-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — The poet Rubén Darío expressed his love his homeland Nicaragua both in verse and in his life as a journalist and diplomat, with lines such as, “If the motherland is small, you dream it big. My dreams, my wishes and my hopes tell me, no motherland is small.” In his poem Nicaragua, he describes his country’s traits as those of a “mother.”
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
A century later, in his 1999 memoir of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution, Adiós Muchachos (“Goodbye Boys”), Sergio Ramírez, who served as vice president in the socialist regime installed in 1979, insisted the revolution, while failing to attain all its objectives, did bring democracy (to use his term) to a country that had been run by kleptocrats like the Somozas.
Separately, Mexican author Jorge Ibargüengoitia wrote in his 1969 novel Maten al león (“Kill the Lion”), about a Caribbean dictator — who could be any Latin American dictator — manipulating laws and removing his opponents to perpetuate himself in power.
I cite these works bearing in mind Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega‘s most recent move to alter the constitution to give himself and his wife Rosario Murillo, more time in power and absolute control over the three branches of government. He too was one of the “boys” who fought with Ramírez to rid their father or motherland of tyranny, before morphing over four decades into an even bigger tyrant.
Ortega’s constitutional changes
Ortega’s recent “Law protecting Nicaraguans from sanctions and external aggression” extends the presidential term from five to six years. It also gives his wife equal powers, elevating her from vice-president to joint president.
The creation of the post of “joint president” — in a manner reminiscent of Roman co-emperors — as an effective means of anointing a successor, who may well turn out to be the couple’s son, Laureano Ortega Murillo.
Ortega has even outlasted even the presidencies of Anastasio Somoza García and his son, once a byword for abusive government.
The law tweaked 100 articles of a constitution Ortega has already amended 12 times since 2007. Those amendments included allowing the sitting president’s indefinite reelection and the creation or formalization of the volunteer police, or body of citizens “voluntarily” aiding police in law-enforcement and other tasks.
Repression and long rule
Born on November 11, 1945, Ortega emerged on the stage of modern Latin American history as a commander of the FSLN or the Sandinista Front fighting the U.S.-backed Somoza government. Following the Sandinista victory in 1979, he took over as coordinator of the National Reconstruction Government Council, which gave him a taste of the power he has since been loath to relinquish or even share with anyone besides his wife.
In April 2018, his government brutally suppressed an uprising that left 325 dead, then ramped up its repressive practices to become a classic police state. Hundreds of Nicaraguans are in jail today for opposing the regime, and hundreds of thousands have fled the country, which has, alongside Cuba, become one of the chief violators of human and particularly religious rights in the hemisphere.
Ortega is Nicaragua’s longest “serving” president, outlasting even the joint presidencies of Anastasio Somoza García and his son Anastasio Somoza Debayle, once a byword for abusive government.
In contrast with its peers in Venezuela — whose socialist regime has aided Ortega with cash and oil — Nicaragua’s opposition is singularly disunited, with members living in exile and lacking a joint strategy. Opponents agree Ortega and his circle are an obstacle to democracy, but there is no road map toward a shared objective.
Opposition’s struggles and hope
After jailing the country’s main political figures, the Ortega government proceeded in February 2023 to strip more than 300 opponents of their nationality while deporting 222 of them as “traitors to the homeland.” Dispersion is to many observers a factor in the opposition’s weakness, but so is its devotion to an established political culture that cherishes a strongman or savior — and inevitably fuels competition.
They feel something could happen once Trump takes office in January.
The result in is that there is no leading opponent and the opposition is the setting of often bitter divisions between the Left and conservative elements. That is in sharp contrast with 1990, when a united coalition led by Violeta Chamorro (now living in Costa Rica) won the presidency and pushed Ortega into opposition for an “intolerable” 17 years.
What the opposition has today is a renewed glimmer of hope with the reelection of Donald Trump as U.S. president. They feel something could happen once he takes office in January, from the Ortega regime splitting internally to its being overthrown from outside, though even these vague sensations mirror their discord and political immaturity.
The only recent challenge to Ortega was in the statement emitted by the general secretariat of the Organization of American States “rejecting and repudiating” his constitutional reforms.
I would urge those who know in their hearts that Nicaragua will pull through, because its destiny is to be free, to read Darío’s famous 1907 poem, “Poema del retorno” (“Return Poem”) — and never lose hope of an end to the nightmare of this most dogged of Latin American dictatorships.
