By David Morera Herrera – Leader of the PRT of Costa Rica
On February 9, the Ortega-Murillo capitalist dictatorship surprisingly removed 222 political prisoners from the El Chipote prison to send them unexpectedly to the United States in a special plane at the expense of the U.S. government. This was a carefully calculated operation negotiated in advance with U.S. imperialism and the European Union, particularly in the latter case with the Spanish government. Daniel Ortega is lying when he denies that there was a negotiation: there is plenty of evidence to conclude that his argument that it was an outlandish idea of his wife and vice-president Rosario Murillo is absurd. Beyond speculation, what is certain is that both the dictatorship and the imperialist Biden and his European partners are seeking to profit from this measure, as we shall see.
This does not at all prevent us from celebrating the freedom that so many of those released from prison now enjoy, which has been received with joy by their families and the Nicaraguan community opposed to the dictatorship, in its broad political and ideological spectrum. We are glad that the released prisoners are no longer rotting in Ortega-Murillo’s dungeons, with permanent danger to their physical and mental integrity. Undoubtedly this is a democratic triumph, a triumph of the most elementary human rights. But it is important to unveil the context and background of the event, in order to interpret its scope and meaning.
US/European Union negotiations with Ortega-Murillo
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, immediately welcomed the release of the 222 people and stressed that the event “is the product of concerted US diplomacy.” He expressed that this is a constructive step to address human rights abuses in Nicaragua, while the plane with the released prisoners arrived in Washington DC. He said that among those released are political and business leaders, journalists, civil society representatives and students, to whom the United States “facilitated their safe transportation” to Dulles International Airport and is “providing them with medical and legal support”. State Department spokesperson Ned Price later told reporters in Washington that the Nicaraguan government identified 224 people to be sent on the plane, but that two of them refused, without mentioning them. Price pointed out that the 222 who arrived at Dulles were accommodated in hotels and other places and are under the responsibility of U.S. authorities.
He further stressed that the release was “a step in the right direction for the people of Nicaragua” and that the United States hopes “it is a harbinger of additional steps to come”.
On the other hand, José Manuel Albares, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, the following day, February 10, affirmed that the Government of Spain is offering nationality to the 222 political prisoners released and expatriated by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The statements were made by the Spanish Minister to the media Servimedia, where he assured that Spain is pleased with the release of the 222 Nicaraguans and congratulated the decision of their liberation.
“The Government offers Spanish nationality to these 222 released prisoners, in view of the news that the process to declare them stateless has begun”, announced the Spanish minister and added that the process is immediate and Spain would be contacting the Nicaraguan expatriates. The diplomat added that his country is willing to receive the rest of the political prisoners that still remain in the different prisons of Nicaragua”. We are also offering Spain to take in any other prisoners who are still in the same situation as those who have just been released,” said Albares.
It is absolutely clear from these statements of well-known representatives of U.S. and Spanish imperialism that there is a willingness to negotiate with the dictatorship. Let us also analyze what the dictatorship is pursuing.
Liberation with loss of nationality: bitter-sweet.
The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is clever. It has a long history of survival, adaptation and negotiation. It is enough to recall, among other facts: the gruesome pact it had in the past with the oligarchic faction of Arnoldo Alemán’s Liberal Party in order to monopolize and share all the spaces of political power, the approval of the neo-colonial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with North America and the subsequent servile agreements with the International Monetary Fund, to impose measures to cut social rights, as was precisely the case of the attack on pensions that detonated the massive mobilizations in 2018 against the dictatorship. Orteguismo reflects the upstart capitalists who enriched themselves hand over fist with the favor of the State disguised as “Sandinista”, such a bourgeois sector has no shame in negotiating with anyone for mere interests of private economic accumulation.
For this reason, the regime did not limit itself to freeing the prisoners, but proceeded, at the same time, to their immediate deportation to the United States and stripped the deportees of their nationality. Octavio Rothschuh, magistrate of the Court of Appeals of Managua, in a press conference, stated that the 222 people were deported under an order issued on Wednesday which declared the prisoners “traitors to the homeland, inciters to violence and terrorism”.
Meanwhile, the Parliament, on the same day, approved a law reform to withdraw the nationality of those released from prison. For the stripping of nationality, the parliament, tightly controlled by the dictatorship, modified the Constitution in a blink of an eye. That the deported deportees should be stripped of their nationality and citizenship and political rights in “perpetuity” is a poisoned political dart, which implicitly and symbolically (in agreement with the Biden administration) seeks to throw the opposition into the arms of US imperialism and establishes the commonplace of Ortega’s propaganda that all those who oppose his dictatorship are agents of imperialism, which, to support this narrative, has welcomed the exiles, which in turn makes the U.S. government pass itself off as a “champion of democracy”.
It is a double farce. In the first place, because despite Ortega’s denials, it offers a gesture of interest in negotiating the lifting of sanctions against his family and closest associates, in the midst of the economic recession and international isolation that Nicaragua is suffering. Likewise, Ortega-Murillo are getting rid of the burning problem of the political prisoners, but not without first hitting them politically with the loss of their nationality.
It is important to clarify that, unlike other countries subject to sanctions, the policy of US imperialism, before 2018, was complacent with the regime, and after the brutal repression of 2018, focused on pressuring the dictatorship, not with generalized sanctions against the Nicaraguan economy, but focused on the family and the most intimate circle of the Ortega-Murillo duo.
Of course, the United States does not have the slightest political authority to appear as the “savior of democracy”, at the same time that it supports the infamous dictatorship of Dina Boluarte in Peru, which is right now unleashing massacres against the mobilized people.
Although they are different processes, what is certain is that U.S. policy, both in Nicaragua and Peru, is marked by Biden’s turn in association with European imperialism, tending to recover the lost ground in our subcontinent, guaranteeing the exploitation/extraction of our rich resources to its large corporations, in the fierce competition and frictions that are increasingly acute with China and Russia.
Conclusions
Faced with the question of whether this is a popular triumph or a negotiating maneuver, we answer that in this episode there is a combination of both. It is a popular democratic triumph, but with important contradictions and limitations, determined by maneuvers and negotiations at the highest levels, giving priority to the political initiative that both the dictatorship and imperialism have today, in one case to defenestrate and in the other to appropriate this popular democratic triumph. This is so because the liberation is not the immediate fruit of the rise of popular mobilization, it does not happen in the heat of the moment, although in the long run it is a triumph of that long resistance and the battle for the freedom of the political prisoners, which we proudly promoted early on from the PRT in close collaboration with the International Socialist League (ISL), an organization which we have recently joined, and with whom we promoted in depth the international campaign for the freedom of the political prisoners and the caravan to Peñas Blancas last year.
That is why we do not hesitate to characterize there is an undeniable triumph of the popular resistance that rightly celebrates the liberation of the deportees. Being a contradictory phenomenon, then our duty is to fiercely dispute with imperialism and the opposing bourgeoisie this heroic struggle, and not simply step aside. Because only with a socialist, anti-imperialist, class independent perspective and program, should and can we take advantage of the democratic loopholes that have been torn out. However steep the road may be, it is a matter of promoting the reactivation of the workers’ and popular movement inside Nicaragua, strengthening its links with the exile and fortifying a solid revolutionary core, starting with our comrades of the ISL who make up the Anti-Capitalist Alternative of Nicaragua. We are fighting this battle side by side, day by day.