Daniel Ortega’s regime appointed this Wednesday, September 21, Gadiel Francisco Arce Mairena as its new ambassador to Colombia. The diplomat was serving as Nicaraguan consul in Ecuador in 2008 when a guerrilla member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) asked protection to Nicaraguaafter he survived the military operation in which they eliminated “Raúl Reyes”, second in command of that organization.
Ortega explained in those days, to a group of ex-combatants from the Pablo Úbeda special troops, that the guerrilla was known as “Hope”, but did not mention his name. She was later identified in the Colombian press as Nubia Calderón Trujillo, a organization hotshotwho survived the attack in Ecuador along with three guerrillas who were also protected by Ortega: the Colombians Martha Pérez Gutiérrez and Doris Torres Bohórquez, and the Mexican Lucía Morret.
Organically, the then consul with the rank of minister counselor in Ecuador also responded to the concurrent ambassador from Nicaragua, Commander Tomás Borge, who dispatched from Peru, according to information published in the media. “I imagine that Arce receives the paperwork and if he can do it, he does it, and, if not, he sends it to Peru (where Borge is),” explained a spokeswoman for the Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when the media arrived at her office. , full of curiosity about the case.
Since 2016, the FARC guerrillas signed a peace agreement with then-president Juan Manuel Santos, not seen by the United States as a “terrorist group” since 2021, a decision taken to open the way for the implementation of the peace agreements. Arce Mairena was in charge of Ecuador until 2009.
Ortega made the new appointment official through the presidential agreement 137-2022, published in La Gaceta. Maple Mairena is psychologist professional. According to journalistic records, his professional background dates back to the eighties when he represented Nicaragua in the former Yugoslavia. In 2007, he was appointed ambassador to Iran in the early days of the current regime’s power.
Colombia condemned Nicaragua in Geneva
The appointment of Ambassador Arce Mairena occurs 12 days after a moment of tension between Bogotá and Managua, fueled by the condemnation of the Nicaraguan executive, backed by 45 countries in the United Nations Human Rights Council, among they Colombia.
Days before the vote in Geneva, Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva advanced his country’s vote, after describing Nicaragua’s treatment of opponents “like being kicked” and reporting on a failed humanitarian effort to free 21 of 205 political prisoners who currently exist in Nicaragua.
Read: 45 UN countries condemn repression by the Ortega regime
While at the international level, the Palacio de Nariño made its position clear with Managua, questioned for abstaining from a condemnation of Ortega in the OAS, Petro positioned on September 13 as its new ambassador to Nicaragua the politician León Fredy Muñoz, who last August he celebrated when he was designated that with “the winds of change the doors are opened for our country to return to brotherhood in Latin America.”
On September 13, Petro spoke of the need for a dialogue with Nicaragua, after the unfavorable rulings of the International Court of Justice against Colombia, the main ruling in 2012 when it awarded 75,000 square kilometers in the Caribbean Sea to the Central American country.
In addition to being a low-key diplomat, Arce Mairena is a well-known writer of eulogies for the FSLN and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In 2011, when Ortega imposed his re-election using a ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice, the now ambassador to Colombia bet in a column published in Bolsa de Noticias for giving legitimacy to a vote to face fear, “the most powerful weapon that capitalism has used”.
