On March 2, the group of specialists appointed by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN) to investigate the violations in Nicaragua denounced the regime of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo for crimes against humanity. .
By: Fabio Bosco
Since the peaceful protests against the pension reform in April 2018, more than 350 protesters have been killed by police and paramilitary forces. Additionally, 317 political dissidents had their nationality revoked, including 222 political prisoners who were expelled from the country on February 7. The report also denounces arbitrary prisons and torture. Among the expelled dissidents is the legendary Sandinista commander Dora María Téllez, immortalized in Gabriel García Márquez’s Time.news – “Assalto ao Palácio” – written in 1978.
The following day, 54 member countries of the UN Human Rights Council endorsed the complaints, but Brazil remained on the side of the Nicaraguan dictatorship and limited itself to announcing that it could receive Nicaraguan dissidents who had been deprived of their nationality.
A long history of repression
Repression against dissidents is part of the Sandinista tradition. After seizing power on July 19, 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front tried to establish national reconstruction juntas with bourgeois sectors, disarm the population, and form a regular army and police.
In the midst of this process, on August 14, 1979, the Sandinista government arrested and deported 70 members of the Simón Bolívar Brigade who had fought against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza and were dedicated to organizing independent unions.
But the most visible traces of the repression occurred after the return to power of Daniel Ortega in 2006. Before being elected, Ortega supported the total ban on abortion in the country. In 2008 he rigged the municipal elections and harshly repressed the protests in Managua and León. In 2013 he reformed the electoral law allowing unlimited re-election and establishing his control over the Supreme Electoral Council.
In 2014, he crushed peasant protests against the expropriation of their lands for the construction of an interoceanic canal. In 2018, she suppressed protests against the pension reform. In 2020, he imposed exceptional laws that allow any citizen who publicly criticizes his government to be detained for “treason against the homeland.” In 2021 he arrested seven opposition candidates in the face of imminent electoral defeat for his unpopular government.
Capitalism and poverty: while the country sinks into misery, the Sandinistas get rich
Nicaragua has 6 million inhabitants, 40% peasants. Most live in poverty. But the country has more millionaires than Costa Rica. This situation has deepened during the 16 years of the Ortega-Murillo government.
In 2006, the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) entered into force, and with it increased foreign investment that will control the country’s wealth.
In addition, the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, established annual investments of US$600 million. These investments guaranteed an average annual growth of 4% of GDP until 2018, when the economy entered a recession.
Economic growth makes some assistance programs possible, which ensured the popularity of the government until 2018, but mainly strengthens the new Sandinista bourgeoisie, made up of Sandinista leaders who appropriate public assets and concessions, among which the Ortega family stands out, owner of 22 capitalist enterprises, in particular the television network. This new capitalist class is allied with the old, corrupt and right-wing capitalist class to run the country.
Rhetoric: Ortega and the farce of anti-imperialism
Relations with the United States are marked by verbal darts and much economic and political collaboration.
The Ortega-Murillo government maintains CAFTA, which mainly benefits US capitalists. About 60% of Nicaragua’s exports go to the United States.
In addition, the Nicaraguan Army maintains an excellent relationship with the Southern Command of the United States Armed Forces. There are also agreements with the DEA (US drug enforcement agency) regarding the “war on drugs.”
Finally, the Ortega-Murillo government is dedicated to turning Nicaragua into a retaining wall for land migration to the United States.
In the relationship with the United States, these actions speak louder than the anti-imperialist repertoire.
Dictatorships: Lula’s support for the Nicaraguan dictatorship goes against the grain of the struggle of the Brazilian people
The position of the Lula government to stay on the side of the Nicaraguan dictatorship abandons the defense of democratic freedoms that have been important in the recent history of Brazil.
Brazil lived under a civil-military dictatorship between 1964 and 1984. During this period, the dictatorship murdered around 10,000 people, including left-wing activists in the cities, peasants, rural workers, and indigenous peoples. In the hardest period, the neighboring countries and the United States supported the dictatorship and remained silent about the crimes against humanity committed in Brazil. But there were European or leftist governments that opposed the atrocities, and in that way they were an important point of support for the working class and the Brazilian left.
Unfortunately, Lula, himself a victim of the infamous National Security Law (LSN), forgets about that experience and turns his back on the Nicaraguan people to support a dictatorship that is his ally.
If this strategy prevails, all those exploited and oppressed by regimes allied to Lula, such as those in Cuba (where there are more than 700 political prisoners), Venezuela, Russia (which has already killed 100,000 Ukrainians in the last year), China (which repressed the protests in Hong Kong and arrests the Uyghur people in concentration camps in Xinjiang), North Korea, will not have the support of the Brazilian government, but they will be able to count on the solidarity of all of us who have not abandoned the fight for freedoms democracies nor do we renounce the fight for socialism and the world revolution.
Nicaragua and the LIT: the Simón Bolívar Brigade in the Revolution
The Nicaraguan revolution played a very important role in the founding of the International League of Workers – Fourth International (LIT-CI), which integrates the PSTU of Brazil.
In 1979, Trotskyists led by Nahuel Moreno formed the Simón Bolívar Brigade to fight in Nicaragua against the Somoza dictatorship. The brigade left Colombia and went on to fight on the Southern Front, from Costa Rica.
His main event was the capture of Bluefields, the main port city on the Atlantic coast. Three combatants were killed and several were wounded.
After the fall of Somoza, the brigadistas formed a government without capitalists in Bluefields, contrary to the orientation of the Sandinistas, and organized 90 unions in the capital that represented some 20,000 workers.
For this reason, 70 foreign members of the brigade were detained, deported to Panama, tortured by the local government, and expelled to their countries.
The leaders of the Fourth International (Unified Secretariat), based in Paris and headed by Ernest Mandel, supported the Sandinista repression. Two years later, Mandel declared that the Sandinistas were more democratic than the Bolsheviks.
This support for the repression led the Trotskyists headed by Nahuel Moreno, then the main current in Latin America, to break with the Mandelists and found in 1982 the International League of Workers – Fourth International (LIT-FI).
Article published in www.pstu.org.br, 3/15/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.