The government of President Daniel Ortega celebrates this Tuesday the 43rd anniversary of the Sandinista revolution that brought him to power for the first time between 1979 and 1990, in a different context that includes the death in prison of his fellow fighter Hugo Torreswhile other former guerrillas such as Dora María Téllez remain behind bars.
In recent days, the government announced vigils in various parts of the capital, Managua. At midnight a fireworks show took place in a central point of the country.
The spokeswoman and vice president of the government, Rosario Murillo, referred to the messages of congratulations for the “triumph” of the revolution, among which those sent by the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as well as those from the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, both allied countries and singled out for human rights violations.
Similarly, Murillo read a “greeting” sent by the president of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, who said that “relations of friendship and cooperation” between the two countries will be “intensified and developed” in the midst of the fight for anti-imperialist independence. ”.
The official anniversary has been clouded for the second year due to what the figures of important ex-guerrillas who are imprisoned and whose relatives denounce that they are isolated and under conditions that violate human rights represent.
That is the case of the former commander and historian Dora María Téllez, who played a key role in the Sandinista revolution.
In an opinion piece published in The Young Cubathe writer Pertti Pesonen pointed out that the sentence against Téllez “is pure revenge of Ortega.”
He also said that Dora María “did not give special importance to her past, despite being the famous ‘comandante 2’, who together with Edén Pastora and Hugo Torres led the seizure of the National Palace of Managua in 1978.”
“Téllez single-handedly led the conquest of the city of León, the first to fall into the hands of the Sandinista troops during the final offensive against the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship. She was vice president of the State Council, Minister of Health. She then distanced herself from Daniel Ortega and was one of the founders of the Sandinista Renovation Movement”, the writer stated.
Ortega has repeatedly minimized the accusations of his critics and has said that no opponent is imprisoned, but rather “terrorists” who, according to him, tried to topple him from power.
Opposition message
The Nicaraguan opposition, for its part, issued a statement prior to the commemoration of the Sandinista revolution and stated that 43 years ago “the tyrant Somoza was expelled from power by the decision of the Nicaraguan people.”
“It was the people acting with a single fist to conquer democracy (…) unfortunately today we are facing the power of a new corrupt and sell-out family, which represses and murders, forces us into exile and keeps us in poverty,” criticized the National Unit Blue and White (Unab), whose leaders are in prison in Managua.
The organization pointed out that just as “the Somocista dictatorship fell, the same people, through civic and non-violent struggle, will take charge of passing the Ortega-Murillos to the dustbin of history.”
The act of commemoration of the Sandinista revolution, which will be broadcast on national and radio networks, will be held for the third consecutive year in a private act in the Plaza de la Revolución, and not in the Plaza de la Fe, as was the case historically.
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