The liberation of political prisoners this June 11 in Nicaragua was a victory of the Nicaraguan people inside and outside the country who have pressured the government. Relatives, friends, neighbours and comrades massively took over the streets to receive their brothers and sisters. This image of the liberated prisoners is the proof that the dictatorship did not win and there are reserves in the new generation of activists. 40 years since the revolution of 1979, the challenges for the Nicaraguan people.
Despite the constant police and paramilitary repression, Brandon Lovo and Glen Slate led a march on the Caribbean Coast to embrace Jeffrey “El Nene”; the entire city of Masaya mobilized to receive Yubrark Suazo, who thanked people by dancing for hours to the sound of marimba. Amaya Coppens, Bayron Estrada, Nahiroby Olivas, Dilon, Lucia, Miguel, Olesia and the others that were released that day were able to laugh and hug their loved ones. This victory also happened thanks to the efforts of refugees all over the world. The permanent campaign we carried out last year, the exiled Nicaraguan students, the activists of the MST, the Anticapitalist Network and now the International Socialist League, also paid off. Thanks to the constant work denouncing the crimes of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, mobilizing to the Nicaraguan embassy in Argentina to demand the release of every political prisoner, the talks, visits to universities and the honest commitment of each activist to the Nicaraguan cause, today we see the achievements of internationalist work.
However, there are still over 89 people kidnapped by the dictatorship; and the Civic Alliance, the Apostolic Nuncio of the Pope, and Rosadilla, as delegate of the OAS itself, take responsibility for this. That is why we must continue fighting, because we still have many tasks left to completely free the political prisoners held by the dictatorship and retake the path of the demands of the Nicaraguan people.
Big business aims to demobilize and take over the leadership
The policy of the “dialogue” derailed the people’s uprising and saved Orteguism in 2018. Since then, after the initial confusion passed, it is clear for a great part of the active youth that the dialogue of the capitalist leaders and the clergy, that coexisted and shared businesses with the regime for years, is a farce. The great majorities, those who never governed, must decide, to as to put the social movements and territorial organizations in the spotlight again, for working people to decide over their own future. We must condemn how the self proclaimed “representatives” of the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy legitimize the political game imposed by the regime and its objective of retaining a greater piece of the “new Nicaragua”, of Orteguism without Ortega, but with his accomplices in big business.
This is how the Civic Alliance consolidates itself as the vehicle of the capitalists to the presidential chair; we denounce how they refused to declare themselves in fiscal disobedience the last year and continued paying taxes to the regime, tax contributions that feed the repressive machine and state terrorism. The Civic Alliance, the Church (as an institution) and the “international community” want to deviate the accumulated social energy toward the electoral field. They call us to trust in the businessmen as a “democratic” political option so in the end nothing structurally changes in our country.
Retaking the road of mobilization, promoting an alternative solution
We are convinced that it was the mobilized and autonomous Nicaragua without bosses or opportunists that managed to destabilize the regime. But only an organized Nicaragua will root it out. We must build an organization to promote and orientate the social mobilization and retake the power on the streets. An organization that does not limit itself to partially denounce the traitorous leaderships and that breaks with the current social atomization to once again become a single fist, striking together like in April 2018. However, the enemies of the social majorities, the workers, the youth and the rural people are not only in the government. Those are the main and immediate enemies, but the business opposition to Orteguism is not an alternative, but a tramp and a farce. That is why our proposal to the generation that shares the revolutionary dream of a Nicaragua for those from below, not for the capitalists and repressors, we must discuss our roadmap:
· Real University Autonomy, without the invention of business and a government of the students, teachers and workers.
· Secular state. Separation of State and Church.
· Liberation of political prisoners. Trial and punishment of the regime´s repressors and murderers. Publication of regime files. Dismantling of the repression apparatus.
· Decriminalization of therapeutic abortion.
· Universal and quality education at all levels.
· Public health care for all.
· State owned public services under social control.
· Full employment and a minimum wage equals to the cost of the basic basket.
· Land for those who work it, not for corporations, transnationals or mining companies.
· No privileges for politicians and public workers, salaries equal to that of any skilled worker; with recallable mandates and the obligation with their families of using the public system (education, health, transport), because if they want to govern they must live like us.
· Breaking with the IMF to have real independence and sovereignty to freely execute our self-determination. As well as the auditing of the external debt contracted by the Nicaraguan leadership.
· Down with the dictatorship of Ortega-Murillo. For a free, sovereign and democratic Constituent Assembly to reorganize the country on new economic and social bases with a different political model.
We must fight for
everything. It is Ortega-Murillo, the “opposition” businessmen, the clergy, the
international organisms. In the end: it is the entire system and its gears.
None of it represents us. We do not want to maintain nor reform what brought us
to this situation. Everything that is not useful must end up in the trash. Let
us build a political tool without individualism, that transcends the electoral
field and battles on every terrain, that is profoundly anti-capitalist and
internationalist. The Nicaraguan activists of the
MST and the International Socialist League are on that path.
Elmer Rosales and Ariana McGuire
Exiled Nicaraguan students and members of the MST and the ILS