The situation in the country is going through a conjuncture of a new repressive offensive by the dictatorship. Once again, there is a jump in the number of people imprisoned for political reasons. The phenomenon of exile and remittances. Ortega-Murillo’s double discourse. The need to resume the international initiative.
Anti-capitalist Alternative (ISL – Nicaragua)
Nicaragua is going through an acute contradiction: a political tyranny was consolidated and except for episodes of isolated, very localized resistance, there is a general reflux in the population after the post-April 2018 defeat. The dictatorship did not hesitate since then: it suppressed all democratic rights in the country, dismantled the network of groups, social human rights organizations, feminists, peasants, students and all kinds that articulated committed activism in a transversal way. Thousands of legal entities suppressed, expropriation of headquarters, expatriation of referents and persecution of leadership. We must add the annulment of all free and independent press, with dozens of journalists and young researchers in forced exile.
The latest escalation has been on private universities, and especially the cancellation of the Jesuit-run UCA, with imprisonment for young student leaders and economic sanction measures, rounded off a new phase of internal repression.
Ortega and Murillo, supported by the repressive force monopoly, by the dismantling of all internal opposition with the capacity for mobilization, have been achieving the objective of handcuffing the people of Nica town and in any case, as Humberto Ortega, brother of the ruling tyrant, explained, preparing the conditions for a transition agreed with sectors of the business opposition now in exile, in conditions of maintaining business and impunity for the crimes committed. The figure of “reconciliation and national dialogue” reappears in this strategy. Logically, the deterioration of the social and economic situation, the tensions within the ruling clan and eventually, the multiplication of “lightning” actions (of which we know there were some specific expressions), will set the pace of the internal situation of the country.
The politics of exodus, the remittance business and doublespeak
According to a report from the Central Bank of Nicaragua, until last May, remittances from the United States were growing at more than 80% annually. 75% of the dollars that came in through family remittances in 2022 originated in the United States, followed by Costa Rica and Spain. This is a decisive flow for the structure of Ortega-Murillo’s capitalist economic model: during 2022, income from family remittances reached a total of 3,224 million dollars. Therefore, the apparent paradox is expressed that the tyranny that deploys a supposedly anti-imperialist discourse, on the other hand, has one of its main economic supports in these turns from the outside. In fact, it is estimated that, at the end of this year, family remittances are projected to increase by 5 billion dollars. This means that the economic dependence on remittances will be greater than 30% of GDP, and one million unique households will receive money from the US.
It should also be added that exports to the United States represent 35% of the country’s GDP, being half of the free zone, of 130 companies, 34 American and more than 40 of Nicaraguan capital.
A pincer combination, and functional for both poles of the relationship:
*Gringo imperialism, with its companies in the free zone under the maquila format, super-exploits the workforce of this country in Nicaraguan territory. And at the same time, with the migrant population in the US, the workforce is super-exploited in precarious conditions, forcing the people themselves to tighten their belts, to enable the sending of remittances so that those who migrate can support their desperate families in Nicaragua, although with increasing difficulty.
*Tyranny, for its part, promotes an exile that clears the path of any protest or potential social reaction, and at the same time, it receives an economic income that compensates for the matrix of subordinate, decadent and impoverishing capitalism of its people (but not of its official bourgeois class, which parasitizes enormous businesses from the State, starting with the Ortega-Murillo clan).
In short: overacting anti-imperialism, and parallel businesses for the dictatorship. Story about “democracy and human rights” from the White House, which in the end maintains a status quo that allows it to do business, which is what matters to them, ultimately.
The Monteverde platform: what opposition is needed?
The panorama of social withdrawal in the interior of the country has its other side in the different sectors’ activities of the opposition in exile. The latest liberation, including expatriation, of 222 political prisoners several months ago, reactivated a crucial debate: what opposition is needed to confront the dictatorship?
In this context, the “unity” axis in the face of evident fragmentation and repeated failures, above all, of the opposition more closely linked to a business faction and with organic ties to the White House, revived the confluence of the so-called “Monteverde Group.” In that space, some of the main leaders coexist which promoted in the context of the April 2018 rebellion the policy of “national dialogue”, which divided the street mobilization, deactivated part of the barriers that had cornered the dictatorship and gave in to a cunning maneuver that Ortega-Murillo used to repress consistent activism and unleash large-scale repression.
These same leaders later trusted in a call for elections under fraudulent conditions and with prisoners in the dungeons of tyranny, and also generated a false expectation, which led to subsequent frustration at the prohibition of all opposition candidates by the regime.
So, what we have once again, with the “Monteverde” initiative (a name that alludes to the hotel in Costa Rica, where they met for the first time) is a very heterogeneous convergence of political-business, farmers and social leadership, even of leaders of the Unamos party which is made up of former Sandinista leaders, who contribute to a policy that has already failed: unity for unity’s sake, without a program and strategy of international and national mobilization to harass, corner tyrants and encourage popular morality in Nicaragua by betting to the reaction of people with a long revolutionary tradition. The unity that is required is for mobilization independent of all interference from imperialist powers, and a clear program, demanding freedom for all prisoners, and a call to action by the Nica people to definitively throw out this pro-capitalist, repressor and executioner tyranny of its own people.
Take back the initiative: the example of the International Commission
A little over a year ago, from the International Socialist League, together with the Articulation of Social Movements, the PRT of Costa Rica, family groups of prisoners, persecuted people, and other Latin American leftist organizations, we carried out the initiative of the “International Commission for the life and freedom of political prisoners in Nicaragua.” That campaign, which included a caravan to the border with Nicaragua from Costa Rica, in defiance of the dictatorship, with the demand to enter the country to certify the conditions of imprisoned people’s confinement, had a wide regional impact, and collaborated with the pressure that finally caused the regime to release political prisoners. This bold action, with a campaign that gathered support among some sectors of the anti-capitalist and socialist left, critical of the Ortega tyranny, is the type of initiative that militant internationalism has the obligation to resume and sustain, to be consistent with the fair struggle of a people who do everything to fight, but have their hands tied.
On the occasion of this intervention, unfortunately, sectors of the world left abstained from participating actively, others did so weakly, and the so-called Latin American progressivism, directly, chose to ignore a unitary democratic orientation, although with the delimitation of any imperialist camp. It’s time to get back on track. To resume the initiative. There is no room to be indifferent because Nicaragua, its fighting people now hostage, needs us.
