Forty-five years ago, the Sandinista guerrillas overthrew the Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua. Why is President Daniel Ortega, in power for 17 years, now accused by opponents and critics of establishing a regime like the one he helped defeat?
Here are five keys to understanding what is happening in Nicaragua:
– The protests –
In April 2018, Nicaragua took a radical turn when strong protests against Ortega broke out, lasting for three months and leaving more than 300 dead, hundreds detained and thousands in exile, according to the UN.
Ortega and his powerful wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, maintain that the protests were an attempted coup sponsored by Washington and that they were controlled by paramilitaries.
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“They wanted to impose terrorism,” Murillo said this week.
Accusing them of treason, in 2023 the government released 316 critical politicians, journalists, intellectuals and activists from prison, expelled them from the country and stripped them of their nationality and property.
One of them, former presidential candidate Félix Maradiaga, president of the Foundation for the Freedom of Nicaragua, told AFP from Miami that “almost 15% of the population has been forced into exile.”
According to UN experts, the government is committing human rights “violations” that are “equivalent to crimes against humanity.”
– Press and religion –
No foreign journalists can enter Nicaragua. The San Jose-based Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy (FLED) counts 263 Nicaraguan journalists in exile since 2018, mainly in Costa Rica and the United States.
Nicaragua is ranked 163rd out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranking, in the “very serious situation” group with Russia, China, North Korea and Afghanistan. In Latin America, it is only above Cuba.
Accusing the Catholic Church of having supported the protests, the government banned street processions and exiled around 200 clerics, according to exiled researcher Martha Patricia Molina. At the end of 2023, around 30 clerics were imprisoned and then sent to the Vatican.
Nicaragua adopted “cybercrime” and “foreign agent” laws modeled after Russian ones. Since 2018, the government has shut down more than 3,600 organizations — including a Jesuit university — that received external funding, and confiscated their assets for failing to report the source of their income.
– Russia and China –
An ally of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the Nicaraguan government is under sanctions by the United States and the European Union (EU) for its human rights situation.
China has road, airport, railway and energy infrastructure projects in the country, sells buses and exports all kinds of goods to Nicaragua.
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“For the regime, trade and financial ties with China are a tactical option in the face of the hardening of relations with the democratic world,” Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank told AFP.
“There is total dependence on Russia for security,” he added, pointing to the presence of Russian military personnel, police training and the purchase of weapons.
Seeking to hit the United States and make a “million-dollar business,” according to Orozco, Nicaragua has been a springboard for migrants “with more than 1,000 charter flights that transported nearly 200,000 from May 2023 to May 2024.”
– The succession –
Ortega governed in the 1980s after the triumph of the revolution, lost the 1990 elections and returned to power in 2007. He was re-elected in three elections questioned by Washington, the EU and international organizations.
The 78-year-old former guerrilla is in charge with his wife, his children work in the government and run the media. The leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) controls the entire state.
“Nicaragua is a tropicalized North Korea: a family-style dictatorship, followers who behave like a sect, an oppressive system with the State at its service, and a cult of personality for Ortega,” said Maradiaga.
Recently, Ortega gave “full powers” to negotiate with China to his son Laureano, 42, a presidential advisor pointed out by opponents as the “dauphin.”
For Orozco, “the hope for democratic change” is in a sort of implosion.
– “Apparent normality” –
The government will celebrate this July 19. “We fight against the enemies of humanity” and “among these are the traitors,” Murillo said on Thursday.
“There is an apparent normality within the country as long as there is no criticism of the system,” Maradiaga said.
For Orozco, Nicaraguans are more concerned about everyday life and “migration is the escape valve for work.”
“People want to leave, receive family remittances (27% of GDP), win the favor of someone in the government or live in a bubble of denial, so that nothing happens to them,” he said.
