translated from Spanish: Greed, power and crimes of the Ortega-Murillos

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, as in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, represent the embodiment of ambition and the desire for unerated power, which leads them to commit all kinds of crimes and to betray friends and people to whom loyalty is owed.
In 1979, after 40 years of an opprobrious dictatorship, the Nicaraguan people ended the Somoza family dynasty. The Sandinista popular revolution opened a path of hope for Nicaragua, and became a benchmark for ending the opprobrious military dictatorships, which in those years oppressed the peoples of Latin America. Today, however, a new dynasty, of the Ortega-Murillo family, oppresses the Nicaraguan people.
The government’s carelessness in the face of the fire of April 3, 2018 in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve, produced an immense impact on the peasantry and the youth. Immediately after came the pension reform, demanded by the IMF to reduce the fiscal deficit, which increased the contributions of social security workers and employers, but reduced pensions for retirees.
Those two events were the spark that burns the prairie in Nicaragua, facts that bring to light an accumulated indignation about the abuses, corruption and arbitrariness of the Ortega-Murillo regime. It awakens the claim against the concentration of power in the hands of marriage, as well as the dynastic delegation of offices and businesses to their children, which is unbearable for ordinary people.
The discretionary power of the government had been strengthened by the servility of parliament, the judiciary and the electoral authorities. Ortega-Murillo had accumulated the full power of state institutions, placing his friends and sycophants in key positions, thus eliminating transparency in the management of the state. Among other things, this allowed for a constitutional reform that has secured Ortega perpetual re-election.
After a decade of authoritarianism, with intolerable grievances, a popular uprising is emerging only comparable to the heroic street struggles against Somocism. During the 2018 protests, police, led by Francisco Díaz, Ortega’s father-in-law, along with paramilitary gangs, killed 300 civilians, with thousands injured, disappeared and tortured. This was the response of the orteguista regime to the citizens’ demands against arbitrariness, theft and corruption.
More than a month of protests in 2018, with demands that grew beyond pension reform, demanded independent investigations into the crackdown, government accountability and the prosecution of those guilty of the murders. To this were added demands on the democratization of the country, the departure of Ortega and the advance of the elections. There were no government responses. On the contrary, the government has stepped up repressive activities.
For its part, the opposition has made a variety of efforts to face the presidential elections in November this year. However, the government has arrested the most prominent opponents, with crude charges of money laundering and treason. Interestingly, the accused and arrested are presidential candidates to whom were added former Sandinista guerrillas, who participated in the fight against Somoza and who today demand the democratization of the country.
In fact, the government is keeping four opposition presidential hopefuls under arrest: Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga, and Juan Sebastian Chamorro Garcia. They are joined by former Head of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) Jose Adan Aguerri (who was an ally of Ortega in his economic project), former Vice President Jose Pallais, and opposition leaders Violeta Granera, Tamara Davila, Ana Margarita Vigil, and Suyen Barahona.
The former revolutionary, turned dictator, imitating Stalin, also ordered in these days the arrest of three important Sandinista figures, and former comrades in arms, old fighters against the Somoza dictatorship: Dora María Téllez, Víctor Hugo Tinoco and Hugo Torres. All three represent the historic Sandinismo that fought hard against the Somocista dictatorship.
Torres was part of a guerrilla commando that in 1974 broke into the house of José María Castillo, Somoza’s prominent minister. There they captured several hostages and secured the release of dozens of Sandinista prisoners, including Daniel Ortega. Later, in mid-1978, Torres himself, along with Dora María Téllez (commander 2) participated in the assaultor the National Palace (seat of the Somocist Parliament), a coup of great national and international impact that initiates the collapse of the dictatorship.
Torres, Tinoco and Dora Maria were later undisputed leaders in the final offensive that destroys the Somoza dynasty. And, during the Sandinista government, Dora Maria was minister of health, Torres becomes the second chief of the Army and Tinoco becomes vice foreign minister of the Republic.
By arresting his former fellow fighters, Ortega thus reveals his hatred against all those who renounced the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and later became opponents of his regime. He thus represses his own comrades, just as Stalin did with the Bolshevik old guard.
What is curious, however, is that Ortega during his long years in office builds a solid alliance with the Higher Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), backed by the IMF and the World Bank. It also receives the approval of the United States, in exchange for the guarantee of strict control of drug trafficking, with an active presence of the DEA, in Nicaraguan territory.
Thus, the new “Sandinista” government with a clear turn to the right, favored the enrichment of the traditional oligarchy, but also that of a new bourgeoisie, the orteguista bourgeoisie.
The government’s understanding with national and foreign capital has had its most brutal expression in the concession of the construction of an interoceanic canal through Nicaraguan territory, in favor of an adventurer of Chinese nationality. This is a blatant surrender of national sovereignty, which gives continuity to mining, forestry and fishing concessions, managed directly by the Ortega Murillo family and their relatives, and which have provoked the repeated rejection of peasants and environmentalists. Fortunately, that project could not be realized in the end.
On the other hand, it must be recognized that, thanks to economic growth and social welfare policies, Nicaragua has made progress in reducing poverty. Venezuelan aid was useful for this purpose, with money that never passed through the nation’s budget and that was handled directly by the presidential couple and their close associates. But in addition, part of those funds served to multiply the business of the presidential family, including the purchase of television channels, managed by Ortega’s sons.
Under the conditions described, it was easy for Ortega to be re-elected in 2011 and then in 2016, and thanks to a constitutional reform, to begin a third term; this time accompanied in the vice presidency by Rosario Murillo. All opposition efforts to build a democratic alternative have been crushed by Ortega and his partners in the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, with the support of the institutions they monopolize.
Former commander Hugo Torres sums up well the nature of orteguismo, comparing it with somocismo,
“The similarities between the current government of Daniel Ortega and the fabric that the Somocista dictatorship managed to assemble gives chills. Daniel Ortega has appropriated the party of the revolution, the Sandinista Front. He has distorted it and turned it into his party, a family party.”
In short, Ortega privatized the FSLN and the state, turning them into instruments at the service of his family and close associates. All state institutions – the judiciary, the electoral branch, the prosecutor’s office, the comptroller’s office, the human rights procurator’s office – are subordinate to its control.
In the eighties, the FSLN had not only succeeded in overthrowing the dictatorship but also in defending revolution, negotiating peace and ensuring democratic alternation. It was an unprecedented political process. This consecrated him a massive international support from governments of various political persuasions and from citizens of different countries who came to Nicaragua to support the revolution.
Today, Ortega’s FSLN, and his government, are a disgrace. They dishonor Sandino’s memory. The turn to the economic and cultural right, nepotism, corruption and, now, the mass murders of defenseless citizens and the repression of opposition political forces have erased in one fell swoop the reference that the Latin American left had in Sandinismo.
Ortega bases his support on repression, because he has lost all legitimacy. Most of the historical commanders are no longer with him, nor are former Vice President Sergio Ramirez. Businessmen, the Church and the Americans themselves, who had been their main source of support, have switched to the opposition. They have realized that the citizenry massively rejects the dictatorship and that it is immense cost to continue supporting Ortega.
For Chileans, the tragic events taking place in Nicaragua are particularly painful.
Our relationship with Nicaragua has a long history. Rubén Darío, the father of modernism, writes his first book, Azul, in Chile, supported by president Balmaceda’s son. Gabriela Mistral, our distinguished poet, is committed to the anti-imperialist struggle of General Sandino, who appoints her as the standard-bearer of the Army defending national sovereignty.
Finally, it is impossible to forget the role played by Chilean revolutionaries in the triumph of July 19, 1979. Especially on the Southern Front, the military presence of our compatriots was decisive in the defeat of the Somocist Guard. So was the role of many Chileans in the reconstruction of nicaraguan new institutions and in the defense against US aggression.
The transformative and democratic hopes that the entire world once counted on Nicaragua have been dashed by the shameful Ortega-Murillo government. However, the courage of the Nicaraguan people, together with decent Sandinismo, will send the current dynasty to the dustbin of history as they once did with Somoza. The unbridled ambition and passion for the power of the Ortega-Murillo marriage, as in the Tragedy of Macbeth, have an end date.

The content of this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish