The Bismarck Martínez program, a project to deliver social housing for supporters of the Daniel Ortega regime, started after the repression against the citizen protests of 2018, has changed its scheme: they deliver plots of land instead of houses , due to financing problems, as confirmed to CONFIDENTIAL sources from the Mayor’s Office of Managua, city councilors and beneficiaries of the program.
The cut in funding has been caused by the suspension of Taiwan’s cooperation, after the diplomatic rupture promoted by the regime in December 2021, to fold to Mainland China.
The vice president and spokeswoman for the regime, Rosario Murillo, in her midday monologues, continues to promote the program as one of the emblems of Ortega’s political clientelism. However, the same announcements by the regime’s operators confirm the priority of delivering lots instead of houses, which forces the beneficiaries of the program to assume the construction of the houses on their own.
In an intervention before the regime’s propaganda media, in September 2021, the sanctioned Secretary General of the Mayor’s Office of Managua (ALMA), Fidel Morenoannounced that by early 2022 they planned to deliver 3,000 homes and 30,000 lots throughout the country, as part of the program.
The concept of “urbanized lots”
Moreno appeared again, on March 30, 2022, to announce the delivery of 300 lots in the vicinity of the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, last Tuesday, April 19.
In this intervention, Moreno clarified that only the lots will be delivered and that the beneficiary families themselves will assume the construction of the houses.
“Conditions such as paved streets, electricity and drinking water will be created so that each family, when they build their home, can immediately connect to each service,” he explained.
In this particular project, called Villa Esperanza, Moreno assured that health centers, a police station, a mayor’s office, a bus terminal and a market would also be built.
A press release from the capital commune, posted on your website, reports that the goal at the end of 2022 is to deliver 4,000 “urbanized lots” in Villa Hope.
“This subdivision is conceived as a progressive project, where families will be able to start the construction of their homes and will have all the basic services required in an urbanization”, cites the press release.
Sellin Figueroa, councilor for the party Citizens for Freedom (CxL)disqualified by the regime for the national elections of November 2021, said that, when the contract between the mayor’s office and the beneficiary is signed, it is established whether he has the capacity to pay for a built house or just the lot.
The rupture with Taiwan and its consequences in the program
Figueroa indicated that the program Bismarck Martinez is hermetically controlled by the authorities of the Managua Mayor’s Office and that the rupture with Taiwan affected the execution plans, because an important component was financed with funds disbursed by that country.
The loyalty of Taiwan’s cooperation with the Ortega regime made it possible to cover the construction of social housing for the regime, even with funds that were not originally intended for this purpose. This was the case in 2014, with the 30 million dollars that Taiwan donated for the construction of the National State, but which Ortega ordered to be used for the housing project of Bethlehem Cityarguing that it was for families affected by the rains and other disasters, or who lived in high-risk areas in Managua.
“There was definitely official support and consent from Taiwan, after diverting the funds planned for the construction of the national stadium and allocating them for the housing program, in addition to other financial support for decent housing programs,” said Figueroa. He added that “now this program is sustained with funds from the General Budget of the Republic and by debts acquired with multilateral organizations.”
Jaime Chin Mu Wu, the last ambassador of Taiwan, was also a regular assistant in the delivery of social housing of the regime. Reports from the propaganda media of the dictatorship record his participation in the delivery of homes under the Bismarck Martínez program.
The same reports indicate that, from 2018 until the breakup of relations, the Taiwanese ambassador participated in four donations in the amount of 200,000 dollars each, for a total of 800,000 dollars to finance the construction of houses.
The mayor of Managua, Reyna Rueda, and Guillermo González, minister of the National System for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation and Attention (Sinapred), also participated in the events. With these disbursements, the construction of 400 homes under the Bismarck Martínez programaccording to official media reports.
On January 28, 2022, two weeks after Laureano Ortega Murillo represented the regime on an official trip to China, Rosario Murillo announced that the Asian giant would finance a program for the massive construction of social housing in 84 municipalities in the country.
The program, according to Murillo, would be carried out over a period of three years, but he did not provide more details about the start of construction or how many houses will be built as part of the project during this intervention.
It was until this Wednesday, April 27, that Murillo spoke again on the subject, announcing the signing with the China International Cooperation Development Agency, revealing the amount of the disbursement for this project.
“There are 400 million Chinese yuan, equivalent to more than 60 million dollars, for housing, the first phase of this program”Murillo assured in his speech. The signing of this agreement was in charge of Laureano Ortega and the head of Finance and Public Credit, Iván Acosta. After the announcement, Murillo did not provide more details on the subject, and it is still unknown if this disbursement It would be as a loan or donation and when would the construction of these houses begin?
The propagandistic origin of the program
The Bismarck Martínez program has a strong propaganda component. The name refers to the Sandinista militant who, according to the Government, was assassinated after being kidnapped on June 29, 2018, in a citizen roadblock of the San José College, in Jinotepe, Carazo, during the civic protests repressed with bullets by police and paramilitaries of the regime. .
The regime never allowed the disappearance and death of Martínez to be investigated by the mechanisms of international human rights organizations that came to Nicaragua to investigate the political violence, and were expelled from the country by Daniel Ortega.
Promoters and beneficiary of the program who agreed to talk with CONFIDENTIAL under the condition of protecting their identities, they assure that this initiative is actually a mechanism devised by Ortega to compensate mainly those who participated in the land and property seizures promoted by the regime as part of the repression against businessmen, opponents and citizens in 2018.
Figures reported by the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic) and compiled by the magazine Send in December 2019 record that in 2018, 65 properties were illegally occupied in eight departments of the country, for a total of 9,800 manzanas. 71% of the properties were for agricultural use, 20.5% livestock, 5.5% forestry, 2% industrial and 1% other uses.
Those affected were 53 owners: 40 Nicaraguans, eleven Americans, one Mexican and one Canadian. Subsequently, the regime used the police forces to gradually evict most of these properties.
The beneficiaries consulted by CONFIDENTIAL they also assure that the system established for the delivery of the houses lacks transparency due to the secrecy with which it is managed by the mayors involved in the program, mainly that of Managua, which provokes complaints and claims from the citizens registered in it. .
“The lack of transparency is a constant that is not only reflected in the complaints of some beneficiaries, but also goes beyond compliance with the law, where it requires transparency of all ordinary and extraordinary income of the commune and that they put in a bag called miscellaneous or others to lose track of the control”, explained Figueroa.
Requirement to opt for the program: a letter to Daniel Ortega
To register for the program, the requirements to be met are: write a letter addressed to Daniel Ortega To apply for housing, show that you are part of a family nucleus (single people cannot participate) and that you have a salary or monthly income greater than 7,000 cordobas.
If they are not salaried, the applicant beneficiary must submit a notarized statement of their income, as well as photographs of the business or commercial activity they carry out. In addition, he must present a proof or denial of assets showing that he does not own property and prove his place of residence.
The request is made through the mayor’s offices. The commune that registers the largest number of requests is Managua, since it is the area where most of the houses and lots delivered by the Bismarck Martínez program have been located.
As soon as the citizen meets the requirements and is registered in the program, he has to start making monthly payments for his lot or home, which range between 20 to 41 dollars a month at the windows of the mayor’s office.
The beneficiaries consulted by CONFIDENTIAL They assure that they do not receive proof of said payments, one of the main reasons for the complaints and protests.
Another complaint is that since the program was implemented, there are many beneficiaries who have been paying their homes for more than two years, but still do not have a document that certifies the date of delivery of the property.
The beneficiaries consulted explained that after spending that time making payments, they are called from the mayor’s office to come and sign a “promise of sale”, but they do not keep a copy of the document.
In the case of these consulted beneficiaries, they assure that since they signed this document three months ago, they have not been contacted by the authorities of the Managua Mayor’s Office.
“I remember that when I signed in January, they told me that my house would be ready by May, but since then, I don’t know anything else, only where they were supposed to build the house in Managua,” one of the beneficiaries confided to CONFIDENTIAL.
