Daniel Ortega’s regime uses everything at its disposal to distract Nicaraguans from the real problems that afflict the country: there is a dictatorship, there are no individual freedoms; There is repression, there are no new investments, there is a lack of employment and life has an increasingly higher cost.
“The incredible thing is that in the country there is a circus, even though there is no bread,” says an opponent who spoke anonymously to avoid a secure prison. The voice refers to the recent activity of several local figures who were part of a kind of boxing evening with the media and financial support of the Ortega regime and his wife Rosario Murillo.
«They try to show a happy country and hide what they cannot; a country without freedoms under a dictatorship that killed 355 opponents and has imprisoned and exiled thousands for opposing them dying in power,” the opponent accuses.
Former boxing champions like Rosendo Álvarez, José Alfaro and Ricardo Mayorga put on gloves and threw punches at Tik Tokers and merchants like Juan Caldera, this October 12 at the “Alexis Argüello” Sports Center facilities. It was the media of the Ortega-Murillo regime and its staff who were responsible for insisting that the event deserved the attention of the entire country.
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The participants appeared on the television channel programs of the children of Ortega and Murillo, the Mayor’s Office provided the facilities and provided other logistics, while the Police ensured the security of the activity. Álvarez, Mayorga, Alfaro and Caldera himself have declared themselves faithful followers of the regime that has become one of the worst dictatorships in Latin America.
«The people provided the bread and they provided the circus»
For Mrs. Rosenda Gómez, 77 years old, a grocery store in the “Milagro de Dios” neighborhood and with more than 30 years of having that business, it was an opportunity to generate profits. For Mrs. Rosenda, the good thing is that “the people provided the bread and they provided the circus.”
«Son, the devil knows more about being old than being a devil… I took out my television with an extension to the street and got about 40 chairs from the neighborhood residents. I offered to watch the crazy Caldera fight – because I don’t know the others – but I sold beers and a lot of chiveria. “I won 5 thousand pesos, no less and no more,” he said. “Mother necessity,” he added, “pushes us, son, to be creative,” he explained.
Don Porfirio Medina, a man from the capital who has lived in the “Domitila Lugo” neighborhood for 32 years, out of the 62 of his entire life, says that he is not being fooled. “Yes, I had fun watching those crazy things, but it’s clear that all of that is a show, if it entertains people for a while, but the truth is that what you experience is something else and you don’t forget,” he points out.
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The sexagenarian refers to the fact that people in the country “have their four nails,” in his words. “There is no work, there are economic and political problems that these things, although they make you laugh for a while, do not erase the fact that tomorrow must be resolved and that things have not been looking good for a while,” he says.
“No one forgets here”
María Alarcón is a young fifth-year student at a public school. She says that she met Alvarito Conrado, the teenager murdered by the Police of Daniel Ortega’s regime during a protest in 2018. «Seeing this is unpleasant. There is a mixture of discomfort and sadness to see how there are people who ignore what we have experienced in Nicaragua,” he laments.
For his part, José Quijano, a young worker in the commercial sector of one of the capital’s markets, said that “he did enjoy the show.” “I went, it was a momentary joy, of course,” he explains. “Then one returns to the nails, to the slap – lack of money -, the friends first laugh and then complain that it would be better not to have spent on that relaxation… they leave a sour feeling,” he says between laughs.
«If people are clear about what all this is about, it only means that the circus that the regime set up is not having the desired effect on the people of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship. “Everyone knows that we are pissed off,” says the opponent.
