On August 9, the National Council of Universities (CNU), the body that controls higher education under orders from the dictatorship, appointed Bosco Castillo as rector of the National Agrarian University (UNA). This appointment would be nothing more than a congratulatory one if it weren’t for who this person is: without any academic experience but a blindly loyal pawn of Rosario Murillo, to whom he has shown no scruples when planning and executing repression against the people of Nicaragua.
Where does the new rector of UNA come from? None other than the National Union of Students of Nicaragua, UNEN, the political and operational arm of Sandinismo, used, under the slogan of the 6% university students, to destabilize the governments of the 90s and early 2000s.
Furthermore, since 2007, with the return to power of Daniel Ortega, the UNEN also acts as a tentacle of control and repression against university students. Bosco Castillo was formed in this student organization.
From UNEN he jumped to the national coordination of the Sandinista Youth 19 of July (JS), the organization of Sandinista fanatics used by the regime to repress popular protests such as that of the elderly demanding better pensions, known as “INSS squatters), or the Wednesday protests organized by opponents and critics of the Sandinista regime, which were repressed by young people wearing JS t-shirts, then coordinated by Castillo.
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Journalistic investigations have revealed that Bosco Castillo was not only an executor of the orders to repress but that he participated in the planning of the repressive actions, as occurred with the elderly Ocupa INSS.
An investigation by Confidencial magazine revealed that the operation in which the elderly and the rest of the population who accompanied them in their protest in front of the facilities of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) were assaulted, beaten and abused by Sandinista fanatics, and it was Fidel Moreno and Bosco Castillo together with the Sandinista deputy Jenny Martínez, and the then Vice Minister of Education, José Treminio, who planned in detail how to assault, rob and evict the elderly protesters.
And if that were not enough of a resume to present himself as a kneeling pawn of Sandinism, he also has a link that led him to get close, first to the dictator Daniel Ortega, and then to the vice-dictator Rosario Murillo, in whose service he is currently.
That link is Fidel Moreno, general secretary, with mayoral powers, of the Managua City Hall.
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Castillo’s willingness to plan and execute, without scruples, repressive operations against the people earned him the trust of the dictators who soon called him to the executive branch.
His first position within the State was a low-level one, which he obtained in 2009, in the Mayor’s Office of Managua, as municipal head of Ornamentation; however, that position was only to justify a salary because in reality he was dedicated to the national coordination of the JS.
By 2012, the former UNEN and ex-JS member Bosco Castillo had strengthened his operational relationship with Fidel Moreno, known as a very close pawn of Murillo, and through him, demonstrated his unscrupulous capacity to be loyal to dictators and was then called into the big circle, as the new head of the newly created Ministry of Youth (Minjuve), a position he held until 2022.
That year, Castillo was removed from the Minjuve and appointed presidential advisor on Technologies and Productive Innovations, until, through the Presidential Agreement 111-2023approved on July 6, 2023, and published in La Gaceta, Official Gazette number 123, on July 10, 2023, Castillo was appointed by dictator Daniel Ortega as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
After a year in that position, according to presidential agreement 129-2024 published in the Official Gazette on August 7, Bosco Castillo “resigned” from the position of MAG minister. News reports indicated that the former UNEN member’s resignation was due to alleged acts of unauthorized corruption.
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However, less than 72 hours later, the CNU issued a statement announcing that they had appointed the former minister and former advisor to Ortega as rector of the UNA. The statement mentions Castillo as having an engineering degree, although it does not specify in which branch of engineering the new Sandinista had graduated.
In reviews made by Article 66Bosco Castillo’s known background does not indicate that he has ever taught at any level of education, much less dedicated himself to scientific or academic research. That is, for the first time in its history, UNA will have a rector who has no experience in the academic world.
In Nicaragua, primary, secondary and university education is used by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as an academy of political indoctrination in favor of Sandinismo.
The matter has reached such serious levels that some reports claim that at the Casimiro Sotelo University, installed on property stolen from the Central American University (UCA), they have hired Sandinista militants as teachers who do not even have a bachelor’s degree.
