A photo of one of Daniel Ortega’s sons, Laureano – his investment advisor – and the vice minister of foreign affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Ma Zhaoxu, It sealed the agreement with which the Nicaraguan regime recognized the People’s Republic of China as the only China in the world. Thus they left behind relations with Taiwan, which Nicaragua recognized in 1990, when President Violeta Barrios began the democratic transition after the first Sandinista government of the 1980s.
The return to the arms of the Asian giant also confirmed the reactivation of a series of anti-democratic contacts by the Nicaraguan ruler, whose legitimacy has been questioned by a vast majority of countries in the international community since the voting last November. marked by repression and the lack of democratic guarantees.
For the professor of international relations at the University of Panama, Euclides Tapia, Ortega’s geopolitics places Nicaragua in the middle of a conflict between large nations, whether it is China with the United States or Russia against the Americans themselves, which evokes alignments of the past as those that occurred in the years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although the contexts have changed.
“They are in the middle of the dispute. In the elephant fight, they are the grass. Ortega understands that the way to survive is to have external support from his enemy’s enemies so that he can have at least the promise of support that if there is a threat of invasion, they will defend me, ”explained Tapia, who adds that these situations may be convenient for him on a personal level, but not for the country.
The recognition of Beijing was expressed by his Foreign Minister Denis Moncada Colindres in Managua, while Ortega’s son took his photo in Oriente, a diplomatic move that opens up the opportunity for a series of businesses for the elite close to the president.
The professor of Latin American Studies at the United States Army War College and an expert on China’s relations with Latin America, Evan Ellis, he considers that Ortega stayed with Taiwan, while consolidating his power, due to the economic calculation that he would obtain greater resources from Taipei, which later changed to the rhythm of political circumstances.
“With the descent of the country (Nicaragua) to an increasingly obvious corrupt authoritarianism, and the increase in sanctions by the US and the European Union, those calculations began to change, especially in the context of the reaction of the democratic international community to the “elections” of November 2021. The Ortegas needed resources to replace those of the West and its investors, “Ellis added.
At this point, he coincided with the Costa Rican political scientist Constantino Urcuyo, who said in mid-December, in an interview with This week Y CONFIDENTIAL, that the regime seeks resources and political support in a world political arena in which China is not exactly looking for a confrontation with the United States, but to gain influence to displace Taiwan.
“As for China, in Nicaragua this will probably include an opening for Chinese companies in telecommunications, electricity generation and transmission, construction, tracking and surveillance, and ‘smart cities’, among others, and also access to limited amounts of sugar and other projects. agricultural, ”Ellis said.
Corruption in one-party regimes
What on the surface can be seen as good news also leads to other caring situations. The business window, in a country that shares a single party political system, the benefits can be for Nicaraguan businessmen connected with the Nicaraguan ruler; the country can access loans to develop infrastructure projects in an opaque environment that can foster corruption to “distribute bribes and other benefits to actors whose support is critical to the continuity in power of the Ortegas.” It also implies the possibility of supporting infrastructure in telecommunications monitoring and surveillance that help the Nicaraguan executive to maintain control, in a scheme similar to that developed in other countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Ellis also believes that the arrival of Mainland China can give a new air to the interoceanic canal, granted in concession by the Government of Nicaragua to Chinese businessman Wang Jing, which reappeared recently, and whose results so far are considered a huge failure.
“There is still no evidence that the channel is more profitable than when it was stopped due to a lack of interest from Western investors in 2016, but HKND (Wang’s concessionaire) still has legal authorization from the Sandinista congress, and the change in relations has resulted in it. makes it more feasible ”, pondered the American expert.
“Economic insertion is not so easy”
According to former Ecuadorian minister César Verduga, 77 years old, the issue of Nicaragua, based on Ortega’s decision, is the insertion of the country in a tripolar world and identifies as blocks the United States and NATO on one side, and the alliance Russia and China on the other.
The former minister indicated that, although there are political rapprochements between Nicaragua and China, the economic issue is not so easy, especially when more than half of Nicaraguan exports are destined for the United States.
“At an economic level, (Nicaragua) is inserted in the zone of influence of the United States and the West. I don’t think anyone with common sense would try to break that quickly (…) it is not easy to leave an economic insertion in one area of influence and go to another. This process at an economic level takes years, at a political level it can be short ”, he reiterated.
In addition to mainland China, Nicaragua has become closer to Russia. Ortega and Putin have a personal relationship. At the beginning of December, two sons of the Nicaraguan president, sanctioned by the international community, Laureano and Rafael Ortega Murillo, were received as part of an official delegation by the vice chancellor Sergei Ryabkov.
According to the Nicaraguan external cooperation report, published in the Central Bank of Nicaragua in 2020, Relations with Russia meant donations of 149.8 million dollars for the Nicaraguan Executive in the period 2007-2015.
The cooperation of both countries has also focused on the military area. In 2016, the purchase of 50 T-72B1 war tanks became known. The following year, the Glonass station was inaugurated in Nejapa, a device that links to 24 Russian satellites from Managua and that works as Russian technology similar to the Global Positioning System (GPS).
This telecommunications base located in the south of Managua has been denounced as enigmatic in the international press and as a probable spy center. In Nicaragua, there is also a police training center in the fight against drugs, with a regional scope, which is part of the close relations between the Kremlin and the FSLN secretariat.
The analyst on international issues, Euclides Tapia, insisted that both the case of China and Russia show that these powers take advantage of minimal fissures to sneak their interests into all the countries of the region, which also includes Nicaragua.
In the case of Ortega, on the other hand, Tapia exposes another element to take into account for the analysis. He says that the ruler is part of a league of totalitarian countries that make a continental bet, now from the Chinese side, to counter the United States.
“Ortega is part of an arc of countries that do not respect human rights, which are authoritarian countries and intends with them to consolidate a permanent alliance of eternal governments, elections for life, it is part of the same: what is in China, Russia and Cuba, he wants to stay there for life or inherit power to women, “added the Panamanian expert, referring to Vice President Rosario Murillo.
However, Tapia doubts how successful Ortega’s calculations can be in these international alliances. In the professor’s opinion, neither Russia nor China are willing to risk the security of their populations for Ortega, or for Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela, a position that seems to be only in the imagination of these political allies.
As Tapia assures, there may be diplomatic support between Nicaragua and its neighboring countries, but there is a limit, that is, “they are not going to jump into a hole to defend it.”
Contrary to the new alliances woven by the Nicaraguan regime, 25 countries of the Organization of American States denounced the illegitimacy of the votes in which Ortega and Murillo were reelected and demanded the freedom of the political prisoners. However, the dictator insists that he is a victim of the “interventionism” of the Western powers, whom he describes as colonizers, without acknowledging the human rights violations perpetrated by the State and documented by national and international human rights organizations. These criticisms are “bad”, while relations with Russia and China are seen in the ruling party as bridges to strengthen the “friendship of the peoples.”
