The dictator Daniel Ortega ordered, this Monday, June 10, the dismissal of the Agriculture Minister, Isidro Antonio Rivera, who had barely been in office for a year, to replace him with the former leader of the Sandinista Youth on July 19 (JS) and the National Union of Students of Nicaragua (UNEN) Bosco Castillo Cruz, who currently works alongside Ortega as Minister Advisor for Productive Technologies.
Through Presidential Agreement 110-2023, published in the Gazette number 123, this Monday, Ortega cancels “the appointment of compañero Isidro Antonio Rivera in the position of minister of the Ministry of Agriculture.”
The now ex-minister Rivera had been appointed to that position through Presidential Agreement 102-2022, published in the Official Gazette 118, of June 28, 2022. He becomes one more minister who passes through the Ortega cabinet without pain or glory, since he was never known as a promoter of agricultural policies or strategies in the country.
A JS to the Ministry of Agriculture
In the same gazette in which Rivera is fired, Ortega publishes Presidential Agreement 111-2023 with which he rewards Bosco Castillo Cruz with a second position, this time as head of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Likewise, it decides that the new Minister of Agriculture “continues to hold the position of Minister Adviser to the Presidency of the Republic for Technologies and Productive Innovations”, a position that, supposedly, he exercises “without pay”.
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Castillo Cruz is not known as an expert on agricultural issues or productive technologies, his image is directly linked to demonstrations and as a political agitator for Ortega.
He was national president of the UNEN, political arm of agitation and control of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the country’s universities. He was also the national leader of the JS, an organization that, after Ortega’s return to power in 2007, became the most feared shock arm of Ortega and Murillo, in charge of dismantling any protest attempt, he was also the first secretary of the Ortega Youth Institute.
