The novelist and activist Gioconda Belli, a comrade of Ortega’s struggle at the time when Sandinismo was a movement with “patriotic roots,” believes that “Maduro is going to finish off Chavismo,” just as Ortega did with Sandinismo, now “hated” by the Nicaraguan people themselves and transformed into Orteguismo, a regime where power is totally centralized in Daniel Ortegal and Rosario Murillo, his wife and also vice president of Nicaragua.
Daniel Ortega has been a central figure in Nicaraguan politics since the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. Although he was the leader of that movement, he himself pulverized it. His career, which spans 27 years in power, has been a journey towards a dictatorial model, where the control of state institutions, the persecution of opponents and the limitation of civil liberties have become the pillars of his regime. In the vast Latin American network, Nicolás Maduro emerges as one of his closest allies. Despite the notable differences between the two, they share authoritarian approaches and tactics of repression against protesters. Perhaps this is the reason why, days after the National Electoral Council (CNE) gave a presidential victory to Chávez’s anointed one – who has governed for 11 years – the Central American leader expressed his “formal and clear recognition of the electoral result,” defying the strong rejection of the international community.
In Nicaragua, the 2021 elections were also controversial, resulting in a new mandate for Ortega. The people rose up in Managua against what they considered fraud, but the Sandinista leader stood firm on his position. Today, the flame of protest has been extinguished; public gatherings are banned and any form of opposition is stifled with relentless violence.
Gioconda Belli, a former Sandinista guerrilla and renowned poet and writer, despite the similarities between the Maduro and Ortega regimes, does not share the pessimistic view that “Venezuela will become another Nicaragua.” Faith surrounds her words when she pronounces it, although her conviction seems to waver in the face of reality. She sadly recalls that in her country —from which she has been banished— there was a popular rebellion that was repressed “with blood and fire.” Three years ago, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) set the death toll from the 2018 protests against Ortega at 355.
The Nicaraguan novelist feels a deep “admiration” for Venezuelans who still dare to go out into the streets. “That is fundamental,” she firmly emphasizes. She insists that each person is the master of his or her own fear and that she remains quiet with company, with a crowd. “It is hard because one risks being killed. It is such a personal decision. When we were resisting in the case of Somoza, I knew that I was not alone. When you reach that point, that is when you manage to move forward,” she explains.
In the middle of a conversation with SuchWhich On August 21, she launched the idea of calling a national strike. However, she soon hesitated: “I am not Venezuelan.”
Belli wonders how Maduro will be able to govern after the “electoral fraud” that, in her opinion, has made him lose all legitimacy. “It’s shameful,” she exclaims, but she has already lived through that bitter experience in her native Nicaragua.
«They have locked up the whole society in Nicaragua. When the rulers are rejected by their people and they know it, what they do to ensure their power is to squeeze as much as they can; they create spy networks and harass them until they leave. They send you abroad and take away your nationality,» Belli reflects from Madrid, where she lives in exile from the Nicaragua that she deeply loves; the Nicaragua that made her a poet and that still accompanies her in her heart because it is a «small country, it is a portable country.»
Gioconda Belli also recalls that Sandinismo, although transformed by time and circumstances, was a “heroic feat” that resonated among Nicaraguans. However, that vibrant essence no longer exists; it has been supplanted by Ortegaism, a regime in which power is completely concentrated in Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who holds the vice presidency of Nicaragua.
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She, who was Ortega’s comrade in arms at the time when Sandinismo was established as a movement with “patriotic roots,” believes that “Maduro is going to put an end to Chavismo,” just as Ortega did with Sandinismo, now “hated” by its own people. Perhaps at this point it is appropriate to recall the attack against the symbol of the revolution in Venezuela, the statues of Hugo Chávez, in the face of the government’s silence in the days following the presidential election and the deep collective unrest.
«The most terrible thing I see is that in Venezuela a situation of fear of writing, of speaking, is beginning to develop. I have suffered these days with you (with the Venezuelans). I cannot resign myself. Injustice moves me, it hardens me. It gives me the impression that they (Maduro) thought they were going to win the elections. It reminds me that the Sandinistas thought they were going to win the elections and when they lost they froze. The decision of the Sandinistas to hand over power was taken by nine people, who were the leaders of the revolution. It was not just Daniel Ortega. If he had been alone, he would not have done it,» he pointed out.
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