There was a time when the Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN, did not have to threaten its affiliates to get them to attend marches, rallies, and rallies to celebrate July 19. A woman from Matagalpa, a former state worker, remembers it as a day that the whole world celebrated.
“Now it is a party of few,” he says. He adds that before April 2018, “you could see people all over Matagalpa celebrating things related to their party, but now there are a few cats who shout four times in the street and make noise from their vehicles,” he said.
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He recalled that before, they attended the July 19 marches out of conviction, with the certainty that they were celebrating the end of a tyranny. “Now they tell me that they are forced to contribute financially to the party, they are forced to wear a scarf, T-shirts, a flag, and under threats or intimidation they are required to show up at the marches or caravans on July 19 or on the day they think of demanding that they make noise,” he said. “Why do they do it? Why do they need to force people?” he wondered.
stopped representing something
This woman from Matagalpa assures that she has been working on her own for more than 10 years, and that she moved away from the activities of the Sandinista party because she stopped believing in it, she stopped feeling represented. “I like to do things because I believe in them, not because someone forces me or worse threatens me, no, that’s what they wanted to do with me and I said I’m going and I left,” she said.
The streets of Matagalpa were desolate in the middle of the day.
She said that she felt like a Sandinista until 2013, because they respected her, but then everything began to be mandatory. “Now some former colleagues are being picked up from their homes to go to such targets, that we need them to arrive with the vehicle to attract people to the caravan. Now they have the poor workers with their souls in a thread, that if they do not obey, they run them or put them in the Chipote, that should not be the case, “she criticized.
This situation is what the majority of public officials are experiencing, but he believes that there is another large part that remains convinced that Ortega does things for the good of the party. “The problem is that the party is a family, a family that lives in Managua, in El Carmen,” said another former militant.
“Many things are no longer the same as before. There is no mystique, there are no principles, those who are there are people who know nothing and the others are threatened with unemployment, jail, death or exile. If not by force, the Sandinistas would no longer be in power, “he points out.
“Days to drink liquor”
In Matagalpa, the departmental house of the party was full of people on July 18, in the so-called vigil, with testimonial music, but it is nothing more than a night for the consumption of alcoholic beverages, noise and disorder, even in the presence of the Police. “These are days to drink liquor, that’s what they do,” says a former militant who has also resigned from the party.
At dawn this Wednesday, the caravans blocked the streets. In Matagalpa the streets looked empty, most of the commerce remained closed, few street vendors, the occasional passerby. A small number of vehicles carried flags and emblems of the dictatorship. The rest of the Matagalpinos showed their indifference.
By: United Voices.
