Nicaragua

On February 9th the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega released 222 political prisoners, put them on a plane, and had the United States fly them into exile to Washington DC. At the same time, the Nicaraguan government stripped them of their citizenship and left them stateless.

On the same day, Bishop Rolando Álvarez was handed a 26-year jail sentence after refusing to leave the country with the released prisoners underscoring the perception that the Ortega dictatorship is radicalizing rather than softening.

Most of these political prisoners had been held since before the 2021 elections and most were opposition leaders, intellectuals, and dissidents who had dared challenge Ortega. He ruled Nicaragua with an iron fist from the Sandinista Revolution in 1979 until the election of 1990, when he gave in to international pressure to hold a free and fair election. This after the Soviet Union revised its support for revolutionary movements.

He then remained on the political sidelines until 2007 when he was re-elected. He quickly moved to consolidate his hold on power through an alliance with former President Arnoldo Aleman, who had been imprisoned for 20 years for corruption. In exchange for Ortega’s having the Supreme Court revoke the verdict, Aleman had his own party in Congress align itself with Ortega to govern with little official opposition.

By 2014, Ortega’s Sandinista Party held 64 out of 100 seats on Congress. That year Congress rescinded presidential term limits and Ortega has ruled since with his wife Rosario Murillo serving as Vice-President and heiress apparent.

The Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) stated that the right to a nationality cannot be revoked. Arbitrary deprivation of citizenship, particularly as a politically motivated punishment, is a violation of international human rights law. It is also worth stressing that since 2013, Nicaragua has been a party to the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.

Thus, while the release of these prisoners held illegally for a number of years was welcomed by the international community, the deprivation of their nationality goes against international law. 

Why did Ortega choose to release the prisoners? 

Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Washington Post that Nicaragua was coming under growing pressure not only from the United States but from Latin American countries to release the prisoners. For the Nicaraguan government, Freeman said, “this is mostly about buying some breathing room internationally.”

According to The Dialogue, A Washington based think tank, the leftist governments of Chile, Colombia, and Argentina, in addition to the center-right governments of Ecuador and Uruguay, condemned with varying emphasis and demanded the cessation of political persecution. Added to this was former leftist Uruguayan President José ‘Pepe’ Mujica, who declared that Ortega ‘got out of hand a while ago.’ 

So, what may the future hold? 

The United States has unsuccessfully tried to dislodge Cuba’s communist dictatorship from power since 1960. It has done no better in trying to remove the Chavistas from power in Venezuela since 2000.

A number of Latin America’s democracies support the Nicaraguan regime because the specter of intervention remains anathema to them. The same goes for Cuba and Venezuela. 

And not only are these countries opening to Russia and China. Iran continues to project itself militarily in the hemisphere, with its naval vessels docking in Brazil and Venezuela, and in the case of Venezuela, offloading military supplies and engaging in petroleum deals to help them both circumvent US sanctions.

According to The New York Times, on the occasion of the visit to Nicaragua of Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in February of this year said, “We are countries with sister revolutions that defend our right to choose our own path to development and prosperity,” He also noted that, in the past year, “we had important Iranian delegations here in our country and we also had Nicaraguan delegations visit Iran.”

Nicaragua appears destined to remain on its course until Ortega and his wife pass into history or new democratic opposition leaders emerge and can freely challenge the current system. 

This not much of a consolation for those seeking democracy in the hemisphere’s second poorest country, nor for those who aspire to create a united democratic hemisphere out of a currently deeply divided one.

[email protected]

Keep reading: The Trump Legacy

Edition: Estefanía Cardeña