El Salvador. During her visit to the camp an armed death squad crossed the border from El Salvador, with the Honduran army’s blessing, entered the camp and rounded up about forty refugees to take them back to El Salvador. Bianca Jagger, the delegation and the relief workers feared that the death squads were going to kill the hostages once they arrived in Salvadorian territory. Armed only with cameras, they followed the death squad and hostages for half an hour. Finally, they came within earshot of them. The death squad turned, brandishing their M-16's. Fearing for their lives, Bianca Jagger and the relief workers began to shout, “You will have to kill us all,” and, “We will denounce your crime to the world.” There was a long pause. The death squad talked among themselves and, without explanation, left, leaving their hostages free - unharmed. This experience was a turning point for Bianca, marking the beginning of her human rights campaigning. She realised the importance of bearing witness when innocent people’s lives are at stake, how a small act of courage can make a difference, and sometimes save lives. Upon her return to the US, Bianca Jagger testified before The Congressional Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs, to bring attention to the atrocities committed by the Salvadorian government and its paramilitary forces, with the complicity of the Honduran Government.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990’s, Bianca worked closely with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office for Latin America. She continued campaigning against oppressive governments throughout Latin America, including in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and denouncing the US’s support of the Contra war in Nicaragua.
In 1993 she visited Bosnia, to document the mass rape of women in the former Yugoslavia. She wrote a decisive essay: ‘J’accuse: the Betrayal of Srebrenica,’ a detailed account of the massacre in Srebrenica, which was published world-wide. In July 1995, when the United Nations “safe area” of Srebrenica in Bosnia was overrun by Bosnian Serb troops, some 8,000 civilians (virtually the entire male population) were systematically massacred. Since then, Bianca has spoken on behalf of the survivors. For many years she campaigned to stop the genocide taking place in Bosnia and, later, to make the perpetrators accountable before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). She has testified on this issue before the Helsinki Commission on Human Rights, the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus, the International Operations Subcommittee on Human Rights, and the British and European Parliaments.
Bianca Jagger is a staunch defender of indigenous and tribal rights in Latin America and elsewhere. In 1991 she proved instrumental in stopping a logging concession that would have endangered the Miskito Indians’ habitat on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. She supported the Guarani in southern Brazil, in their campaign to protect their land from cattle ranchers, and engaged in a similar effort to protect the Yanomami of northern Brazil from invasions of their lands by gold miners. She has also supported the Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani in their battle against Texaco in Ecuador. Bianca Jagger and the BJHRF are campaigning in support of Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, of the Surui tribe in Brazil, to raise awareness of their struggle to defend their ancestral land, in the Amazon, from the encroachments of logging, damming and mining companies. Bianca Jagger is also campaigning against the Brazilian government’s plan to build over 60 dams in the Amazon region. The area where the dams are planned is currently home to 400,000 indigenous people, whose livelihoods will be directly threatened; the human and environmental consequences of the dams would be devastating.
During the last two years, the BJHRF has supported the Kondh tribe in Orissa, India, campaigning to protect their sacred Niyamgiri Mountain from the proposed bauxite mine by Vedanta Resources Plc, a British-based mining company. Bianca Jagger visited the Kondh in Orissa, with ActionAid, appealed to government officials in India, spearheaded a letter campaign to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chief Minister of Orissa Naveen Patnaik, and in cooperation Amnesty and ActionAid, appealed to UK shareholders to withdraw their investments in Vedanta, and attended and spoke at two Vedanta AGMs in London. On 24 August 2011, Indian Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh refused permission for the mining project.
As Chair of the BJHRF Bianca Jagger is advocating critical reforms to our model of development, which needs to encompass principles of justice, respect for human rights, democracy, good governance, accountability, the protection of the environment and sustainability. She is calling for a shift in our fundamental values. Development should take into account the needs and aspirations of all sectors of society: local communities and indigenous and tribal people. The new model of development needs to move away from our obsession with profit and growth and, instead, focus on sustainability.



Bianca Jagger denounced the invasion of Iraq, as an ‘illegal, immoral and unwinnable war’ which undermines the rule of international law. She visited Baghdad in the run-up to the war in early 2003 with a peace delegation of US academics.
In 2003 she was made Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador for the Abolition of the Death Penalty. In 1996 she was awarded the “Abolitionist of the Year Award” by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty for “her tireless efforts and heroic dedication in achieving clemency for Guinevere Garcia”. Since then, she has campaigned on behalf of numerous prisoners on death row. In June 2000, she travelled to Texas to meet with Gary Graham and plead on his behalf with Governor George W Bush. Gary Graham was 17, a minor when he was sentenced to death. At his request, she was one of the official witnesses at his execution. Bianca Jagger received the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer Champion of Justice Award in 2000.
Bianca Jagger continues to denounce the lack of meaningful appellate review in commutation proceedings. In her role as Founder and Chair of the BJHRF, she is currently supporting the cases of Linda Carty, a British grandmother on death row in Texas, Reggie Clemons, who is appealing for clemency in the state of Missouri, and Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43 year old mother of two, who was sentenced to death by stoning in Iran. Bianca Jagger and the BJHRF led the "Too Much Doubt" Twitter campaign with Amnesty International on behalf of Troy Davis, an innocent man who was executed by the State of Georgia, USA, on September 21st, 2011. On 24 February 2010, Bianca Jagger delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 4th Annual Congress against the Death Penalty at the UN in Geneva.
Under the auspices of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, Bianca Jagger has been working to develop a legal framework that will enable us to hold accountable CEOs and management of companies committing human rights abuses and environmental destruction. She advocates the development of a definition of Crimes Against Present and Future Generations, and for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to extend its jurisdiction, to cover Crimes Against Present and Future Generations that are not already proscribed by the ICC’s Rome Statute as Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, or Crimes of Genocide. “Crimes against future generations of life” are acts or conduct committed with the knowledge of their severe consequences on the health, safety, or means of survival of present and future generations of humans, and their threat to the survival of entire species or ecosystems.

Bianca has participated in numerous television and radio debates and lectures throughout the world about Central America, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, genocide, war crimes, the war on terror and the ensuing erosion of civil liberties and human rights, Crimes against Present and Future Generations, climate change, the rainforest, the protection of indigenous peoples, corporate social responsibility, children and women’s rights, human trafficking, and the death penalty.