On the 43rd anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, Nicaraguan society is once again polarized. At one extreme, public employees and supporters of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are preparing to celebrate the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. At the other, opposition movements are claiming that the country is “living a new dictatorship, sooner or later.” bloodier and more totalitarian than the Somoza dynasty”.
On the eve of the celebration, Vice President Murillo reported that representatives from 31 countries will be present at the largest Sandinista party, including its strategic allies: Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela, as well as delegates from countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe, from both neighboring and distant countries, including Abkhazia or Djibouti.
During the celebration, Ortega will decorate the only ruler who confirmed his attendance, the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, who will receive the “Augusto César Sandino Order” in its highest degree, “Battle of San Jacinto”, according to reported Murillo, also first lady.
“Here we are and we say and affirm that it will always be July 19 and that our popular Sandinista revolution, which is a revolution of love, which is a revolution of affection, which is a Christian, socialist, solidarity revolution, goes forward,” Murillo said. .
The Sandinista celebration comes after a stormy 2021 in terms of human rights and the illegitimate re-election of the rulers, questioned by the international community. However, despite the absolute power exercised by the presidential couple, the State-party-family machinery does not dare to convene a mass act on July 19.
A report of CONFIDENTIAL points out that the former political muscle of the FSLN faces its worst level of attrition and national repudiation. The celebrations were held in neighborhoods, regions and municipalities, on July 17 and 18, and this July 19 they will hold an act in the Plaza de la Revolución with a reduced number of guests, on a national radio and television network as in 2021.
A dictatorship “as or bloodier” than the previous one
For their part, at least 20 opposition organizations lamented and rejected the Sandinista celebration, considering that it is “a victory that was usurped, betrayed and turned into the worst historical tragedy.”
According to the opposition organizations, which are in Nicaragua and in exile, the country “is experiencing a new dictatorship, as or more bloody and totalitarian than the Somoza dynasty.” The Ortega-Murillo regime “has destroyed the democratic institutions that were beginning to be built and, as of 2018, once again resorted to violence in an enormous way to maintain absolute control of the country, eliminating the spaces of organized civil society, annulling the State of Law, raging against human rights and thus increasing their crimes against humanity.
Among the organizations that rejected the Sandinista party are the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, the Blue and White National Unity, the Campesino Movement, the Political Prisoners Reflection Group, and the Nicaragua Freedom Coalition.
“There is nothing to celebrate, much less the liberation of a people that continues to be assassinated, we do not conceive of a celebration, commemoration or veneration, on a date whose meaning has been trampled on and degraded like the very lives of citizens,” the opponents continued. .
The organizations also demanded “the immediate exit from the criminal dictatorship of the Ortega Murillo family, the release of the more than 190 political prisoners, respect for public liberties, and the safe return of the more than 144,000 exiles.”
In this same order, the Self-Convened National Movement called for a national tweet against the Ortega and Murillo regime, on July 18 and 19.
We invite you to publish photos and videos this July 18 and 19 about the FSLN’s crimes against humanity, because historical memory is not forgotten and the Sandinista dictatorship must pay fairly. Everyone to use the hashtag:#SOSNicaragua#Historical memory of #Nicaragua pic.twitter.com/seuhaJALP0
— Self-Convened National Movement (@MNAutoconvocado) July 18, 2022
The virtual protest consists of filling the social network Twitter with photographs and images of the regime’s brutal repression against citizens starting in April 2018, with the aim of making what happened visible and continuing to demand justice, truth, reparation and non-repetition. .
The Calvary of State Workers
For government employees, the celebration of July 19 means an imposition. Although the regime will give July 20 as a national holiday, participating in the marches and assemblies means submitting to political surveillance and the obligation to raise the flag of a party in which they do not believe.
Ligia Gómez, former political secretary of the Sandinista Leadership Council at the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) and today a researcher at Urnas Abiertas, said in the report of CONFIDENTIAL that “there are few public employees who go (to the celebrations) convinced; Generally, those who have liked to go without being enlisted are those who participated in the war of the eighties and believe the story that everything bad that has happened in Nicaragua is the fault of the United States. People who are already 60 years old or older, and who in some cases have managed to influence their children who, in some cases, now work for the State.”
For the former BCN official, however, despite government control, there is a majority of workers who do not go of their own free will, but must go so that they are not put on a layoff list.
According to a report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), attached to the Organization of American States, at least 355 Nicaraguans were killed in the context of protests in 2018, more than 2,000 were injured and more than 100,000 went into exile to protect their safety.
However, Ortega and his circle have denounced without evidence that they were victims of a coup d’état, imposing an atmosphere of terror among the citizenry.
