On the International Day of Memory, Truth and Justice, we raise our voice for Nicaragua to affirm an undeniable truth: there can be no peace without memory, there can be no transition without justice and there can be no democracy without truth, and none of this will be sustainable in time without guarantees of Non-Repetition.
By Alternativa Anticapitalista
Memory is not a symbolic act or a date on the calendar. Memory is a right of the people; it is a tool against imposed oblivion, against the manipulation of history and against the impunity of the executioners. In Nicaragua, the capitalist-Stalinist dictatorship of the Ortega-Murillo family governs on the basis of political terror, in order to apply IMF measures and sustain their business with the local and transnational bourgeoisies. They have persecuted, kidnapped, exiled, denationalized, assassinated, while trying to erase the traces of their crimes, extend impunity and ensure continuity in power. On the opposite side of the street, against the dictatorship, young people, women, indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants, sex-diverse dissidents, many of them from the peasant movement and workers who with dignified rage have mobilized and organized tenderness: solidarity networks, care and blockades that paralyzed the country in self-defense. That is why today we say clearly: without memory there is no possible future.
Facing Tragedy and Farce in Nicaragua: Historical Memory
This dictatorship does not emerge from nothing. It is built on the betrayal of the legacy of insurrectionary and revolutionary struggles, of pacts between elites and opportunist politicians. Just as military dictatorships of the 1960s throughout our Abya Yala imposed by the United States and its “national interests” used the anti-communist banner as state doctrine to execute capitalist terror. Today the Ortega-Murillo regime raises the rhetorical “anti-imperialism” as an alibi to cover up its alliance with the same economic powers it claims to fight, executing a model of clientelist and neoliberal accumulation, and thus justifying the repression of the people who oppose its policies.
To recover the memory is also to unmask those who repeat the methods of repression, censorship, disarticulation; those who, from the false left, repeat the policies of the enemy they claim to have defeated or want to defeat. There is no popular cause possible if the people are betrayed.
Political subject of memory
We recognize the fundamental role of mothers, who in Nicaragua, as in all of Latin America, have been the moral and political support of memory. They do not give up, nor sell out: they cry, search, name, resist and fight.
The construction of memory demands a collective political subject. It is not about a transition agreed among elites, the same elites that sustained this regime as far as they wanted, but about the independent articulation of those from below: workers, neighborhoods, indigenous and Afro-descendant territories that are still defending their territories, peasant cooperatives, the feminist and LGBTIQ+ movement. This articulation is the material basis of a new society. Because the memory we want is not only the memory of the crimes against humanity committed by the Ortega-Murillo and Somoza, but the collective organization so that power, finally, is in the hands of those who sustain life.
We also claim the construction of a huge social and community network to reconstruct the truth, where victims, exile, journalism, forensic science, academia, activism, art and social organizations are articulated. Memory is not decreed: it is built collectively.
Let us build historical memory for non-repetition and a socialist horizon.
We demand the dismantling of the repressive apparatus, the dismantling of the paramilitary and para-police structures. A formal transition is not enough if the machinery of terror remains intact.
We firmly say: No impunity. Trial and punishment of criminals against humanity. Justice must be comprehensive, an Independent Multidisciplinary Investigation Commission must be set up to bring to light the crimes of the dictatorship, with independent courts, international mechanisms when the State is complicit or incapable, full reparation for the victims and real guarantees of non-repetition. Without justice there is no memory that is not an open wound; without reparation there is no future that is not a foretold repetition.
Memory in Nicaragua is linked to social, peasant, feminist, LBTIQ+, student and environmental struggles. Because repression has also been against territories, dissident bodies and forms of community life, and not only against those who denounce. There is no democratic justice without social justice and sovereignty for those who sustain life. Our memory is popular, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, because it rises up against all forms of domination and foreign interventionism.
Memory and truth are also sovereignty. Sovereignty to decide on our natural assets, today handed over to family businesses and transnationals complicit with the regime. Non-repetition will not be possible as long as the economic structures administered by the dictatorship remain intact. Because the power of the regime is not only repressive, it is also patrimonial, clientelist and extractive. Therefore, the justice we demand is also economic: against dispossession, against the plundering of common goods and for a radical democratization of land, energy and water.
We propose the broadest unity of action in the streets and on an international scale. To dislodge the regime beyond an “institutional cleansing”, we propose the need for a constituent, free, democratic, sovereign and plurinational process for the people to decide how to reorganize Nicaragua on new economic, social and political bases. For us, we are on the road to a plurinational socialism, with real democracy and a Latin Americanist and internationalist perspective.
Today we reaffirm a historic commitment, which is, at the same time, our program of socialist struggle:
Memory, so that pain may be the organized engine that overcomes the imposed oblivion.
Truth, to dismantle the regime’s lie with the force of facts.
Justice, to put an end to impunity, punishing the perpetrators of crimes against humanity within and outside our borders.
Non-repetition, which will only be possible with the transition to a free, sovereign, democratic and plurinational constituent process that reorganizes Nicaragua on new bases, building a new power of the workers and the people, profoundly democratic, anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist and socialist.
For our dead, who demand coherence from us; for the mothers who resist with dignity; for the political hostages; for the youth, who fight and are the rebellious present; for the exile, who is an active memory, does not forgive and does not forget; and for a free Nicaragua that we will build from its popular entrails.
MEMORY, TRUTH, JUSTICE AND NON-REPETITION
