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BACK IN THE 1980s thousands of Irish people backed the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua – when they overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza.
I took part in fundraising and awareness-raising activities here in Ireland and in 1988, I was one of more than 150 Irish people who travelled to Nicaragua to support the Sandinistas, as part of the Solidarity Brigades, sometimes known as the coffee brigades.
We went to lend a hand to local farmers by picking coffee as well as to offer friendship and support to the local people.
At that time the gains of the revolution, chiefly universal literacy, land reform and wide access to education and healthcare, had vastly improved the lives of the poor people in Nicaragua.
But a US-backed war against the Sandinista government had led to compulsory military service, which was increasingly unpopular. I witnessed many reluctant men being driven to the front, many of whom came back maimed or in coffins.
The US economic embargo caused shortages and hardship and had led to cuts in essential services. The people were tired.
Daniel Ortega was a leader of that revolution and the president – he still heads the Sandinista National Liberation Front to this day. But that organisation has changed beyond anything we could have imagined in the 1980s.
The rot started in 1990 when leading party figures plundered state resources for personal gain before handing over power after losing an election.
Then during the nineties, Ortega moved to eradicate democracy within the party and entered into political pacts with right-wing parties aimed at carving up power.
As a result, many members left his party, including the majority of the commanders who had helped to bring about the defeat of Somoza. Along with the former Sandinista Vice-President, they established an alternative – the Movement for Sandinista Renewal (MRS).
Control
When Ortega regained the presidency in 2007 a friend of mine who was a member of MRS said to me: “He will come after us all.” How right she was.
Ortega has amassed huge personal wealth based on control of the energy and telecommunications industry, as well as privatising the support offered to the country by Venezuela.
He has managed to control the four pillars of democracy: the judiciary, which he uses to punish critics; the electoral commission, which he has used to run fraudulent elections; the parliament, which obediently passes laws that promote his interests and bans any party that might compete with his ruling FSLN party.
He controls the executive through his wife, who is the vice-president and he has changed the constitution to allow himself to stay in power permanently.
The human rights record of his government has been very poor, with Amnesty International documenting appalling prison conditions and attacks on peaceful protesters.
A 15-year old boy that I know was tortured in prison in 2016.
Ortega has satisfied all the conditions to secure loans from the IMF. He forged alliances with big business and has silenced all voices not controlled by his party except for a few small media outlets that are under constant attack.
But he has also carried out some social programmes that proved popular. His iron control of the country has also meant that the drug traffickers and gangs, that have terrorised the population of neighbouring countries, have not succeeded in achieving a strong foothold in Nicaragua.
These factors may help to explain why the population was fairly acquiescent during many flagrant electoral frauds, cases of corruption, police and army violence and non-stop propaganda from the government – but on 18 April 2018 that changed when peaceful protests took place.
Peaceful protests
Ortega’s implementation of an IMF-recommended reform of the social security system served as the trigger for the current protests, which were led by university students.
However, it was not so much the proposed changes that led to widespread anger but the suspicion that the social security fund had been looted by a member of Ortega’s family.
Other contributing factors were government inaction in the face of a massive wildfire in an important ecological reserve, and a threat by the vice-president (Ortega’s wife) to ‘regulate’ social media.
The peaceful demonstrations of April 18 were fired on by police.
Over five days of protests 30 people were killed.
Arising from these killings, a wide opposition coalition was formed, consisting of students, civil society, the women’s movement and employers, now demanding the exit of Ortega and his government. As the protests spread, the death toll has mounted. Government-backed forces have opened fire on peaceful protestors.
Police, backed by government-supported gangs, roam the streets at night, killing, injuring and kidnapping people thought to be engaged in the protests.
The death toll is in the hundreds – the dead are mostly young men and students, but also include women, children and babies. Thousands more have been seriously injured.
There have also been many arrests, with 600 people still detained while 300 others have been charged with serious offences, including terrorism. Many released prisoners have been tortured and the ‘disappeared’ whose bodies have been found at the side of the road also show evidence of torture.
In recent months Ortega has waged war against the independent media with many journalists in jail or forced into exile.
He has been criticised by human rights bodies, including Amnesty International, the Organisation of American States and the UN High Commission on Human Rights – which has been expelled from the country because of their negative findings against the government.
The UN Security Council and the Organisation of American States have both attempted to intercede with Ortega to stop the repression, to no avail.
Alleged conspiracy
The government alleges that the uprising is ‘coup-mongering’. The product, variously, of a conspiracy by the US, the Catholic Church, ‘satanic forces’ or the narcos and gangs.
However, the head of the Supreme Court, Rafael Solis, the man who previously masterminded all of Ortega’s manoeuvres to gain complete control of the country, resigned his post in January and his party membership.
Solis said that there is no coup and that the political prisoners are innocent peaceful protesters. He said that the long sentences being handed down to protestors for ‘terrorism’ are being dictated by Ortega.
The reality is that 80% of the population now oppose Ortega, that is according to a recent survey by transparency organisation Etica y Transparencia.
There have been pleas for restraint by the international community and from many international left-wing figures, including Noam Chomsky.
A surprising enemy
It is estimated that Ortega’s apparatus consists of approximately 1,000 people, many with so much corruption and violence to their name that they will fight to the end to protect the regime.
This is not a war, but a massacre by a criminal regime against an unarmed population that wish to have a say in how their country is run.
The UN estimates that up to 50,000 people have gone into exile in neighbouring Costa Rica, among them Carlos Mejia Godoy, the troubadour whose emblematic songs accompanied the struggle against Somoza, and the entire staff of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, all threatened with death for their defence of the unarmed protesters.
Others, particularly campesinos (small farmers) young people and students, are in hiding from the state in safe houses or in the jungle. Many of those who have been affected by the violence were supporters of Ortega prior to the events of 18 April 2018.
The message for Irish people who supported the Nicaraguans in the 1980s in their struggle for social justice, and who identified with the Sandinista cause, is that the majority of Sandinistas now support the protest movement, not Ortega’s government.
It is estimated that 70% of the political prisoners have Sandinista origins.
My Nicaraguan friends are afraid to leave the house. The generation that fought with Ortega against Somoza feels guilty that they were outwitted by him, resulting in so much suffering for their children.
The Nicaraguan people continue to struggle for democracy, justice and fairness – only this time against a surprising enemy.
They deserve our solidarity today just as they did in the past.
Molly O’Duffy is a former Solidarity Brigade member and a member of the Latin America Solidarity Centre in Dublin.
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The problem Ms. O’Duffy is that the communist paradise does not exist. Ortega was a communist then and it is a communist now. The Sandinista movement was communist then and communist now. They want to bring the economic plan of Venezuela which is hunger and poverty. Stop blaming the USA, blame communism and economic plans that are destined to fail. The reason Ortega is jailing his former colleagues is the typical communist way of dealing with rivals, nothing new.
Nicaraguan people do not want to live in your communist paradise. Please read Animal Farm and leave them alone.
@Jo Buckley: Had the original Sandinistas been left alone they probably would have made a success of it. But as the US and their local allies couldn’t allow what Oxfam at the time called ‘the threat of a good example’ the new left-wing govt(containin 3 priests) had to be brought down. A country had overthrown a vicious dictator and tried to bring in enlightened reforms, managed huge improvements for workers and peasants. As a shining beacon for how to change from a feudal society of aristocrats and serfs to a more modern European left-wing approach it could not be permitted to be a success by many vested interests, hence the CIA-created Contras carrying out attacks that were condemned around the world. The sad truths of those times are not erased by current corruption of Ortega.
@Squiddley Diddley: Not to mention the blockade of course, which had the effect of pushing the country towards the Eastern bloc.
@Jo Buckley: Please read any other book by Orwell and realise that he was a radical socialist.
@Kieran Duffy:
Ha Ha Ha! Orwell was a radical socialist until he saw it in real life. His last two major novels were Animal Farm and 1984. Perfect examples of the horror of radical socialism which is the same as communism which equals poverty and lack of freedom.
You cannot name a single communist regime that had been successful in a century of radical socialism. Not a single one!
Not a single place were you, cosy Irish citizen will dare to live and bring your family, because you know you will condemn them to a future of poverty and oppression. And if you choose to live there is because you are one of the pigs of the Animal Farm and you enjoy the spoils of the oppressor.
But you radical socialist hypocrites want that for the poor Nicaraguans or Venezuelans or Cubans, shame on you!
Of course you always can blame the imperialism of the USA. That is the mantra all you believe. It would be a joke but it is not, communism has been the reason of millions of deaths over the last 100 years, way worse than nazism (and this was as perverse as it can be).
@Jo Buckley: Show us a right-wing dictatorship that doesn’t result in poverty and oppression. That’s what causes revolutions in case you hadn’t noticed.
@Jo Buckley: Orwell became a more radical socialist after he fought on the socialist side in the Spanish Civil War. Have you read “Homage to Catalonia?” Or any of his essays? In “Why I Write” he mentions that everything he wrote after his time his Spain was “against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.”
@Jo Buckley: there was always going to be one eejit to completely misunderstand the situation and go straight to blame an ideology and not the actions of people: state players but most importantly US players.
@Squiddley Diddley: right wing dictatorships that do not result in poverty and oppression:
1- Spain
2- South Korea
3- Portugal
The three are now democracies and rich countries for international standards.
Compare them with your favourite countries where the socialist democracy flourish:
1- North Korea
2- Venezuela
3- Nicaragua
4- Cuba
All truly shi-tholes in the pursuing of a socialist utopia.
Dictators are a disgrace right or left. What is unbearable is the sanctimonious posing of the left while they exonerate the murderous regimes of their side.
@Jo Buckley: no doubt she’s moving to Venezuela
Want to know what’s going on in Nicaragua, a country targeted by the US for regime change? Read Max Blumenthal
Shocking stuff
@John: pretty typical of Latin America though
@Thomas Harrington: pretty typical of the US to be involved to further their own interests at the expense of human rights
@Noirin Kavanagh: Judging by the author, the US are not the only ones with a history of unhelpful meddling.
@Noirin Kavanagh: pretty typical of how socialism works/doesn’t work , once the pigs get their feet under the table at Jones farm it all goes to pot
@Fergus Sheahan: Have you seen how right-wing dictators work? No matter who replaced them setting up an alternative with popular ownership of previously looted assets would seem like socialism even if Fine Gael did it.
@Fergus Sheahan: you’re saying that every time a country has an opportunity to create and maintain a fair and equal society for all its citizens it will inevitably fall to corruption and greed? Without any outside interference? How about we give it a try? After all, what is there to lose? Look where neoliberalism has brought the world and all its inhabitants…..
Irish people need read or re-read ‘Animal Farm’ methinks!
@Michael Kavanagh: You do realise that Animal Farm was written by a commited socialist, who was criticising Stalinism in the book and not left-wing politics in general?
I think the one thing we can agree on here is that any country that interferes in another’s is not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts but because of their own self interest. The one constant here is that US interference in Latin America has ruined millions of live.
Look up the term banana republic and see where it came from and how the interests of a US corporation United Fruit Company was put ahead of the people in the country to self determination.
Imaging in 1922 when we became a free state and then we wanted to do something that benefited Ireland. France wasn’t happy so they instigated a coup to oust the government or killed De Valera because they saw him as a threat. That’s what the US has been doing in Latin America.
Really Molly?
“I would be overwhelmed by their testimony. This woman, Karla Teresa Torres, I met, who does community policing—She’s an anti-narcotics cop who works with at-risk youth in a city called Jinotepe. Her husband on his day off—he was a cop—on his day off he was kidnapped and burned alive at a roadblock on camera. A local Catholic priest gave verbal assent to the torture and burning alive of this person. He was dragged from a truck and then burned alive on camera. He was filmed in order to spread fear among Sandinistas. But I mean, this was just one of so many people that I met that it’s hard to even keep track of their names.”
-Max Blumenthal
US journalist
—And we Irish badly need to learn that a Left wing or Communist dictator is EVERY BIT AS BAD AS A RIGHT WING ONE even though they always claim the high moral ground!
@John Mc Donagh: isn’t that always the problem with these support groups, they are populated by ideologists, taking pride in their taught academic prowess and spouting about their theories of social reform.
Yet when it comes to recognizing the dictatorship potential of the regimes that they help to establish , they are as thick as planks.
Or maybe they don’t care past the victory march and getting their back slaps.
But real life fairytales don’t have final chapters, they go on and on ever after, but not necessarily happily.
@Sega Yolo: I think the article is proving the exact opposite.
@Squiddley Diddley: no squiddley, it goes to show that you have to be very careful who you support. Being from the same end of the political spectrum is not enough. The history of revolution is plain to see, those that revolve around personality cults or fundamentalist concepts always end up in dictatorship. Outside supporters should never invest in these as vehicles for change, only in the establishment of strong constitutional systems. The author and her friends backed the wrong horse.
@Sega Yolo: The article is showing the author to be very aware of what has gone wrong and her change of mind regarding support for Ortega, the opposite attitude to what you were claiming. Initial support for the Sandinistas was widespread given the unwarranted interference by the Reagan administration, and international solidarity was backing the people of Nicaragua and their attempt at rebuilding a fair society (with constitutional systems), not idolatry of Ortega. The author and her friends backed the good guys. Ortega and some of his colleagues screwed the country over later, not the fault of those who cared for the people, and still care.
@Squiddley Diddley: But I agree you have to be careful about who you support.
@Squiddley Diddley: I don’t pretend to know the internal politics of the Sandinista movement at that time. However, I am aware that these kids embarked on supporting the overall goals of the movement. My point is that, being from outside of the group think and supposedly educated they should be in a position to spot these characters, they are present in every movement. They may not have realized the amount of weight they actually carry coming in from abroad, by adding advice about how to safe guard against hijacking and cult formation, they would have been a more effective contributor in the long term.
@Sega Yolo: You have come along way from your “think as planks” comment.
I was in Nicaragua a couple of years ago before the government crackdown, wonderful country with wonderful people and a true revolutionary spirit. Doesn’t seem to be much difference between the Somoza dynasty and now the Ortega-Murrillo dynasty – perhaps the kleptocracy is not as blatant.
Interesting though that some solidarity groups and the individuals involved are happy to condemn Ortega and will happily vilify his response to protests, however when it comes to Maduro and Venezuela they are happy to support Maduro and his bunch of narcotrafficantes while they kill hundreds, imprison hundreds and lock up opposition protestors and ban them from political life. They are cut from the same cloth in my opinion, however it might be more convenient to cover ones eyes and ears regarding Maduro.
@greg merrin: you might be leaving the bit out where one was elected and the other wasn’t.
BLUMENTHAL: It sounds like I’m making it up except he’s been tried, and he has confessed to being involved in arming the opposition. They started arming up with homemade mortars, but there were rifles brought to campus. He ran a kind of operations room on the third floor of UPOLI. Felix Maradiaga, who is now in the U.S. and who just held a seminar at the Aspen Institute alongside David Brooks on moral leadership—This is crazy. [He] is the main channel for National Endowment for Democracy money to Nicaragua—He was at UPOLI and was heavily involved in taking what was initially a student protest and turning it into a violent rebellion.
Yawn. We live in Ireland. I would rather focus on myself and my family
@Finbarr Dowling: so wtf are you doing reading about American interference in Nicaragua?
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely – with more than a little help from calculating US foreign policy.
You were a Commie stooge in the ’80, I guess you are still one now.
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