Nicaragua’s vice-dictator Rosario Murillo took advantage of Nicaraguan Student Day, celebrated on July 23, to unleash insults of all kinds against young people who have challenged the regime presided over by her and her husband, Daniel Ortega. At the same time, she called the victims of Somoza’s regime “sacrosanct” who were not even Sandinistas.
In his usual daily monologue through the government propaganda media, Murillo began by saying that the commemoration of Student Day is also a celebration of youth and immediately attacked the youth who have not subordinated themselves to him.
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“And today, July 23, we reiterate, we say, we affirm, cowardice has no homeland! And we say it to the rags, the clowns, the ruins,” he said with hatred, clearly alluding to the young students who in 2018 rose up in protest against the regime, for which many of them have been imprisoned, banished or forced into exile.
July 23 is remembered for the “student massacre” that occurred in León on that date in 1959, when the National Guard (GN) of the Somoza dictatorship fired on a demonstration, killing four university students: Sergio Saldaña, Mauricio Martínez, José Rubí, Erick Ramírez. There were also 60 wounded.
These young people were not Sandinistas, since at that time that organization did not yet exist. According to the story told by the Sandinistas themselves, that movement was founded in 1961. However, the FSLN has appropriated the memory of those university students who protested against Somoza.
The vice-dictator is trying to magnify this fact in order to minimize or ignore the massacre of students ordered by her and her husband and carried out by the Sandinista Police and paramilitaries in 2018, which lasted for several months and left at least 45 students killed among the 355 fatalities of the regime that year, as confirmed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
What he did not mention in his speech was that those injured in those massacres were treated in the public hospital in León and at no time did the Somoza regime prohibit that right, something that Ortega and Murillo did do in 2018, when they ordered all state health care centers to close their doors to those injured in the demonstrations.
The vice-dictator’s hatred of the young students who challenged her tyranny became more evident when referring to the four young people murdered in León in 1959, she said that they were “martyred by the dark Somoza tyranny, they are a symbol and essence… and they are sacrosanct flames of patriotic love.”
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While referring to today’s youth, who resisted in trenches and university campuses the attacks of the Police and paramilitaries who fired with weapons of war, in 2018, he called them cowards without a country.
“Cowardice has no homeland! Listen, listen, you freaks… listen, you ruins of yourselves. Listen, you buffoons, you waste of history!” said the vice-dictator in an exalted tone.
Murillo was furious that banished and exiled youth leaders harshly criticized the decree issued by the regime declaring Nicaraguan youth “national heritage,” the same youth they subject in universities, force to attend demonstrations against their will, and keep under threat to allow them to study in universities controlled by the dictatorship that have become centers of indoctrination.
“Terrorists, coup plotters, criminals, murderers have no place in Sandino’s homeland. Listen, you rags of yourselves: you have no place in Sandino’s homeland,” he shouted.
