Carlos F. Chamorro*: The fear of nuns

In 2009, the dictator felt threatened by some nuns who prayed to assassinate him.

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the dictator daniel Ortega expelled 18 missionaries of charity from the religious order of Mother Teresa of Calcutta from Nicaragua, after having closed their charitable works and canceled the legal status of their association, because they did not register as foreign agents.

This triple aggression against religious freedom, the right of association, and the right of the poor to receive social assistance from society organizations, has caused widespread rejection, even among supporters of the regime, and in international public opinion. , which also condemns the censorship and persecution unleashed against the newspaper the press as punishment for covering the news of the expulsion.

Actually, it is not the first time that the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has launched a virulent attack against representatives of the Catholic Church. After the April rebellion, between 2018 and 2022, they assaulted the Diriamba basilica; they attacked the Divina Misericordia church with bullets, killing two university students; they attacked the image of the Blood of Christ in the Managua cathedral; they provoked the forced exile of Bishop Silvio José Báez; they expelled the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Sommertag from the country; they besieged Monsignor Rolando Álvarez and dozens of priests in the temples; and imprisoned Father Manuel Salvador García.

And despite this persecutory background, the expulsion of the sisters of charity has caused astonishment, because they only dedicated themselves to helping the most needy with works of Christian charity.

But, it is not the first time that the regime criminalizes solidarity from people to people, and intends to prohibit aid to the most vulnerable in a country lacerated by poverty; those affected by famine and drought; to the victims of official negligence in the face of the covid-19 pandemic; and the most unprotected due to the lack of access to the most basic social services. The prohibition of solidarity is in the dictatorial DNA of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who intend to establish themselves as the only social benefactors before the poor, so that every time the population gains access to a right, it gives thanks to the commander and the companionconsecrating an act of political submission.

For this reason, they have already canceled more than 950 NGOs, medical and educational associations, social works of the Catholic Church, and above all social and community development projects that underpin active citizenship, with the aim of installing a totalitarian regime in which the State-party-family embodied in the presidential couple is the only interlocutor before the population and especially with the poorest.

But even with all this evidence in view, it is difficult to understand the viciousness against the nuns and perhaps the only explanation, which is not a justification, is that this hatred has always been there and feeds on the deep fear that Ortega and Murillo have of the people, and to the exercise of solidarity that is part of the identity of the democratic values ​​of Nicaraguans.

Among the more than 1,400 documents on Nicaragua leaked by WikiLeaks, which are based on diplomatic cables sent by the United States ambassador in Managua to the State Department offices in Washington, there is one dated April 27, 2009, more than 13 years ago, by ambassador Robert Callahan, in which cites a private meeting with the then first commissioner of the National Police Aminta Granera, who recounts Ortega’s fear and paranoia caused by the alleged threat from some nuns. I quote verbatim: Police Chief Aminta Granera told Ambassador Callahan that President Daniel Ortega is completely crazy and represents a threat to the country. And he added that, according to Ortega, there some nuns who are praying for him to be assassinated.

In this diplomatic cable written by Callahan, Granera does not specify who the nuns are, whom Ortega fears because they were supposedly conspiring against him, through prayer, to take his life.

According to Ortega, it is a group of very old nunswho are praying for him to be killed, and consider this to be a serious threat to national security.

Granera limits herself to saying that she herself feels insecure before Ortega, because he considers her a potential political rival, and that the only thing that allowed her to keep herself safe from Ortega was her growing popularity. And finish that the only person who has influence over Ortega is his wife Rosario Murillo.

Thirteen years after the publication of this prescient cable from WikiLeaksthe paranoia of Ortega and Murillo, the fear of citizenship and losing power, is the only thing that can explain the irrationality of a totalitarian regime that massacred its own people, imprisons and tortures those who demand freedom and free elections, closes all spaces of civil society, and feels threatened by the nuns of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

*Nicaraguan journalist