The 2021 Nicaraguan “Elections” on November 7th. Please also see my essay “Daniel Ortega and Populist Authoritarianism in Nicaragua” from June 26, 2021 in my blog. Years ago on one of my trips to Nicaragua, I met Sergio Ramirez, Sandinista leader and internationally known author. In the early to mid-1990s Ramirez openly split with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and created the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). I actually attended the inauguration ceremony of the MRS in 1995 in Managua at the invitation of Ramirez. Since 2007 he has become one of the more outspoken leaders against President Ortega. He is currently in forced exile in Spain. Ramirez recently described the upcoming Nicaraguan “election” on November 7th in this way:
“I think that calling what is going to happen elections is a semantic error. There will be no elections in Nicaragua, what there will be is a process of institutional violence that marks the candidates for removal and sends them to jail; that controls the elections, as if the Electoral Council were a police organ that can declare whoever they want the winner, and then have them take possession…”
For much of this year, the populist authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega has been detaining or arresting leading opposition figures and potential presidential candidates who could run against him in the November 7th election. This includes the person who has the best chance of defeating Ortega, Christiana Chamorro. She is the daughter of assassinated Somoza opposition leader and journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro and former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. She is the VP of La Prensa (primary opposition newspaper) and the head of the Foundation that promotes a free press that bears her mother’s name which was shut down by the state in February.
Others who have been detained or arrested include noted figures such as Jose Bernard Pallais Arana (Coalition National Party), Felix Maradiaga Blandon (Blue and White National Unity), Juan Sebastian Chamorro Garcia (Civic Alliance), Jose Adan Aguerri (economist and former head of COSEP – National Chamber of Commerce), Violeta Granera (sociologist, Blue and White National Unity), Arturo Cruz (former Ambassador to the US, Alliance for Citizen’s Unity), Noel Vidaurre (Alliance for Citizen’s Unity), Lesther Aleman (Nicaraguan University Alliance – student movement), Medardo Mairena (farmer and leader of the peasant movement since 2018), Ana Margarita Vigil (law professor, human rights activist, president of the Sandinista Renovation Movement MRS), Suyen Barahona (feminist activist, President of UNAMOS), and Tamara Davila (sociologist, activist since 2018, daughter of Sandinista revolutionaries and member of UNAMOS).
Many of those who are now opposing the Ortega government are the sons and daughters of Sandinistas who fought to end dictatorship in their country. The list of those detained or arrested includes several former Sandinistas who played a major role in the 1979 revolution that toppled the long-time Somoza family dictatorship including internationally famous Dora Maria Tellez (former Sandinista guerrilla and leader who became famous by leading the attack on the Nicaraguan Congress in 1978, served as Minister of Health from 1979 to 1990, turned against Ortega and helped to create the MRS) and Hugo Torres (former Sandinista guerrilla who participated in the 1974 Christmas raid that freed fellow Sandinista Daniel Ortega and the 1978 raid on the Congress).
While the United States (US), the European Union, and other democratic states have imposed selective economic sanctions against the Ortega government, it is clear that Ortega will not bend to pressure, especially from the US. As I wrote in my book on Nicaragua, Ortega grew up in an intensely anti-US family. His father was a supporter of Augusto Cesar Sandino who led a peasant army that fought against the occupation of Nicaragua by US Marines from 1926 to 1933 and was assassinated by the founder of the Somoza dynasty, Anastasio Somoza Garcia. Ortega’s father continued to oppose the Somoza dynasty that the US had created and the US. Daniel Ortega stated that, “We were anti-Coca Cola, anti-comic book, against everything good and bad represented by the United States, except baseball.” Much like Fidel Castro, Ortega will never give in to pressure from the US. Greater pressure from the US will cause him to dig in heals even more just as Fidel did so often. The only path to a democratic Nicaragua is through its own people and their struggle. Given the strength of the populist, authoritarian hold on the country by Ortega with his control over all the institutions of government and his corporatist control over Sandinista unions and a fractured opposition, I don’t expect that to happen very soon. In my book, I characterized Nicaragua as both beautiful and tragic. The tragedy continues in the upcoming election.
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