Nicaragua: Open letter to the dictatorship

43 years after the revolution of the Nicaraguan people

Open Letter to the Ortega-Murillo Dictatorship

We accuse you

For reasons regarding our conscience and heart, we have a historic and present commitment to the people of Nicaragua. Its extraordinary revolution took place 43 years ago and moved and awaited an entire continent, then crossed by murderous dictatorships. A small country for its geography, giant for its epic people. For Sandino. For the once upon a time rebels of Monimbó and Masaya. For the blockades of 2018. For the universities occupied with dignity. For Carazo and its courageous people. For the Mothers of the Victims of April. For the prisoners who suffer medieval tortures today. For the peasant movement, the anti-canal movement. For the exile in defenselessness and poverty. For the silent rebellion of thousands, who process indignation in the confinement imposed by the Police State and dream of new uprisings, a new July and April. New windows of opportunity for another Nicaragua: without enriched elites, nor paid informers, nor executioners of the people, nor interested interference (be it Chinese or gringos, or whoever). For another Nicaragua of those from below, of those who have always sacrificed the dead, the prisoners, their hands in labor, their body in producing all the wealth, always kidnapped, in the end, by minorities. For all that, we ACCUSE you, today July 19, when surely the overly pretended acts of regimented mobilization, will put you again in the center of the scene of the officialist media of Nicaragua, appealing to the memory of a revolution that you buried.

We accuse you, usurper couple, of imposing a dictatorship that represses, persecutes, kills and spies, in defense of their own impunity and, above all, of millionaire businesses (and business deals).

We accuse you, Ortega-Murillo of identity trafficking, traffickers of proud flags now corrupted to cover up a criminal regime: you are neither leftists, nor anti-imperialists, nor socialists. You are the enriched bourgeoisie, you are a decadent sultanate that, without the monopoly of arms, is nothing.

We accuse you of having transformed a beautiful revolution of the people, of the forgotten people, of the dreaming youth, into a nightmare with more murders than under Somocismo, with the same matrix of economic surrender, of appropriation of what belongs to all. You are the executioners of your own people. And there’s no turning back. That is something you must pay for.

We even accuse you of wanting to muzzle poetry, the memory of Ernesto Cardenal and prohibit festivals, as if you could prevent or eradicate the verses, the songs and the freedom to create beauty. You do not understand a thing.

We accuse you in the name of a Latin American and internationalist left, the one who does not stand up for you, that does not mince words to denounce you. We challenge you, we swear with all that exile that resists, that we are going to do our utmost to make you leave and to bring down on you and your complicit environment, the full weight of Memory, Truth and Justice.

We accuse you of crimes against humanity and although there is a part of the international community that is complacent and lukewarm, we are going to judge you. Soon. Because you, like all dictatorships, in your confinement far from reality, believe yourselves to be eternal. But you will fall. Because Latin America has already learned how to get rid of genocides. It has already learned how not to trip over the same stone twice.

The size of the pain you are causing will be directly proportional to the justice that the people will impose on you. Not as resentful revenge, but as a legitimate comeback of history. Those millions who are crouched waiting for the moment deserve so.

Neither leftists, nor anti-imperialists, nor socialists: drop your masks of identity usurpation.

You are a business dictatorship, you are enriched bourgeoisie, you are criminals ensuring your own impunity.

The world will know the whole truth of what you want to cover up. We are part of a proud and valid left, that never remains silent. Socialists for a Nicaragua, a Central America and a world without exploitation or oppression, without artificial borders, with real and full democracy, for the majorities who live by our own efforts, without privileges. We socialists are not afraid of you, nor of imperialism or the bourgeoisie of any region.

And for this July 19, our active desire, within our bodies, is for the dictators to leave, long live the revolutionary, dignified and standing people of Nicaragua that resists.

Mariano Rosa and Luciana Echevarría

Coordinator and parliamentary spokesperson of the International Commission for the Life and Freedom of Political Prisoners in Nicaragua.

International Socialist League (ISL)

Latin America, July 19, 2022