tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/daniel-ortega-53012/articlesDaniel Ortega – The Conversation2024-01-18T13:27:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210762024-01-18T13:27:58Z2024-01-18T13:27:58ZNicaragua released imprisoned priests, but repression is unlikely to relent – and the Catholic Church remains a target<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569921/original/file-20240117-20-1jrits.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C1%2C1017%2C656&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A priest and Catholic worshippers pray in front of an image of 'Sangre de Cristo,' burned in a fire on July 2020, at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Managua.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/priest-and-catholic-faithful-pray-in-front-of-an-image-of-news-photo/1242786617?adppopup=true">Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bad news has been the norm for Catholics in Nicaragua, where clergy and church groups have been frequent targets of a wide-ranging crackdown for years. But on Jan. 14, 2024, they received a happy surprise: The government unexpectedly released two bishops, 15 priests and two seminary students from prison and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/14/nicaragua-bishop-rolando-alvarez/">expelled them</a> to the Vatican.</p>
<p>Those released included <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/rolando-alvarez">Bishop Rolando Álvarez</a>, a high-profile political prisoner who was detained in 2022 for criticizing the government and then sentenced to 26 years in prison for <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/nicaraguan-bishop-rolando-alvarez-receives-26-year-sentence/">alleged treason</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/dictatorship-banishes-monsignor-rolando-alvarez-and-18-other-religious-political-prisoners-to-the-vatican/">They also included</a> priests <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-arrests-four-more-priests-intensifies-crackdown-catholic-church-2023-12-30/">detained by</a> President Daniel Ortega’s government in late December 2023 <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2024-01/priest-arrested-in-nicaragua-following-mass-on-new-year-s-eve.html">for expressing solidarity</a> with Álvarez and other political prisoners. Days later, Pope Francis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/world/europe/nicaragua-pope-francis-church.html">criticized the regime</a> in his New Year’s message and then <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/pope-francis-reiterates-concerns-about-crisis-in-nicaragua/">called for</a> “respectful diplomatic dialogue.”</p>
<p>Nearly six years after <a href="https://infobuero-nicaragua.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PUBLICADO-200908.-FUNIDES.-Nicaragua-en-movimiento-2016-2020-SEI_2020_01-2.pdf">mass protests erupted</a> against Ortega and then were brutally repressed, these prisoner releases offer some hope to Nicaragua’s opposition. As <a href="https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/kai-m-thaler">my research</a> <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003197614-16/nicaragua-rachel-schwartz-kai-thaler">has shown</a>, however, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IICx95ZZzKjfHqiU-oVEityK70vwBv5f/view?usp=sharing">the Ortega regime is unrelenting</a> in trying to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0023">retain power</a>, which suggests this is not necessarily a turning point. In fact, the government reportedly <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-secuestra-al-sacerdote-ezequiel-buenfil-tras-el-destierro-de-19-religiosos/">took yet another priest into custody</a> on Jan. 16.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several rows of people seated in church pews, all looking ahead." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Nicaraguans attend mass in San Juan de Oriente on June 24, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-a-mass-during-celebrations-in-honour-of-san-news-photo/1259026822?adppopup=true">Stringer/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Why target the church?</h2>
<p>Ortega first led Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, after his left-wing revolutionary organization, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, spearheaded the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In the 1980s, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.16993/ibero.38">FSLN clashed with the Vatican</a> and church hierarchy over the group’s socialist politics, even as many <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3712105">poorer Nicaraguan Catholics embraced them</a>.</p>
<p>When Ortega took office again in 2007, however, he did so <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575">with the blessing of Christian leaders</a>. During the 2006 elections, he had turned to <a href="https://doi.org/10.16993/ibero.38">alliances with Catholic</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-017-0005-6">Protestant elites</a> to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2017.0032">return to power</a> in exchange for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X08326020">adopting</a> conservative social policies like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61545-2">banning abortion</a>.</p>
<p>Over the next decade, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16281740895086">Ortega remained popular</a>, presiding over economic growth in collaboration <a href="https://doi.org/10.15517/aeca.v43i0.31556">with business leaders</a> and developing new public infrastructure and services.</p>
<p>Yet he and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2010.00099.x">FSLN party he controlled</a> were also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2019.64">consolidating power</a> and <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/regimen-de-ortega-una-nueva-dictadura-familiar-en-el-continente/oclc/967515148">governing in an increasingly authoritarian</a> manner. Ortega won <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/americas/nicaragua_2011_report_post.pdf">reelection in 2011</a> and then retained power in <a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2017.0032">fraudulent elections</a> in 2016. Opposition candidates were disqualified, and Ortega’s running mate was his wife, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/world/americas/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-house-of-cards.html">Rosario Murillo</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3917/pal.112.0083">Unexpectedly</a>, Ortega’s popularity and his relationship with the church came crashing down in April 2018, when the government announced cutbacks in social security benefits for retirees. Nicaraguans from <a href="https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16281740895086">all backgrounds</a> <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7549585">took to the streets</a>, and Ortega and Murillo responded with a <a href="https://gieinicaragua.org/#section04">furious crackdown</a>, unleashing police and pro-government paramilitaries <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/9213/2018/en/">armed with military-grade weapons</a>.</p>
<p>Cathedrals and churches <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/bishops-journalists-attacked-church-nicaragua">tried to</a> <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/41597a7a2b9356e668ff2b579dc7cb1d/1">offer refuge</a> to protesters, but <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2021/302.asp">over 300 people were killed</a>. Church leaders facilitated a national dialogue between the government and an opposition coalition, <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/nicaraguan-bishops-end-role-mediators-national-dialogue">but withdrew</a> as <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/nicaragua-aumenta-la-violencia-y-la-represion-estatal-a-pesar-de-los-multiples-esfuerzos-de-dialogo/">repression continued</a>.</p>
<p>When popular Catholic leaders <a href="http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/38768/">criticized violence</a> against protesters, the regime began viewing the church <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/world/americas/nicaragua-protests-catholic-church.html">as a rival</a> threatening Ortega’s waning legitimacy. Police, paramilitaries and FSLN supporters started <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-23/exiles-arrests-and-740-attacks-nicaragua-redoubles-its-persecution-of-the-catholic-church.html">harassing and attacking</a> clergy and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-religion-arson-rosario-murillo-latin-america-82bb721aa3ec25e4af34a26e75568599">Catholic institutions</a>.</p>
<p>In 2019, the pope <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-9016f14a1a9b476ab5cb1d61397fc273">recalled Silvio Báez</a>, the auxiliary bishop of Managua and a prominent critic of Ortega, from Nicaragua. Yet other bishops and priests still found themselves <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/nicaraguan-president-daniel-ortega-goes-catholic-church-latest-effort-rcna44618">in the regime’s crosshairs</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people in baseball hats hold posters with pictures of a man in clerical robes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Nicaraguan citizens in Costa Rica demonstrate in front of the Nicaraguan Embassy in August 2022 to protest the detention of Bishop Rolando Alvarez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nicaraguan-citizens-hold-a-demonstration-in-front-of-the-news-photo/1242597067?adppopup=true">Oscar Navarrete/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Some <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nicaragua-catholic-priests-exile-ortega-f5ae508a4295f7ae5b359f96064eea46">fled into exile</a> or were blocked <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/sacerdote-desterrado-silencio-de-los-obispos-no-ha-detenido-la-persecucion/">from entering</a> Nicaragua if they traveled abroad. Others who stayed were kept under surveillance. Priests who expressed support for political prisoners or continued to criticize the regime, even in vague terms, could be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/catholic-clergy-report-surveillance-beatings-amid-nicaraguas-crackdown-2023-07-07/">arrested or beaten</a>. </p>
<p>The government expelled 12 formerly detained priests to the Vatican <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-sends-catholic-priests-rome-after-talks-with-vatican-2023-10-19/">in October 2023</a> after what the regime called “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-sends-catholic-priests-rome-after-talks-with-vatican-2023-10-19/">fruitful conversations</a>.” But Álvarez, the highest-profile political prisoner, was still held by the government and was stripped of his citizenship after <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-caribbean-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-c7930c6340472867148ca7e79e09f1eb">refusing to go into exile</a> in February 2023.</p>
<h2>Broader patterns of repression</h2>
<p>Attacks on the church <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/10/nicaragua-crackdown-religious-actors-further-imperils-return-democracy">are a symptom</a> of the Ortega regime’s absolute intolerance for dissent.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/nicaragua">over 3,000 nongovernmental organizations</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-has-kicked-out-hundreds-of-ngos-even-cracking-down-on-catholic-groups-like-nuns-from-mother-teresas-order-190222">shut down</a> since 2018, the church has become Nicaragua’s only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/world/americas/nicaragua-catholic-church-daniel-ortega.html">major nonstate institution</a> with nationwide reach. </p>
<p>In a country where <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/Nicaragua/#report-toc__section-1">over 40% of the people</a> identify as Catholic, many normally turn to the church in times <a href="https://popolna.org/realidades-municipales-presentadas-en-informe-de-red-local/">of need</a>. Suppressing Catholic institutions means Nicaraguans must turn to the state for aid, which <a href="https://www.divergentes.com/nicaragua-un-espia-en-cada-esquina/">monitors citizens</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2013.10">has been accused of denying</a> services for perceived disloyalty.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/universidad-de-jesuitas-en-nicaragua-suspende-operaciones-tras-ser-acusada-de-ser-un-centro-de-terrorismo-/7227873.html">At least 27</a> Catholic and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/09/group-experts-nicaragua-finds-escalating-persecution-against-dissent-and-crackdown?sub-site=HRC">secular universities</a> have also <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/17/nicaragua-seizes-catholic-university-accused-of-being-centre-of-terrorism">been closed or seized</a> by the government, as have <a href="https://latamjournalismreview.org/news/daniel-ortegas-war-against-journalism-54-media-outlets-have-been-shut-down/">more than 50</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-shuts-catholic-radio-stations-led-by-bishop-critical-regime-2022-08-02/">media outlets</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="T-shirts with pictures of a man in a blue jacket making a 'V' sign with his fingers, and shirts that say 'FSLN,' hang on display outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">T-shirts depicting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for sale in Managua in July 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/shirts-depicting-nicaraguan-president-daniel-ortega-are-news-photo/1539099812?adppopup=true">Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The government’s decision to expel clergy on Jan. 14 is also in line with its tendency to either <a href="https://www.articulo66.com/2022/09/29/estos-son-los-nicaraguenses-desterrados-por-el-regimen-ortega-murillo-en-lo-que-va-de-2022/">block opponents’ reentry</a> into Nicaragua or force them <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/husband-and-son-of-former-miss-nicaragua-director-expelled-and-banished/">into exile</a>. In many cases, Nicaragua has then revoked critics’ citizenship, as when it expelled 222 political prisoners <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/nicaragua-frees-222-political-prisoners-flies-to-us">in February 2023</a> to the United States.</p>
<p>When imprisonment or threats have not shaken critics’ resolve, Ortega and Murillo appear to have decided that <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/nicaraguas-political-repression-will-continue-despite-prisoner-release">keeping them abroad is best</a>. Not only does this reduce the risks of anti-regime action in Nicaragua, but it may diminish international scrutiny of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/10/government-critics-languish-nicaraguan-prisons">political prisoners’ mistreatment</a>.</p>
<h2>Cautious criticism</h2>
<p>Since 2018, repression in Nicaragua has come in waves, with the brutal violence that repressed the protests shifting toward <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/nicaragua">an environment</a> of <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/five-years-of-police-state-in-nicaragua-ban-on-assembly-protests-free-speech-and-elections/">constant surveillance</a>, legal actions against independent institutions and opponents, and periodic arrests. Moments of seeming calm, however, have often been followed by <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/4631/2021/en/">harsh crackdowns</a>, such as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/20/nicaragua-trumped-charges-against-critics">a slew of arrests</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0023">ahead of the 2021 elections</a>.</p>
<p>Even as repression has mounted, the Vatican has <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/pope-worried-about-nicaraguan-bishop-s-prison-sentence-/6959873.html">been cautious</a> about criticizing Ortega and Murillo, and some Nicaraguans and <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/why-is-pope-francis-quiet-about-nicaragua">Catholics abroad</a> <a href="https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2022/08/nicaraguan-ngos-urge-pope-francis-to-speak-out-on-oppression">have urged the pope to do more</a>. Yet the Vatican’s restraint has not appeared to decrease <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/ortega-represses-151-priests-and-nuns-imprisonment-banishment-and-exile/">threats against clergy</a> or limits on activities <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-police-ban-catholic-procession-church-crackdown-2022-08-12/">like religious processions</a>.</p>
<p>In January 2024, however, Francis pointedly <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/pope-francis-reiterates-concerns-about-crisis-in-nicaragua/">called attention to the crisis</a> during two speeches, days after <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-arrests-four-more-priests-intensifies-crackdown-catholic-church-2023-12-30/">a dozen priests</a> were arrested. One week later came the release of Álvarez and his colleagues – free to leave Nicaragua, but not to come back. </p>
<p>Catholic leaders remain Nicaragua’s <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/obispos-alvarez-brenes-y-baez-con-mas-alta-opinion-favorable-en-nicaragua/">most popular figures</a>, according to independent polling. This makes them a continued threat to Ortega and Murillo’s quest for <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/ortega-a-nicas-en-redes-sociales-si-publican-contra-mi-van-presos/">total control</a>. Ezequiel Buenfil Batún, the priest detained Jan. 16, belonged to a religious order <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-secuestra-al-sacerdote-ezequiel-buenfil-tras-el-destierro-de-19-religiosos/">whose legal status was revoked</a> that same day, along with several other nongovernment organizations.</p>
<p>As many Nicaraguans <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/luis-haug-nicaraguans-feel-they-are-hitting-rock-bottom/">lose hope</a> of conditions improving and dozens of political prisoners <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-mantiene-tortura-a-presos-politicos-que-realizaron-huelga-de-hambre-en-la-modelo/">remain jailed</a>, any positive news like the priests’ release is welcome. But it holds no guarantees of broader change ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kai M. Thaler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When President Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006, church figures supported him. Violent repression after the 2018 protests has soured the relationship and made clergy targets for intimidation.Kai M. Thaler, Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002402023-02-24T13:12:56Z2023-02-24T13:12:56ZI assisted Carter’s work encouraging democracy – and saw how his experience, persistence and engineer’s mindset helped build a freer Latin America over decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511514/original/file-20230221-28-xfcklt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2048%2C1272&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jimmy Carter answered reporters' election-monitoring questions in Caracas, Venezuela, May 29, 2004. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-answers-questions-during-a-news-photo/481972699?adppopup=true">Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter founded the nonprofit <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/">Carter Center</a> in 1982, one of their goals was to help Latin American countries – many of which were emerging from decades of military dictatorship – transition to democracies.</p>
<p>Already a hero to many in the region for promoting human rights and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/pmextra/dec99/14/panama.htm">giving up U.S. control of the Panama Canal</a> during his presidency, Carter pioneered the center’s international election monitoring and conflict mediation with the work he did in Latin America.</p>
<p>I was on staff of The Carter Center from 1987 to 2015, first as a senior adviser and then as <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/current_qa/jennifer_mccoy_aug2005.html">director of its Americas Program</a>. In those roles, I worked closely with him, often accompanying the former president on trips to Latin America, where he tried to strengthen democracies and achieve peace.</p>
<p>I saw a man with great determination and self-discipline, driven by his faith and confidence that he could make a difference. He was always willing to take risks to tackle seemingly intractable problems.</p>
<p>The Jimmy Carter I remember was results-oriented rather than process-driven. He brought an engineer’s mind to every problem and was ready with possible solutions. He could be stubborn. But he was always willing to make principled decisions, even if they cost him politically.</p>
<p>For example, when – as president in 1977 – he signed the <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/the-panama-canal-treaties-jimmy-carter">Panama Canal Treaties</a> to turn over control of the canal to Panama by 1999, he was heavily criticized by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/08/18/house-opponents-mount-attack-on-panama-treaties/bd42bdad-62e6-4b82-a737-b52bc3845bdf/">many members of Congress</a>. But with the treaties, Carter ended an arrangement that, from 1903, had allowed the U.S. to control the canal and was viewed as colonialism by many Latin Americans.</p>
<p>Since taking over the canal, Panama <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/an-expanded-panama-canal-opens-for-giant-ships/2016/06/26/11a93574-37d1-11e6-af02-1df55f0c77ff_story.html">has expanded its capacity</a>. </p>
<h2>Democracy first</h2>
<p>Carter always believed that negotiation was more fruitful than force. As president, he leaned into this philosophy with the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2151620">Israeli-Egyptian peace accords</a> and did the same thing to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/166260">help Haiti reestablish democracy</a> as leader of The Carter Center.</p>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter greets Haitian presidential candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the eve of the Haitian presidential elections in 1990. Carter led an international team of observers that monitored the election process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-greets-haitian-news-photo/481997355?phrase=jimmy%20carter%20in%20haiti&adppopup=true">Thony Belizaire/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In 1994, the U.S. was set to invade Haiti on a <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/haiti">United Nations-approved mission</a> to reinstall the country’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Carter had monitored voting there in 1990, when Haitians elected Aristide. The Haitian leader was ousted in a military coup soon after, though.</p>
<p>When Carter informed President Bill Clinton that Haitian military general <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc218.html">Raoul Cedras had asked for Carter’s help</a> in mediating the crisis and avoiding a U.S. invasion, Clinton allowed for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to seek a solution.</p>
<p>Carter led a team, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, to Haiti on a very short timeline <a href="https://greensboro.com/carter-hailed-for-peace-intervention/article_77ed2622-c529-554b-b352-4d814b8ea07c.html">to negotiate a peaceful end</a> to the situation. With the U.S. forces already en route, the men managed to persuade the generals to accept amnesty and exile to avoid a potentially deadly U.S. invasion. </p>
<h2>The Carter art of mediation</h2>
<p>In my view, Carter’s genius as a mediator is his belief that there is some innate goodness in every person, no matter the harm they may perpetrate. He strove to develop a connection with even the most detestable dictators because he knew their decisions could change the future of a society. Once he had a relationship with those leaders, he presented them with the hard choices they needed to make. And he always kept his compass. He focused on the well-being of the people in the countries he was helping, not his personal successes or failures.</p>
<p>His approach opened him to criticism that he <a href="https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19940926&slug=1932656">cozied up to dictators</a>. But, to me, he just exercised realism and persistence. </p>
<p>The Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, came to power during the Carter presidency, when a broad coalition overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza. </p>
<p>The Reagan administration responded to Ortega’s Sandinista government by imposing an <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993096">economic embargo and supporting a counterinsurgency</a> from rebel forces known as the Contras. President Ortega needed help to end that conflict and believed that he could gain international legitimacy and pressure the U.S. to change its policy if he held internationally monitored elections. So, Ortega invited The Carter Center, the U.N. and the Organization of American States to mount an <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1153.pdf">unprecedented election-monitoring mission</a> that ended up terminating the Sandinista revolution.</p>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter and Jennifer Lynn McCoy, to his left, speak with members of the signature’s checking board, May 29, 2004, in Caracas. Carter served as an observer as Venezuelans sought a referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-speaks-with-members-of-the-news-photo/50909679?adppopup=true">Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>I was The Carter Center’s field representative in Managua at the time. The former president had developed his relationship with Ortega over the course of five trips to Nicaragua during the election campaign in 1989 to 1990, mediating disputes along the way. But election night was the most important moment. The initial vote count reports mysteriously stopped, and around midnight Carter went to see Ortega, along with the U.N. and OAS representatives. Carter told him that our data indicated the Sandinista-backed candidate had lost and that Ortega should acknowledge the loss and take credit for the democratic elections and everything the Sandinista revolution had accomplished.</p>
<p>Ortega acceded and the next day we accompanied him as he visited <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=k8hWsuZNb-YC&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&dq=violeta+chamorro+president&ots=_2eCRJqBxb&sig=QWqlOs-d8UVF2__KtvdwN0bXrXM#v=onepage&q=violeta%20chamorro%20president&f=false">President-elect Violeta Chamorro’s house</a> to congratulate her on her victory.</p>
<h2>He was persistent</h2>
<p>But Carter didn’t stop there, knowing the transition would be rocky. He gathered the two sides together in my little house in Managua and, sitting on rocking chairs on the patio, he negotiated a three-point agreement to frame the transition’s most difficult points – confiscated property and land reform, the integrity of the security forces and demobilization of the Contras. </p>
<p>Another time Carter’s persistence paid off was <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html">in Venezuela</a>. That country’s democracy became unmoored with plummeting oil prices and hyperinflation in the 1990s, and The Carter Center was <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-12-15-1998349030-story.html">invited to monitor the 1998 elections</a>, which populist outsider <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Venezuela/The-Hugo-Chavez-presidency">Hugo Chávez</a> won.</p>
<p>After a failed military coup attempted to oust him in 2002, a shaken Chávez asked Carter to mediate between him and his political opposition. We partnered with the U.N. and OAS to form a tripartite mediating group – the OAS secretary general, trusted by the opposition; Carter, trusted by Chávez; and the U.N. as a neutral party providing background support.</p>
<p>Although the opposition was initially skeptical of Carter, given that he was invited by Chávez, it came to value Carter’s entree with Chávez and held high expectations he could hold Chávez to any commitments.</p>
<p>When an eventual agreement led to a recall referendum petition process, Carter forcefully pushed a stalling Chávez and his team to acknowledge that the opposition had gathered sufficient signatures to hold the referendum to decide whether to end Chávez’s term early.</p>
<p>But when the vote finally happened in August 2004, Chávez had managed to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177518">turn the tide in his favor</a> in the opinion polls by spending on social programs. He won the vote decisively. The opposition alleged the vote count was fraudulent, while the <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html">OAS and The Carter Center audits of the count did not detect fraud</a>. I received many messages from irate Venezuelans blaming Carter and me for ignoring fraud and allowing Chávez to continue in power in Venezuela. </p>
<p>I learned then what a thick skin a public figure must have to withstand the fury of severely disappointed people.</p>
<p>I have always admired Carter for the countless controversial decisions he made over the years. And I believe he will be remembered for his vision of a free and peaceful world and his willingness to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems with high risk of failure.</p>
<p>His interventions at key moments helped save lives – and encouraged Latin American democracy, at least for a time. And his center’s ongoing, lower-profile programs that promote citizens’ <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/ati/index.html">rights to information</a>, <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/democracy/index.html">election integrity</a>, <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/health/index.html">mental and public health</a> and media freedom have made life better for people in many countries in the hemisphere.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A suited, smiling gray-haired man walks on stage, with his left hand raised high, as he waves to the audience before him. Behind him, a large video screen captures his actions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511515/original/file-20230221-16-cc5l3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former President Jimmy Carter takes the stage during the Democratic National Convention in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-u-s-president-jimmy-carter-walks-on-stage-during-day-news-photo/82547453?adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lynn McCoy is professor of political science at Georgia State University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was Associate Director and Senior Associate from 1987-1998 and Director of the Carter Center's Americas Program from 1998-2015.</span></em></p>A former staffer with The Carter Center saw how Jimmy Carter’s efforts to bring democracy to Latin America improved conditions, prevented bloodshed and saved lives.Jennifer Lynn McCoy, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1902222022-09-30T12:26:24Z2022-09-30T12:26:24ZNicaragua has kicked out hundreds of NGOs – even cracking down on Catholic groups like nuns from Mother Teresa’s order<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487153/original/file-20220928-24-dggq1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=143%2C83%2C3850%2C2287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nicaragua's lawmakers have closed NGOs in a string of decrees.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-nicaraguan-parliament-during-a-session-in-news-photo/1239277687">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many <a href="https://carnegieeurope.eu/2018/07/24/nature-of-democratic-backsliding-in-europe-pub-76868">countries around the world are becoming less democratic</a> as leaders in places such as <a href="https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2022/02/16/recent-downfall-of-democracy-in-nicaragua/">Nicaragua</a>, <a href="https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2022/03/07/what-happens-to-a-democracy-deferred-malis-delayed-democratic-elections/">Mali</a>, <a href="https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2022/04/20/viktor-orbans-hungary-a-democracy-backsliding/">Hungary</a> and <a href="https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2022/06/11/freedom-of-speech-and-media-in-bangladesh-the-exploitation-of-media-and-restriction-of-free-speech-as-a-tool-to-advance-electoral-autocracy-by-ezgi-nalci/">Bangladesh</a> seek to increase their power and diminish the ability of the courts, legislatures and independent institutions to constrain them.</p>
<p>It’s a process that scholars in political science refer to as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb2434">democratic backsliding</a>” or “<a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/719009">democratic erosion</a>.” We’ve been studying this situation in Nicaragua, and we see it as emblematic of the global trend.</p>
<p>Unlike <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/on-democratic-backsliding/">the regime changes of the 20th century</a>, in which dictatorships sprang up overnight after violent revolutions and military coups, today’s autocrats more subtly and gradually undermine the foundations of democracy. They rig the rules in their favor by weakening checks and balances in their nations and by engaging in manipulation that keeps them in power. </p>
<p>One method that today’s autocrats and the governments under their control are increasingly using to strengthen their grip on power is to crack down on nongovernmental organizations. They are branding these often foreign-funded groups, known as NGOs, as <a href="https://nonprofitrisk.org/resources/articles/foreign-agent-registration-funding-restrictions-for-ngos/">foreign agents</a>. Another tactic is to cast them – usually falsely – as <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Fact%20Sheet_0.pdf">money launderers and terrorists</a>.</p>
<p>All of these designations undermine the NGOs’ credibility and create a pretext for restricting their operations.</p>
<h2>Why NGOs are in the crosshairs</h2>
<p>It’s true that many powerful governments like the United States <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12041">fund NGOs</a>. Typically, this money pays for clearly beneficial work such as building roads, wells and schools or increasing access to health care.</p>
<p>Globally funded independent organizations, like the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/americas/nicaragua">Red Cross</a>, also fill these gaps and often rush in supplies and support after disasters strike. </p>
<p>However, many NGOs focus on assistance that buttresses democracy, by encouraging voting and other forms of civic engagement. And because of those efforts, they have <a href="https://nonprofitrisk.org/resources/articles/foreign-agent-registration-funding-restrictions-for-ngos/">become subjected to</a> tight government supervision and auditing. </p>
<p>This is especially happening in countries that are undergoing democratic backsliding, such as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/democratic-backsliding-in-poland-and-hungary/8B1C30919DC33C0BC2A66A26BFEE9553">Poland</a> and <a href="https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/62-special-issue/the-challenge-of-indias-democratic-backsliding/">India</a>.</p>
<p>Democratic backsliding is <a href="https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/nicaragua%E2%80%99s-democratic-backsliding">well underway in Nicaragua</a> under President Daniel Ortega’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nicaraguas-shift-towards-dictatorship-is-part-of-a-latin-american-backslide-11636476080">increasingly authoritarian leadership</a>. Especially in 2022, his government has been clamping down on NGOs and Catholic institutions.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman walks by a mural of a man holding his fist in the air" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487155/original/file-20220928-15-uzv3g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Ortega, who led Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, returned to power in 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-walks-past-a-mural-with-the-image-of-daniel-ortega-news-photo/1236426762?adppopup=true">Orlando Valenzuela/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stacking the deck in Nicaragua</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-former-revolutionary-daniel-ortega-now-resembles-the-dictator-he-helped-overthrow-171235">Ortega first rose to power</a> in 1979. He stepped down from the presidency after losing a closely monitored election in 1990, only to become president again after a 2006 win. He has since been reelected three times, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/11/07/1053275827/nicaragua-may-be-holding-presidential-elections-but-it-is-edging-toward-dictator">most recently in 2021</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/11/07/1053275827/nicaragua-may-be-holding-presidential-elections-but-it-is-edging-toward-dictator">This phase of his leadership</a> has been rocked by waves of <a href="https://usoas.usmission.gov/oas-resolution-condemns-ortega-regime-in-nicaragua-2/">domestic turmoil and repression</a>.</p>
<p>One of the most troubling moments came in 2018, when the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/27/nicaragua-protests-leave-deadly-toll">authorities attacked</a> people who were taking part in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/e049398b9d9e495cb64eefe5134a4c62">widespread protests</a> over proposed safety-net reforms.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2021/302.asp">Estimates from outside observers</a> indicated that over 350 people were killed by the Nicaraguan police force, with thousands more imprisoned.</p>
<p>Nicaragua has since cracked down harshly on NGOs operating there, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/nicaragua-cancels-non-governmental-organizations-civil-society">prohibiting more than 1,600 of them</a> so far.</p>
<p><iframe id="YofuJ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YofuJ/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>More NGOs expelled</h2>
<p>A series of legislative decrees passed by the National Assembly, over which <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/nicaragua/nicaragua-ortega-murillo-regimes-goal-obliterate-space-independent-civil-society">Ortega wields much influence</a>, have stripped these organizations’ rights to exist and operate in the Central American country. This status is known there as “legal personhood.”</p>
<p>The most far-reaching of these decrees were issued in 2022, sometimes with <a href="https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/nicaragua-strips-legal-status-from-another-100-ngos">100 NGOs or more</a> losing their rights at one time. For example, decrees number <a href="http://legislacion.asamblea.gob.ni/Normaweb.nsf/xpNorma.xsp?documentId=8A1E857C6C19099606258893006829EE&action=openDocument">8823</a> through <a href="http://legislacion.asamblea.gob.ni/Normaweb.nsf/xpNorma.xsp?documentId=EFC0DCAF996C6E53062588B00075B5F7&action=openDocument">8827</a>, passed between July and August, removed legal recognition from 100 organizations at a time, for a total of 500.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, lawmakers have issued a large number of decrees in 2018 and 2019 granting recognition to domestic NGOs. The largely religious and community-based organizations may have been encouraged to carry on the operations of NGOs that were being pushed out of Nicaragua. We have been unable to learn much about how these new groups are faring so far.</p>
<p>Throughout 2019 and 2020, <a href="https://www.ned.org/2021-democracy-award/colectivo-de-derechos-humanos-nicaragua-nunca-mas/">several outspoken NGOs</a> were forced to stop operating by legislative decrees, resulting in the seizure of their assets and often the imprisonment or expulsion of their leadership. This was accompanied by legislation that included the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/nicaragua-passes-controversial-foreign-agent-law/a-55291712">Foreign Agents Law passed in October 2020</a>, which mirrored word for word language <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/13/kremlins-repressive-decade">used by Russia</a> and other backsliding countries.</p>
<p>Nicaragua then picked up the pace of its <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/19/nicaragua-government-dismantles-civil-society">NGO closures</a>, including the expulsion of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/nicaragua">human rights groups and development agencies</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-expels-red-cross-representative-without-giving-reason-2022-03-25/">health care organizations</a>. Even <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-62076784">some Catholic institutions</a> have been sent packing, with nuns from the order founded by Mother Teresa leaving the country on foot.</p>
<p>Nicaragua has also <a href="https://www.catholicherald.com/article/global/nicaragua-expels-the-vatican-ambassador/">expelled the apostolic nuncio</a> – who serves essentially as an ambassador of the Catholic Church – in a move the Vatican called “incomprehensible.” </p>
<p>Among countries recently experiencing democratic backsliding, not all have such an adversarial relationship with major religious organizations. In Hungary, for example, Viktor Orbán has <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/april/orban-hungary-evangelical-election-voices-choice-conservati.html">considerable support from Evangelical Christians</a>. </p>
<p>However, in Nicaragua, Ortega has cast a wide net in clamping down on civil society, as demonstrated by the legislation used to restrict the ability of NGOs and other organizations to operate freely. This is part of a broader effort to weaken the electorate’s ability to prevent his further consolidation of power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These crackdowns are occurring around the world in countries that are becoming less free because of what’s known as ‘democratic backsliding.’Kelsey Martin-Morales, Doctoral Student in Political Science, University of South CarolinaMatthew Wilson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1712752021-11-09T13:42:01Z2021-11-09T13:42:01ZWhy Nicaragua’s slide toward dictatorship is a concern for the region and the US, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430871/original/file-20211108-23-1p53sd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C4695%2C3344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nicaragua's power couple, Vice President Rosario Murillo and husband President Daniel Ortega.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nicaraguan-vice-president-rosario-murillo-gestures-next-to-news-photo/1021529244?adppopup=true">INTI OCON/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega “<a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/informe-cse-proclama-a-ortega-para-cuarto-mandato-tras-farsa-electoral-sin-competencia/">won</a>” a fourth straight term on Nov. 7, 2021 – the second in a row with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, as running mate.</p>
<p>The vote has been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/07/americas/nicaragua-election-nov-7-intl-latam/index.html">called a sham</a> by the international community, with President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/07/statement-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-on-nicaraguas-sham-elections/">dismissing it as</a> a “pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.”</p>
<p>And for good reason. Ortega and Murillo’s government has <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/22/critics-under-attack/harassment-and-detention-opponents-rights-defenders-and">systematically</a> arrested leading opposition presidential contenders, leaving only government-aligned “<a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/satellite-parties-in-nicaragua-accomplices-of-daniel-ortegas-electoral-farce/">satellite parties</a>” facing them in the election. An estimated 81% of Nicaraguans <a href="https://100noticias.com.ni/politica/111265-urnas-abiertas-abstencion-elecciones-nicaragua/">abstained</a> <a href="https://marketresearchtelecast.com/after-arresting-seven-opposition-candidates-and-eliminating-three-parties-daniel-ortega-is-reelected-in-nicaragua-with-75-of-the-votes/197280/">from the vote</a>.</p>
<p>As Biden’s immediate condemnation may suggest, the election is also a challenge for the region and a headache for the United States. As a <a href="https://kaithaler.com/">specialist on political unrest in Latin America</a>, I believe that Nicaragua’s <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/nicaraguas-upcoming-election-highlights-need-long-term-forms-pressure-ortega-regime">deepening autocracy</a> makes a mockery of efforts to support democracy and human rights while also raising the risk of furthering a refugee crisis.</p>
<h2>From revolutionary to oppressor</h2>
<p>The result of Nicaragua’s election – with the Ortega-controlled electoral commission claiming he’s <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20211108-nicaragua-s-ortega-wins-fourth-term-in-election-slammed-as-pantomime">winning around 75% of the vote</a> – cements the ruling couple’s continued hold on power amid increasingly repressive tactics.</p>
<p>Once a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-former-revolutionary-daniel-ortega-now-resembles-the-dictator-he-helped-overthrow-171235">leftist revolutionary</a> who helped lead Nicaragua in the 1980s, Ortega desperately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2010.00099.x">sought to return</a> to power after Nicaragua’s 1990 democratization. After cutting deals to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2019.64">reshape the political system</a>, Ortega won the 2006 elections and has been in power since, with <a href="https://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5283">fraud accusations</a> around every subsequent vote.</p>
<p>Mass pro-democracy protests in 2018 <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">shook</a> the regime’s foundation but were <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/06/19/crackdown-nicaragua/torture-ill-treatment-and-prosecutions-protesters-and">brutally repressed</a>, with hundreds killed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A protester leans out of a car holding a anti-Ortega banner reading 'do not kill us.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430873/original/file-20211108-17-6c9zva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holding a poster attends a protest against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-holding-a-poster-attends-a-protest-against-news-photo/991760770?adppopup=true">Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nicaragua’s people are left with a government that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-protests/nicaraguan-opposition-says-dozens-arrested-in-banned-protests-idUSKCN1RU040">bans protests</a>, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/23/ortega-allies-threaten-as-opponents-are-arrested-flee-nicaragua">threatens journalists</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77602-2_4">ignored and denied</a> the COVID-19 pandemic’s severity.</p>
<p>The Ortega-Murillo family and their friends in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/the-model-of-corruption-and-impunity-in-nicaragua/">rake in</a> millions of dollars from <a href="https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-04-20/nicaraguas-political-dynasty-heirs-in-a-golden-cage.html">government-supported businesses</a>, while most Nicaraguans remain impoverished.</p>
<p>In the face of repression, the <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/the-challenge-facing-nicaraguas-opposition-to-reorganize-without-freedom-and-under-persecution/">opposition</a> has fragmented and struggled.</p>
<h2>Dangerous precedent for region</h2>
<p>This slide into dictatorship poses challenges for the United States and pro-democracy international actors. After winning the presidency in 2006, Ortega <a href="https://journalofdemocracy.org/articles/nicaragua-a-return-to-caudillismo/">steadily eroded</a> the country’s democratic institutions, using the courts to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-25937292">remove term limits</a> and enable his perpetual rule.</p>
<p>The Ortega-Murillo family has established <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/nicaragua-politics-ortega/">a media empire</a> and taken over <a href="https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-04-20/nicaraguas-political-dynasty-heirs-in-a-golden-cage.html">government posts</a> as it seeks to create what <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-labyrinth/">looks like</a> an authoritarian family dynasty.</p>
<p>Successive U.S. governments have cooperated with Ortega on issues such as <a href="https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/cafta-dr-dominican-republic-central-america-fta">free trade</a>, <a href="https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/nicaragua-and-u-s-cooperate-to-fight-drug-trafficking/">anti-drug trafficking efforts</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-nicaragua-cuba-idAFKCN0T502A20151116">halting northbound migrants</a> at Nicaragua’s southern border. But the tougher stance indicated by Biden’s comments on the election reflect the reality that Nicaragua’s decline has the potential to further destabilize the region.</p>
<p>Democracy’s demise in Nicaragua is part of a deeper crisis in Central America. The formerly leftist Ortega <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-10-28/ortega-y-juan-orlando-hernandez-una-extrana-alianza-preelectoral.html">has embraced</a> Honduras’s repressive right-wing President Juan Orlando Hernández, who may be <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/tratado-joh-ortega-mandatario-hondureno-busca-refugio/">seeking refuge</a> in Nicaragua from drug trafficking and corruption charges. El Salvador’s brash president Nayib Bukele, described by critics as Latin America’s first “<a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2021.0031">millennial authoritarian</a>,” has been following Ortega’s democratic erosion playbook by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/804407503/troops-occupy-el-salvadors-legislature-to-back-president-s-crime-package">using the military</a> to intimidate opponents and <a href="https://latinoamerica21.com/en/bukele-forever-and-the-smoke-of-bitcoin/">replacing</a> independent officials with loyalists.</p>
<p>El Salvador’s and Honduras’ problems are their own, but Ortega has set a <a href="https://americasquarterly.org/article/nicaraguas-sham-election-is-over-what-should-the-world-do-now/">dangerous precedent</a> for the region by retaining power through political manipulation and violence.</p>
<h2>Sanctions and refugees</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/nicaragua-related-sanctions">U.S.</a>, <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021/10/11/nicaragua-eu-sanctions-prolonged-for-one-year/">European Union</a> and other democratic countries like <a href="https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/sanctions/nicaragua.aspx?lang=eng">Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-extend-sanctions-on-nicaraguan-officials/46866166">Switzerland</a> have sanctioned Ortega-Murillo government officials and associated companies. </p>
<p>These targeted sanctions have been <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/the-last-financial-arm-of-ortegas-regime-shaken-by-u-s-sanction/">a costly thorn</a> in the regime’s side, but as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/research-for-development-outputs/political-marketplace-framework-sanctions-in-the-political-market">often happens</a> with sanctions, they <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/uses-sanctions-foreign-policy-nicaraguas-elections-2021">have not led</a> to regime collapse; Ortega and Murillo have instead shuffled assets and associates to <a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2021/07/sanctions-nicaragua-crisis/">protect their power</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/comit-aprueba-proyecto-de-ley-renacer-para-que-el-rgimen-de-ortega-rinda-cuentas-por-socavar-la-democracia-en-nicaragua">RENACER Act</a> that the U.S. Congress passed on Nov. 3 calls for considering <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/26/nicaragua-costa-rica-blinken-517056">Nicaragua’s suspension</a> from the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, and there is pressure on the International Monetary Fund <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/us-congresspeople-ask-the-imf-not-to-grant-loans-to-the-ortega-regime/">to end</a> its loans to the Nicaraguan government. Yet such moves <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/nicaragua-dealing-dangers-one-sided-poll">might hurt</a> poor and middle-class Nicaraguans more than the regime.</p>
<p>Regardless of new international measures, the election itself will inhibit foreign investment and deepen Nicaragua’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-economy/nicaraguas-economy-contracts-sharply-amid-political-crisis-imf-idUSKCN20K0JG">economic crisis</a>.</p>
<p>This could spur more Nicaraguans to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/lost-hope-ortegas-crackdown-nicaragua-stirs-fast-growing-exodus-2021-09-02/">flee the country</a>. Over 100,000 people <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2021/4/6079cd184/unhcr-calls-support-nicaraguans-forced-flee.html">have left</a> since 2018, primarily to Costa Rica. Many are now making the dangerous journey north toward the U.S., too.</p>
<p>Thousands of Nicaraguans sought to enter the U.S. <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/americas_turmoil-home-more-nicaraguans-flee-us/6208907.html">in recent months</a> amid Ortega and Murillo’s preelection crackdown.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-important">Get The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter</a>.</em>]</p>
<p>The Biden administration <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/biden-harris-strategy-root-causes-migration-and-fragility-central-america">has said</a> it wants to reduce migrant arrivals from Central America. But without security, political freedoms and economic opportunity at home in Nicaragua, people will likely continue to seek a better, safer life elsewhere.</p>
<h2>A Russian red herring?</h2>
<p>While the potential for a refugee crisis is a real concern for the United States, one issue addressed by the RENACER Act – Russian relations with Nicaragua – is, I believe, <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/ivan-kentros-nicaragua-es-la-entrada-de-rusia-a-centroamerica/">of limited concern</a>. Russian support is not critical to the Ortega-Murillo government’s survival. The Nicaraguan army, police and paramilitaries have <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/02/12/analysis-of-nicaraguas-paramilitary-arsenal/">more than enough weapons</a> to control the country.</p>
<p>And while Russian <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2017/05/19/nicaragua-insists-russian-satellite-station-not-for-spying/">surveillance</a> and cyberwarfare <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/nacion/convenio-de-seguridad-de-la-informacion-con-rusia-una-nueva-arma-del-regimen/">capabilities are no doubt welcomed by Ortega</a>, they merely augment the Nicaraguan government’s preexisting <a href="https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/ortega-spies-using-israeli-technology/">spyware</a> and robust <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/11/october-2021-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-report/">online troll network</a>.</p>
<p>Russian support matters most in blocking action against Nicaragua at the U.N. Security Council. But rather than Cold War-like ideological struggles, Russian ties with Ortega simply reflect <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Authoritarian-Diffusion-and-Cooperation-Interests-vs-Ideology/Bank-Weyland/p/book/9780367587161">autocrats cooperating</a> with each other. With Nicaragua’s government rejected by most countries in the Americas and Europe, other pariah regimes are natural allies.</p>
<p>Following the latest blow of the “sham” election, the short-term prospects for democratization in Nicaragua appear slim. For international actors such as the U.S., Nicaragua’s tragedy serves as a warning: Once a country starts slipping toward dictatorship, it can be difficult to stop.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kai M. Thaler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rule of Daniel Ortega has become increasingly authoritarian. Sanctions and repression could destabilize the region and result in increased numbers of refugees.Kai M. Thaler, Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1712352021-11-05T13:43:29Z2021-11-05T13:43:29ZNicaragua: former revolutionary Daniel Ortega now resembles the dictator he helped overthrow<p>Nicaraguans go to the polls on Sunday November 7 with former revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, hoping to win a fourth consecutive term in office. He’s not leaving much to chance, though. Prominent opposition figures (including presidential candidates) and critics have been <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/20/nicaragua-trumped-charges-against-critics">imprisoned</a> or forced into <a href="https://elpais.com/cultura/2021-10-21/sergio-ramirez-inicia-un-nuevo-exilio-en-espana.html">exile</a> and newspaper offices have been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-58212024">raided</a>.</p>
<p>It seems likely that his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) will receive a significant portion of the popular vote and Ortega – together with his wife and vice-president Rosario Murillo – will continue to rule Nicaragua for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Ortega has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15544315">come a long way</a> from the young left-wing revolutionary in the 1970s who fought in the guerrilla war against the US-backed anti-communist dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, whose family had been in power in Nicaragua for more than four decades. After the Sandinistas led a popular revolution to topple the Somoza dictatorship on July 19 1979, Ortega became a member of the revolutionary junta. It embarked on a radical programme of social change, including <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27861851">land reforms</a> and a successful <a href="http://www.icwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CLS-1.pdf">literacy</a> campaign. </p>
<p>In 1984, with vice-presidential candidate Sergio Ramírez, Ortega won the first presidential <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/05/world/sandinistas-hold-their-first-elections.html">elections</a> since the revolution with a landslide. The 1980s were a period of economic hardship and counterinsurgency at the hands of the Contra rebels. There was also international pressure, principally from the United States, which mined Nicaragua’s harbours in 1984 and provided financial backing to the Contras through the 1980s.</p>
<p>To the surprise of international observers, but largely as a result of a decade of hardship and turmoil, Ortega lost the presidency in 1990 as the Nicaraguan people voted for the opposition coalition led by Violeta Chamorro.</p>
<h2>International acclaim</h2>
<p>If their popularity at home often came into question, in Europe and the Americas the youthful and optimistic Sandinistas were immensely popular throughout the 1980s. Left-wing activists organised solidarity campaigns, fundraisers and protests to support healthcare reform, educational programmes and agricultural projects in Nicaragua. European social democrats including former German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González even launched a committee to <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112717.pdf?v=fc264a634cf81184586955102bec6d68">defend the revolution</a> from “external infringements and influences”. </p>
<p>In Britain, Ortega and the Sandinistas were the darlings of the cultural scene. Leading rock group The Clash released a triple album entitled Sandinista! in 1980 while in 1989, when Ortega made an official visit to the UK, playwright Harold Pinter threw Ortega <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/12/the-evening-graham-greene-introduced-himself-at-a-smart-london-party">a soirée</a> at his London home, where the Nicaraguan leader met a who’s who of arts identities.</p>
<p>Acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie, who travelled to Nicaragua in 1987 to observe the unfolding revolution, shared his rose-coloured view of the Sandinistas in a non-fiction book entitled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaguar_Smile">The Jaguar Smile</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Father Miguel, Sergio Ramírez, Daniel Ortega: were these dictators in the making? I answered myself: no. Emphatically, no. They struck me as men of integrity and great pragmatism, with an astonishing lack of bitterness towards their opponents, past or present.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Ruthless in power</h2>
<p>On Daniel Ortega, Rushdie could not have been more wrong. Since returning to power in 2007, the Sandinista leader has slowly and ruthlessly consolidated his power over the FSLN and the Nicaraguan state. Seeking to avoid a repetition of past mistakes, Ortega formed alliances with former enemies, including the Catholic church (declaring himself a Christian and banning <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/amr430012009en.pdf">abortion</a>), and business organisations such as <a href="https://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4760">COSEP</a> (the Superior Council for Private Enterprise) which had been a strong opponent of the FSLN in the 1980s.</p>
<p>Combining social policies with a neoliberal economic model that received <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150320003016/http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2013/pr13508.htm">praise from</a> the International Monetary Fund and the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nicaragua">World Bank</a>, the Ortega regime kept the country stable and improved living standards. Not even the US, despite the occasional outburst on the state of Nicaraguan democracy, put much pressure on the FSLN leader. After all, the Sandinista government had adopted a strong stance against narcotics and implemented violent but effective policies to stop migrants and <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0187-69612019000100117&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en">refugees</a> travelling to the US. That all this came at the cost of transparency and democracy in Nicaragua did not seem to matter as much.</p>
<p>But in April 2018, these alliances with the church and the business sector broke down in the wake of a popular protest which was then <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/9213/2018/en/">violently crushed</a> by the police and groups of Sandinista paramilitaries, leaving more than 300 mostly young people dead. From that moment it became impossible to deny that Ortega was starting to look more and more like the dictator he had overthrown.</p>
<h2>Popular support</h2>
<p>But Ortega and Murillo have managed to cling on to power. There are many reasons for their political survival, including the opposition’s fragmentation, a repressive state apparatus, and a lack of international pressure. What is too often overlooked, though, is that for many Nicaraguans, the FSLN remains the only political party that represents the interests of the poor.</p>
<p>Freedom of speech and independent media are vital elements of a functioning democracy, but they matter less to the voter who is concerned about food, clean water, a stable house and healthcare. Even though the Sandinistas’ social programmes are embedded in a neoliberal economic model, they still made a difference to the daily lives of many Nicaraguans. </p>
<p>If the opposition is serious about challenging the Ortega-Murillo regime, the answer lies perhaps in building a broad alliance that includes all sectors of society, particularly the marginalised. This, at least, was what the Sandinista revolutionaries needed to finally bring an end to decades of Somocista rule in 1979.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eline van Ommen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Once a Sandinista revolutionary, Ortega’s oppressive neoliberal regime now imprisons opponents and raids newspaper offices.Eline van Ommen, Lecturer in Contemporary History, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1243852019-10-09T16:50:28Z2019-10-09T16:50:28ZThe Latin American left isn’t dead yet<p>Argentina, Bolivia and <a href="https://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/politica/elecciones-dicen-encuestas-cara-octubre.html">Uruguay</a> will all hold presidential elections in October. And, for now, leftists are <a href="https://www.as-coa.org/content/guide-2019-latin-american-elections/argentina">strong contenders</a> in all three countries. </p>
<p>This is a somewhat unexpected development. Beginning in 2015, <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2016/12/09/right-turn">conservatives toppled</a> major leftist strongholds, including in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. The socially progressive Latin American left was <a href="https://aulablog.net/2019/01/09/a-right-turn-in-latin-america/">declared dead</a> <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/pink-tide-latin-america-chavez-morales-capitalism-socialism/">many times over</a>. </p>
<p>But the left-leaning populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">victory in Mexico</a> in July 2018 showed that Latin American political winds don’t all blow in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-left-turn-and-the-road-to-uncertainty-106847">same direction</a>.</p>
<p>So what can be learned from the failures and successes of Latin America’s leftist parties and governments in the very recent past?</p>
<h2>Latin America’s ‘left turn’</h2>
<p>About two-thirds of all Latin Americans lived under some form of leftist government <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/1866">by 2010</a> – a “pink tide” that washed over the region following the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. </p>
<p>Only a few countries – notably Colombia and Mexico – remained under conservative political leadership during this period.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay have elections in October.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com/The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Academics conventionally grouped this <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/welfare-and-party-politics-in-latin-america/BFE6B43ED35B5CB02919279F5620AB73">Latin American left</a> into <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eKOwSqYH5rcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uruguay+social+democratic+left&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBl7LNpY_lAhXQl-AKHaIlB7QQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=uruguay%20social%20democratic%20left&f=false">two camps</a>. </p>
<p>There was the moderate “social democratic” left of Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, which embraced an agenda of egalitarianism while accepting the basic precepts of market economics. </p>
<p>This group was generally contrasted with the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3IVjDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT5&ots=8jhwLduGbl&sig=eLyxmkw3j55zS5nuIfqGGkj6WI8#v=onepage&q&f=false">more radical “populist” left</a> that ran Venezuela, <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/cp/2016/00000048/00000004/art00003">Bolivia</a>, Nicaragua and Ecuador. These governments shared the moderate left’s commitment to progressive social change but had bolder aims: an alternative to market economics and profound changes to political institutions. </p>
<p>Such groupings did little to predict these countries’ divergent fates.</p>
<p>In a few places, leftist governments have remained popular, vibrant and electorally competitive after over a decade in power – namely <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bolivia/2018-02-14/key-evo-morales-political-longevity">Bolivia and Uruguay</a>. </p>
<p>But by 2015, <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/bolsonaro-and-brazils-illiberal-backlash/">Brazil</a>, <a href="https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/Venezuela/Smilde%20Current%20History--final.pdf">Venezuela</a> and <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/07/25/nicaragua-view-left">Nicaragua</a> had all become political and economic catastrophes. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/party-vibrancy-and-democracy-in-latin-america-9780190870041?cc=us&lang=en&">Chile’s leftist government</a> sharply declined in popularity. </p>
<h2>The conformist temptation</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ob2gBJoAAAAJ&hl=en">political science research</a> identifies some shared weaknesses of the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d7yzgzQAAAAJ&hl=en">Latin American left</a>.</p>
<p>The first lesson comes from the Workers Party, which governed Brazil between 2003 and 2016. </p>
<p>Like many progressive parties, the Workers Party’s founding leaders were idealistic – committed to <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300050745/workers-party-and-democratization-brazil">upending Brazilian politics as usual</a>. </p>
<p>Under the Workers Party, Brazil experienced a massive <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-019-09351-7">expansion of social citizenship rights</a>. By 2008, Brazilian President Lula da Silva was arguably the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-brazil-tilts-rightward-lulas-leftist-legacy-of-lifting-the-poor-is-at-risk-65939">world’s most popular president</a>.</p>
<p>But the Workers Party became <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/transformation-workers-party-brazil-19892009?format=PB&isbn=9780521733007">detached from the social movements</a> it once championed. Deeply immersed in the normal – even <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-brazil-is-winning-its-fight-against-corruption-71968">corrupt</a> – give-and-take of Brazilian politics, the party came to be molded by the flawed system it sought to change.</p>
<p>We call this pitfall the “conformist temptation.” </p>
<p>The Workers Party rule ended with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/impeachment-culture-wars-and-the-politics-of-identity-in-brazil-59436">2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff</a>, Lula’s hand-picked successor. Although Rousseff herself <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-brazilian-president-dilma-rousseffs-real-crime-59363">faced no corruption charges</a>, the Workers Party left power associated with corruption scandals, campaign finance violations and economic mismanagement – the exact problems it had promised to fix.</p>
<p>Chile’s Socialist Party met a similar fate. </p>
<p>Under Presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, moderate leftists who governed Chile almost uninterrupted from 2001 to 2018, the party <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/18/chile-just-elected-a-billionaire-president-these-are-the-4-things-you-need-to-know/">distanced itself from its supporters in social movements</a>.</p>
<p>In 2011, students and teachers began <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/08/student-protests-in-chile/100125/">protesting</a> Chile’s low levels of public education funding and <a href="https://www.borgenmagazine.com/economic-inequality-in-chile/">high inequality</a>. The <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1866802X1600800305">youth protest movement</a> grew, exposing Chileans’ disappointment at the Socialists’ limited progress on social reforms. </p>
<p>These divisions on the left <a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-heads-into-presidential-runoff-with-a-transformed-political-landscape-86453">allowed Chile’s strong right wing to win</a> Chile’s 2018 presidential election.</p>
<h2>The autocratic temptation</h2>
<p>Crises in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador result from a different fatal flaw. </p>
<p>In these three countries, leftist leaders succumbed to what we call the “autocratic temptation” – the idea that a charismatic leader or popular political movement not only can speak for an <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/latin-americas-authoritarian-drift-the-threat-from-the-populist-left/">entire nation</a> but that they can <a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-is-not-venezuela-even-if-its-president-does-want-to-stay-in-power-forever-93253">do so forever</a>.</p>
<p>Like many authoritarian leaders, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega have lost touch with their constituents. When leaders become too insulated, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-dictators-dilemma-9780190228552?cc=us&lang=en&">research shows</a>, safeguards against corruption and irresponsible public policies weaken. </p>
<p>Authoritarian leaders are less likely to change course when things go wrong. </p>
<p>The consequences may be devastating – like Maduro’s egregious failure to adjust Venezuela’s exchange rate policies during its descent into economic crisis and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/venezuelas-crisis-in-5-charts/2019/01/26/97af60a6-20c4-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html">hyperinflation</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Weyland-24-3.pdf">Authoritarian leadership</a> has degraded democracy in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador in other ways, too. <a href="https://theconversation.com/ecuadors-populist-electoral-victory-for-moreno-shows-erosion-of-democracy-75157">Checks and balances on presidential authority</a> have been weakened and press freedoms restricted. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">electoral process was manipulated</a>.</p>
<p>The autocratic temptation to lionize a charismatic founding leader weakens the governing political party, too, by making it extremely difficult for new leaders to emerge and carry forward the party’s long-term transformative agenda.</p>
<p>In Nicaragua and Venezuela, that has meant that <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaraguans-try-to-topple-a-dictator-again-98123">autocrats have clung to power</a> despite popular demand that they leave.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://aulablog.net/2018/02/02/ecuador-referendum-marks-critical-juncture-for-moreno-and-correa/">Ecuador</a>, the current and former presidents – Lenín Moreno and Rafael Correa – are engaged in a bitter dispute. Protests have rocked Ecuador over Moreno’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49955695">economic policy shifts</a> away from Correa’s agenda.</p>
<h2>Leftist exceptions</h2>
<p>So what explains the resilience of the left in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/when-movements-become-parties/F06BEE9DEA9BA4E7DCFBD9A87266FAB8#fndtn-information">Bolivia</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/how-party-activism-survives/93C5584DB63DF0A80B51F3EEB68BC8E9">Uruguay</a>, where leftist parties have reduced <a href="http://www.santiagoanria.com/data.html">inequality</a> and made tremendous progress toward <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/delegative-democracy-revisited-more-inclusion-less-liberalism-in-bolivia/">social and political inclusion</a>? Left-wing candidates are polling well in both countries’ <a href="http://www.startribune.com/evo-morales-not-trending-among-bolivia-s-youth-ahead-of-vote/562382812">presidential races</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Argentine presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez and running mate, former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at a campaign rally, Aug. 7, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0BXZSUWZX3IE&SMLS=1&RW=1920&RH=996#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0BXZSUWZX3IE&SMLS=1&RW=1920&RH=996&POPUPPN=8&POPUPIID=2C0BF1MYIRFG1">Reuters/Agustin Marcarian</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our assessment, what sets Bolivia and Uruguay apart is the strength of the ties between the leftist parties and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/when-movements-become-parties/F06BEE9DEA9BA4E7DCFBD9A87266FAB8#fndtn-information">allied social movements</a> there. That has encouraged the accountability and responsiveness lacking in Venezuela, Brazil and Chile. </p>
<p>Civil society in Bolivia and Uruguay also retained its capacity for independent mobilization, constraining any possible slide into autocracy or unbridled ambition. </p>
<p>That may explain why Bolivia has so far <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bolivia/2018-02-14/key-evo-morales-political-longevity">avoided the worst social and economic consequences of the autocratic temptation</a> – despite its charismatic indigenous president, Evo Morales, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-is-not-venezuela-even-if-its-president-does-want-to-stay-in-power-forever-93253">eliminating term limits and consolidating power</a> over the past 14 years. </p>
<p>In Argentina the left’s possible comeback has more to do with conservative president Mauricio Macri’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/10/argentina-economic-crisis-imf-debt-default">economic mismanagement</a>. But the center-left ticket leading Argentina’s presidential race has also succeeded because the candidates formed a broad national coalition – one that includes an array of social movements, from labor unions to feminist groups.</p>
<p>The Latin American left has some life in it yet.</p>
<p>[ <em>You respect facts and expertise. So do The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=yourespect">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Progressives are leading in the presidential elections of Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, bucking the region’s recent rightward trend. But there are lessons in the failures of leftists past.Santiago Anria, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies, Dickinson CollegeKenneth M. Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Director, Latin American Studies Program, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1139912019-04-17T10:55:09Z2019-04-17T10:55:09ZOne year after Nicaraguan uprising, Ortega is back in control<p>One year ago, Nicaragua’s government was on the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/nicaragua">verge of collapse</a>.</p>
<p>Protests against President Daniel Ortega <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaraguans-try-to-topple-a-dictator-again-98123">exploded nationwide on April 19, 2018</a> after the government quietly passed a tax on retirees’ pension checks. Demonstrators barricaded highways and main roads, paralyzing Nicaragua’s economy.</p>
<p>By May 2018, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-protest-analysis/nicaraguas-unlikely-opposition-faces-rocky-road-to-defeat-ortega-idUSKBN1JK11Y">70% of Nicaraguans</a> wanted Ortega – who has <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuelan-oil-fueled-the-rise-and-fall-of-nicaraguas-ortega-regime-100507">grown astonishingly rich</a> ruling Central America’s largest country – to resign. </p>
<p>“This is not a dialogue,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NXcz-ItgWI">student activist Lesther Alemán told Ortega</a> during a <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/lesther-aleman-speaks-on-the-future-of-nicaraguan-resistance/">May 2018 televised negotiation with the government</a>. “This table is to negotiate your exit, and you know it very well because the people have demanded it.”</p>
<p>Today, President Daniel Ortega is back in control. Alemán and hundreds of other opposition leaders fled the country. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/24/nicaragua-costa-rica-migrantes/">at least 50,000 Nicaraguans</a>, including <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/periodistas-exiliados-de-nicaragua-el-reto-de-informar-y-sobrevivir-con-muy-poco">dozens of reporters</a>, have escaped to neighboring countries. </p>
<p>But for a few flare-ups of protest – all quickly and violently quashed – Nicaragua’s “<a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/04/tropical-spring-land-lakes-volcanoes/">tropical spring</a>” has lost its momentum. What happened?</p>
<h2>Ortega’s electoral authoritarianism</h2>
<p>I am an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin_Waddell">American scholar</a> who has researched Nicaraguan politics for years. When the <a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/06/why-people-migrate-a-plea-for-empathy-from-nicaragua/">political chaos forced my family and me to abandon Managua in June 2018</a>, I felt fairly <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/benjamin-waddell-495208/articles">certain</a> that Ortega’s days were numbered. </p>
<p>In a democratic society, I might have been right. Since 1985, 70 percent of all democratically elected Latin American presidents who faced similarly sustained street protests were <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaraguans-try-to-topple-a-dictator-again-98123">ultimately removed from office</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega has defied these odds by becoming the kind of <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/nicaragua-return-caudillismo">strongman leader he rebelled against</a> as a hero of Nicaragua’s 1979 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sandinista">Sandinista Revolution</a>. Using <a href="https://www.apnews.com/e3ecb467c67d4217bb0244823e824160">calculated repression</a> to crush dissent and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_fCZ9slAc">anti-imperialist rhetoric</a> to deflect blame, Ortega has actually strengthened his grip on power.</p>
<p>This is Ortega’s third consecutive term as president and fifth time governing Nicaragua. He first came to power in the 1980s as head of the Sandinistas’ post-revolution ruling junta and, in 1985, was elected president. </p>
<p>In 1990 Ortega <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/world/turnover-in-nicaragua-aristocratic-democrat-violeta-barrios-de-chamorro.html">lost to Violeta Chamorro</a>, who ushered in 16 years of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/23/world/scourge-and-sometime-victim-of-the-sandinistas-jose-arnoldo-aleman-lacayo.html">conservative government</a> in left-leaning Nicaragua. Ortega returned to office in 2007. </p>
<p>Since then, Ortega has systematically <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/reelection-continuity-and-hyper-presidentialism-in-latin-america/">concentrated power in the executive branch</a>, stacking the <a href="https://www.poderjudicial.gob.ni/scons1/default.asp">supreme court</a> with <a href="https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/opinion/Cuando-el-Poder-Ejecutivo-controla-al-Poder-Judicial-20181219-0017.html">party loyalists</a>, cracking down on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/15/ortega-continues-suffocate-protests-press-nicaragua/">press freedom</a> and, in 2014, abolishing <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/01/nicaragua-scraps-presidential-term-limits-201412951043190534.html">presidential term limits</a>.</p>
<p>In 2016, Ortega <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nicaraguas-Daniel-Ortega-Takes-Office-for-3rd-Consecutive-Term-20170110-0006.html">won his third consecutive term</a> with over 70% of the vote and made his wife, Rosario Murillo, his vice president. But just <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/opinion/nicaraguas-electoral-farce.html">30% of the Nicaraguan electorate turned out</a> that year – the first sign that Ortega’s popularity was waning. </p>
<p>Fifteen months later, thousands of anti-government demonstrations had nearly toppled his regime. </p>
<h2>‘They wanted me dead or alive’</h2>
<p>Ortega has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/01/10/daniel-ortegas-reality-check/">mobilized all the power of the Nicaraguan state</a> – a government <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0098">he built from scratch in his mold</a> – to survive.</p>
<p>The regime has sent riot police and pro-government paramilitaries to beat, shoot, terrorize and arrest protesters. Some political prisoners <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-prisoners/hundreds-of-prisoners-released-in-nicaragua-before-protests-anniversary-idUSKCN1RS2FZ">have been released</a>, but <a href="https://correspondenciadeprensa.com/2019/02/02/nicaragua-represion-imparable-se-eleva-a-767-la-cifra-de-presos-politicos-confidencial/">hundreds are still in jail</a>. There, say dissidents, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/nicaragua#235c65">they have been tortured with waterboarding, electric shocks and sexual assault</a>. Many report being forced to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/americas/nicaragua">record self-incriminating videos</a>.</p>
<p>After 20-year-old Lesther Alemán confronted Ortega on national TV last May, death threats poured in, forcing him into hiding and, eventually, exile. Alemán contends that the government <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Articulo66/videos/l%C3%A9ster-alem%C3%A1n-denuncia-que-ortega-puso-precio-a-su-cabeza/2370886746296310/">offered US$50,000 dollars for his capture</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269597/original/file-20190416-147522-fl6qrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lesther Aleman confronts Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega at a televised negotiation on May 16, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Nicaragua-Dialogue/b4b23313020a4ba1b904380010a808cf/6/0">AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“They wanted me dead or alive,” he told me recently from his new home in the United States. “That was a before and after moment. Since then, nothing has been the same.” </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/483464-elecciones-nicaragua-crisis-encuesta-cid-gallup/">majority of Nicaraguans agree</a>. According to a Cid Gallup poll conducted in January, 74% say life has worsened over the past year, 66% disapprove of the government and 54% want Nicaragua’s next presidential election moved up from 2021 to this year. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/483464-elecciones-nicaragua-crisis-encuesta-cid-gallup/">Only 25% of respondants</a> align themselves with Ortega’s Sandinista party. </p>
<h2>An American scapegoat</h2>
<p>Still, the numbers show, Ortega retains remnants of his base. </p>
<p>Like his Venezuelan ally Nicolas Maduro, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuela-crisis-trump-threats-to-maduro-evoke-bloody-history-of-us-intervention-in-latin-america-111169">blames the U.S. for his country’s economic and humanitarian crisis</a>, Ortega has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/01/10/daniel-ortegas-reality-check/">rallied supporters</a> by blaming United States for the popular uprising against him.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rdshycM468c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A mariachi song called ‘Daniel Stays’ – a sign that many Nicaraguans remain loyal to Ortega.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The United States has poisoned our work through intervention, that’s where the root of the problem lies,” <a href="https://twitter.com/teleSURtv/status/1021940383834615808/photo/1">Ortega told the Venezuelan TV channel Telesur in July</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega’s claims appeal to deep anti-American sentiment resulting from the United States’ <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/americas/article/nicaragua-living-in-the-shadow-of-the-eagle-fourth-edition-by-thomas-w-walker-boulder-westview-press-2003-pp-xiv-238-illustrations-notes-bibliography-index-7500-cloth-2500-paper/CE3D980EFA9279E467B129405F43F279">repeated interference</a> in Nicaragua’s political affairs. These include a U.S. military occupation from 1912 to 1933 and, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s clandestine financing of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/17/world/an-iran-contra-guide-what-happened-and-when.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=15C226726BFDD37DDDDDB772B257DAFC&gwt=pay">bloody rebellion against Ortega himself</a>. </p>
<p>Many people I interviewed believed that Nicaragua’s revolt reflects Trump administration plotting – not popular outrage at a corrupt and distant government. </p>
<p>“Why should we trust the United States?” a longtime Sandinista party member asked me during last April’s demonstrations.</p>
<h2>US development aid</h2>
<p>There’s no evidence of direct U.S. involvement in Nicaragua’s crisis.</p>
<p>Since it began, the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1918">punished Ortega’s government for curbing civil liberties</a> by severely <a href="https://havanatimes.org/?p=145740">limiting its access to international financial markets</a>, and sanctioned members of his administration, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46367041">including his wife</a>. </p>
<p>For years, the United States Agency for International Development has also <a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/05/laying-groundwork-insurrection-closer-look-u-s-role-nicaraguas-social-unrest/">invested moderately</a> in the country to “bolster <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/nicaragua">democratic governance and expand educational opportunities</a>.” Between 2015 and 2018 Nicaraguan civil society groups received <a href="https://results.usaid.gov/results">$92 million in development aid</a> – roughly equivalent to the aid sent to neighboring Central American countries. The National Endowment for Democracy – a private nonprofit foundation with <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/01/what-s-the-national-endowment-for-democracy.html">close ties to the Department of State</a> – has <a href="https://www.ned.org/">spent an additional $4.1 million</a> to strengthen democratic institutions in Nicaragua since 2014. </p>
<p>U.S.-funded projects include the civics workshop that Jeancarlo López, an engineering student turned <a href="https://www.24matins.es/topnews/america/estudiantes-forman-coalicion-de-cara-a-dialogo-con-el-gobierno-de-nicaragua-68343">dissident</a>, took in 2017 at the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ipadenic/">Center for Development and Democracy</a>.</p>
<p>“The things we learned were the basic things you should learn in school about human rights and democracy”, he said.</p>
<p>Despite Ortega’s continued rule, exiled dissident Lesther Alemán <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/el-ano-que-no-dejo-de-marcar-abril/">remains hopeful</a> that Nicaragua’s opposition will triumph. </p>
<p>“Ortega labeled us terrorists,” he said. “But the truth is hard to hide.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Waddell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A massive protest movement exploded across Nicaragua in April 2018, threatening to topple the country’s authoritarian regime. What happened to Central America’s ‘tropical spring?’Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1021542018-10-15T10:29:33Z2018-10-15T10:29:33ZMigrant money could be keeping Nicaragua’s uprising alive<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/las-remesas-podrian-mantener-viva-a-la-insurgencia-en-nicaragua-105102"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>Protesting is now <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/09/29/america/1538186460_718736.html">illegal in Nicaragua</a>, according to President Daniel Ortega.</p>
<p>The Central American country has been embroiled in deadly <a href="https://theconversation.com/outrage-at-state-violence-puts-nicaraguas-president-on-notice-95547">political turmoil for months</a>. Demonstrations that <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/22/604762080/violent-unrest-continues-in-nicaragua-over-social-security-reforms">began</a> in April against an unpopular social security reform quickly transformed into a broader movement aimed at ousting Ortega, Nicaragua’s authoritarian president.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/187.asp">Up to</a> <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/asociacion-de-derechos-humanos-en-nicaragua-se-retira-por-amenazas-articulo-804512">450</a> people have since been killed, including a 16-year-old boy <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/un-muerto-tras-ataque-a-marcha-por-los-presos-politicos/">caught in the crossfire</a> between government forces and demonstrators on Sept. 23. </p>
<p>The growing number of protesters arrested and charged with terrorism led the <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/187.asp">Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a> to call on Ortega to <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/cidh-gobierno-debe-suprimir-detenciones-ilegales/">stop what they called his government’s illegal detentions</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, the president in late September <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/09/29/america/1538186460_718736.html">banned</a> protests entirely. Thity-eight Nicaraguans were arrested on Oct. 14 for <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/orteguismo-aumenta-represion-y-detiene-a-38-manifestantes/">planning to march against</a> their government.</p>
<h2>Ortega’s rise to power</h2>
<p>Ortega, a former revolutionary leftist who ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, returned to office in 2007. Over the past 11 years, he has grown ever more <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/04/26/riots-threaten-nicaraguas-autocratic-president">autocratic</a>, abolishing presidential term limits, enriching his family and restricting civil liberties.</p>
<p>The common wisdom is that Ortega enjoyed such a long and, until now, uncontested reign because Nicaragua’s <a href="https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=NI">economy boomed under his stewardship</a>, in part due to cheap and plentiful oil supplied by Hugo Chávez. </p>
<p>According to this theory, the growth allowed his government to pay for extensive <a href="https://elfaro.net/es/201609/centroamerica/19243/Daniel-Ortega-cosecha-votos-de-los-programas-sociales-que-sembr%C3%B3.htm">anti-poverty programs</a>, earning him widespread popularity in the Western Hemisphere’s <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_nu.html">second-poorest country</a> – until the economy began to stagnate last year. </p>
<p>But that’s not the whole story behind Ortega’s long rise and sudden unpopularity. </p>
<p>While Nicaragua has prospered financially under his leadership, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin_Waddell">my research finds that</a> migrants living in Costa Rica, the U.S. and Spain also greatly boosted the domestic economy by sending home millions of dollars each year. </p>
<p>Roughly 16 percent of the country’s population lives abroad. Their remittances, which last year totaled US$1.4 billion, have fueled consumption and tempered political pressure on Ortega’s government to reduce poverty.</p>
<p>Now, Nicaragua’s influential diaspora has <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2018/08/27/nicaraguas-diaspora-activists-bear-a-double-burden/">turned its attention</a> to the resistance against Ortega. </p>
<p>In a time when conflict and disaster are forcing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/a-mass-migration-crisis-and-it-may-yet-get-worse.html">even more people around the world to flee their homelands</a>, these findings from Nicaragua underscore the central role that migrants can play in today’s globalized political economy.</p>
<h2>Migration as an escape valve</h2>
<p>Nicaraguans began migrating in significant numbers during Ortega’s first term, in the late 1980s. </p>
<p>The country was ravaged by <a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2687">civil war and burdened by debt</a>. In 1989, Ortega’s socialist government was forced to undertake a series of austerity measures that left <a href="http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/Lasa2000/Dijkstra.PDF">14 percent of Nicaraguans unemployed</a>. </p>
<p>Subsequent governments enacted even harsher budget cuts, further driving up unemployment and pushing hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25765217?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">to seek work in neighboring Costa Rica</a>. </p>
<p>Today an estimated 500,000 Nicaraguans <a href="https://www.nacion.com/economia/agro/decreto-dara-nueva-prorroga-para-legalizar-trabajadores-migrantes/J5YCWI7HLNGMNIRJRYSEZN66RU/story/">live in Costa Rica</a>, and more are fleeing the country’s political chaos ever day.</p>
<p>Another <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-nicaraguan-origin-in-the-united-states-2013/">222,000 Nicaraguans live in the United States</a>, <a href="https://www.panamaamerica.com.pa/nacion/80-mil-nicaraguenses-en-panama-1071535">80,000 in Panama</a> and <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/04/23/america/1524494946_561490.html">an estimated 30,000 in Spain</a>. </p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2017 – the first decade of Ortega’s current administration – total migrant remittances to Nicaragua totaled <a href="https://www.bcn.gob.ni/estadisticas/sector_externo/remesas/index.php">$12.5 billion</a>. </p>
<p>That’s more than 10 percent of Nicaragua’s annual gross domestic product, on average, and in many years substantially more than <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/nicaragua/foreign-direct-investment">total foreign direct investment in the country</a>. </p>
<p>Remittances also dwarf the <a href="https://confidencial.atavist.com/los-petrodlares-de-venezuela918v4">roughly $3.7 billion in oil aid</a> that Venezuela sent to Nicaragua during the same period.</p>
<h2>Remittances took the pressure off Ortega</h2>
<p>Ortega’s government indirectly benefited from this flood of foreign cash. </p>
<p>Migrant money helped poor Nicaraguans make ends meet and allowed <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jebusi/v77y2015icp42-59.html">consumers</a> to keep pace with the <a href="https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=NI">expanding national economy</a> – greatly reducing <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259512263_Migrants%27_Remittances_and_Economic_Voting_in_the_Mexican_Countryside">demand on</a> Ortega’s government to reduce poverty and unemployment. </p>
<p>Still, Nicaragua remains very poor. About <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/cuestionan-datos-oficiales-pobreza/">40 percent of citizens</a> survive on less than $2.50 a day. </p>
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<p>As the director of Nicaragua’s Jesuit Migration Network, Lea Montes, explains, remittances keep <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2017/11/05/suplemento/la-prensa-domingo/2325318-los-tres-caminos-del-migrante-nicaraguense">many families housed and fed</a>.</p>
<p>As she points out, “It costs a family of four about $400 a month to get by, but the minimum wage is only $177 a month here.”</p>
<h2>Juana the florist</h2>
<p>Take the case of 70-year-old Juana Jiménez, a single mother who in the mid-1990s received a U.S. work visa – her “gift from God” – and worked as a florist in Miami for nearly 20 years. </p>
<p>The $200 to $300 a month that Jiménez sent home covered medical expenses for her son Erik, who was born with severe disabilities, and saw her family through Nicaragua’s leanest post-revolutionary years.</p>
<p>Remittances, in both Nicaragua and other developing countries, have <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/5096">social benefits</a> beyond keeping individual households out of poverty. Research shows that in such countries they have contributed to <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/DoRemittancesPromoteFinancialDevelopment.pdf">reductions in poverty</a>, helped increase access to health care and <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeedeveco/v_3a97_3ay_3a2012_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a156-165.htm">improved school attendance</a> by freeing children from the need to work.</p>
<p>Rather than complement government programs in those places, however, research shows that all to often, migrant remittances actually replace them. </p>
<p>For example, scholars <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233576307_Exit_Without_Leaving_Political_Disengagement_in_High_Migration_Municipalities_in_Mexico">Gary Goodman and Jonathan T. Hiskey</a> have found that, in Mexico, local governments often reduce their expenditures in areas that consistently receive remittances from abroad.</p>
<p>And as remittances increase, electoral participation in democratic countries with high migration tends to <a href="http://www.roygermano.com/uploads/4/5/0/2/45027125/germano2013.pdf">decline</a>. Rather than lobby public officials to upgrade their health clinic, say, or pave a road, citizens may look to the relatively well-off diaspora for solutions.</p>
<p>For a decade, the dual domestic impacts of international migration – economic growth and diminished citizen pressure – proved a winning combination for Ortega. </p>
<p>But then his government responded to April’s uprising with deadly repression.</p>
<h2>Remittances and dictators</h2>
<p>Nicaraguan migrants did not trigger the protests against Ortega, nor are they the reason the demonstrations grew and strengthened.</p>
<p>But, today, my research shows, they are now helping to keep this pro-democracy movement alive by <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/the-caravan-across-europe-to-denounce-whats-happening-in-nicaragua/">informing the international community</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/NicasAutoconvocadosExtranjero/?hc_ref=ARTYcUFJCrcCzptG6pnxBRqCFUB67fgIRinvil2nn-z9hJvg6yewheDWIUDKOoodrws">creating international advocacy networks</a>, housing refugees and <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/nicaraguaprotest">channeling funds to anti-Ortega groups</a>. </p>
<p>It is too soon to know precisely how critical, or how financially substantial, migrant support has been to Nicaragua’s insurgency. </p>
<p>But studies done in other countries show that migrants from authoritarian countries frequently <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12382">fund protests against dictators</a>.</p>
<p>According to political scientist Idean Salehyan, an expert in <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100235990">transnational rebellions</a>, more than 50 percent of all national uprisings after World War II – including those in Cuba, Ireland, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – were spearheaded by insurgents abroad.</p>
<p>That’s because migrants do not just change their home countries financially. They also influence the way local residents think.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239002/original/file-20181002-85611-1ldgb1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicaraguan expats protesting the Ortega government outside the Organization of American States headquarters in Washington on June 4, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://binaryapi.ap.org/5a927309f2844f4882debd3ff0e0b666/preview/AP18155615449559.jpg?wm=api&ver=0">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having connections with migrants living in more developed countries <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X10001270">can encourage local children to stay in school</a>, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-009-9080-7">improve access to health care</a> and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0010414009331733">seed support for democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the influx of ideas and mindsets acquired abroad, known as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2011.521361">social remittances</a>, can transform domestic politics. </p>
<p>At first, the mass exodus of Nicaraguans aided Ortega in his quest to amass power and wealth. </p>
<p>Now, those same migrants may contribute to his overthrow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Waddell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nicaraguan migrants send over US$1 billion home each year. This money has played a changing role in domestic politics – first boosting the Ortega regime and, now, sustaining the uprising against him.Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1005072018-08-21T10:33:15Z2018-08-21T10:33:15ZVenezuelan oil fueled the rise and fall of Nicaragua’s Ortega regime<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/petroleo-venezolano-provoca-el-auge-y-caida-del-regimen-de-ortega-en-nicaragua-101940">Leer en español</a></em>.</p>
<p>The downfall of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has been <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/07/25/nicaragua-view-left">dizzyingly fast</a>. </p>
<p>In January 2018, he had the <a href="https://www.hispantv.com/noticias/nicaragua/368452/daniel-ortega-popularidad-presidente-latinoamericano">highest approval rating of any Central American president</a>, at <a href="https://www.tn8.tv/nacionales/443603-presidente-daniel-ortega-mejor-evaluado-america-latina/">54 percent</a>. Today, Nicaraguans are calling for <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2018/07/18/5b4f9174e5fdea94188b45c3.html">Ortega’s resignation</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega, a former Sandinista rebel who previously ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, first showed signs of weakness in early April, when students protested his mismanagement of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/nicaragua-rainforest-fire-costa-rica">massive forest fire</a> in Nicaragua’s biggest nature reserve. </p>
<p>By April 19, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, including <a href="https://www.latercera.com/mundo/noticia/excomandante-la-revolucion-sandinista-daniel-ortega-peor-somoza-asesinatos-una-represion-brutal/215798/">former Ortega supporters</a>, joined the demonstrations, after his government rammed through an unpopular social security reform. </p>
<p>Since then, <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/124.asp">police officers and pro-government forces</a> have killed more than 450 protesters and injured at least 2,500. </p>
<p>In an echo of Nicaragua’s past, foreign money has contributed to the country’s current unrest. In the 1970s, the U.S. supported the regime of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1986/jun/28/usa.marktran">Gen. Anastasio Somoza</a> – a brutal dictator who was eventually overthrown by <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/group/arts/nicaragua/discovery_eng/timeline/">Ortega and his revolutionary peers in 1979’s Sandinista Revolution</a>. </p>
<p>This time, it’s not the U.S. that’s supporting an unpopular Nicaraguan dictator, it’s Venezuela. </p>
<h2>Oil diplomacy from Venezuela</h2>
<p>I am a former Nicaraguan resident, who was recently forced out of the country by violence. I am also a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin_Waddell">scholar</a> of Latin America’s political economy. And my research in Nicaragua suggests that Venezuelan oil money helps explain Ortega’s rise – and his current fall.</p>
<p>Ortega <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/08/1">was re-elected to the presidency in 2007</a> after two decades out of power. At the time, he was one of <a href="https://mondediplo.com/2011/11/04latinamerica">many left-leaning leaders</a> in the region. </p>
<p>Venezuela, then led by the socialist leader Hugo Chávez, immediately began <a href="https://confidencial.atavist.com/los-petrodlares-de-venezuela918v4">sending billions of dollars worth of cheap oil</a> – its biggest export and most valuable commodity – to Nicaragua. According to <a href="https://nestoravendano.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/la-economia-de-nicaragua-esta-en-juego-en-venezuela/">Nicaraguan economist Adolfo Acevedo</a>, between 2007 and 2016, Venezuela shipped US$3.7 billion in oil to Nicaragua.</p>
<p>“Oil diplomacy” was standard practice in Venezuela at the time. In the early 2000s, Venezuela was one of Latin America’s <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2017&locations=ZJ-CL&start=2007&year_low_desc=true">richest countries</a>. Chávez used his economic brawn to support allies in Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil by sending them <a href="https://www.libertaddigital.com/economia/chavez-regala-53000-millones-de-dolares-a-sus-aliados-mientras-arruina-venezuela-1276382056/">financial aid and cheap crude</a>.</p>
<p>Venezuela offered the Ortega regime unusually favorable terms of trade. His government paid 50 percent of the cost of each shipment within 90 days of receipt. The remainder was due within 23 years and financed at 2 percent interest. </p>
<p>This cheap fuel was distributed at market prices by Nicaragua’s government gas company, DNP. The government’s nice profit margin helped spur a period of <a href="http://www.bancomundial.org/es/country/nicaragua/overview">remarkable economic growth in Nicaragua</a>. </p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2016, Ortega’s government spent nearly 40 percent of oil proceeds to bolster <a href="https://nacla.org/node/6313">ambitious social welfare programs</a>, including micro-financing for small businesses, food for the hungry and subsidized housing for the poor. </p>
<p>These initiatives contributed to <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Nicaragua-Succeeds-in-Slashing-Poverty-Rates-Inequality-20170705-0031.html">significant poverty reductions across Nicaragua</a>, earning <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/gracias-dios-al-comandante/">Ortega and his Sandinista party</a> widespread popular support.</p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2017, Nicaragua’s gross domestic product <a href="https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=NI">grew at an average of 4.1 percent a year</a>. The boom peaked in 2012, with a stunning 6.4 percent growth in GDP. </p>
<p>The year before, Venezuela had sent a record $557 million in oil to Nicaragua – the equivalent of 6 percent of the Central American country’s <a href="https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=NI">total gross domestic product</a>. </p>
<h2>Ortega’s oil wealth</h2>
<p>Beyond jump-starting the Nicaraguan economy, Venezuelan oil also directly benefited the Ortega family. </p>
<p>DNP, Nicaragua’s national oil distributor, is managed by Ortega’s daughter-in-law, <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/06/01/economia/2428449-albanisa-y-la-dnp-tras-importacion-de-fuel-oil-para-la-generacion-electrica">Yadira Leets Marín</a>.</p>
<p>According to investigative <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/the-right-to-know-about-albanisa/">reporting by the Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial</a>, the 60 percent of earnings from Venezuelan oil sales not spent on social programs – roughly $2.4 billion – was channeled through a Venezuelan-Nicaraguan private joint venture called <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/daniel-inc-how-nicaraguas-ortega-financed-a-political-dynasty">Albanisa</a>, run by President Ortega’s son, Rafael Ortega.</p>
<p>The funds were invested in shadowy private businesses controlled by the Ortega family, including a wind energy project, an oil refinery, an airline, a cellphone company, a hotel, gas stations, luxury condominiums and a fish farm. </p>
<p>There is no public accounting of Albanisa’s investments or profits. But according to Albanisa’s former deputy manager, Rodrigo Obragon, who <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/daniel-inc-how-nicaraguas-ortega-financed-a-political-dynasty">spoke with Univision in May</a>, President “Ortega used Albanisa to buy everybody off in a way never seen before in the history of Nicaragua.” </p>
<p>Ortega’s personal wealth is unconfirmed. But reliable sources, including the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nicaraguas-leftist-ortega-embraces-businessand-authoritarianism-1478251804">Wall Street Journal</a>, say that his family has amassed one of the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/1014/p06s01-woam.html">largest fortunes in the country</a>.</p>
<h2>An uphill battle</h2>
<p>Ortega’s landmark social programs, coupled with the lucrative business ventures that allowed him to buy support, made him the most powerful Nicaraguan leader since Somoza. </p>
<p>During his 11 years in office, Ortega has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/01/nicaragua-scraps-presidential-term-limits-201412951043190534.html">abolished presidential term limits</a>, installed his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/world/americas/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-house-of-cards.html">wife as vice president</a> and <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/04/26/riots-threaten-nicaraguas-autocratic-president">banned opposition parties from running in elections</a>. </p>
<p>In late 2015, plummeting global oil prices sent Venezuela’s mismanaged economy into recession, and then <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-venezuelas-crisis-7-essential-reads-89018">into a full-on collapse</a>. </p>
<p>Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, was forced to cut back on oil diplomacy. As a result, in 2017 and 2018 his government sent no oil shipments at all to Nicaragua.</p>
<p>In effect, Ortega had to <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/cobro-plan-techo-causa-inconformidad/">cut his landmark anti-poverty programs</a>, <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/01/31/politica/2369533-daniel-ortega-manda-reformas-leyes-que-afectan-la-tarifa-y-el-subsidio-energetico">eliminate subsidies on public utilities</a> and raise gas <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2017/10/02/economia/2306541-gasolinazo-provoca-alzas-en-serie-en-varios-sectores-de-nicaragua">prices at the pump</a>. </p>
<p>Support for his regime <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/464323-cid-gallup-ortega-pierde-apoyo/">eroded quickly</a> after that.</p>
<p>Like the dictator he helped oust three decades ago, Ortega has relied on foreign money to buy his way through challenges. Now that Venezuelan money has dried up, he’s got little left to offer his people – one more reason, protesters say, Ortega’s time is up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Waddell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cheap Venezuelan oil boosted Nicaragua’s economy and funded President Daniel Ortega’s many anti-poverty programs. With Venezuela in crisis, the oil has dried up – as has support for Ortega’s regime.Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/999242018-07-20T10:36:37Z2018-07-20T10:36:37ZBloody uprising in Nicaragua could trigger the next Central American refugee crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228297/original/file-20180718-142411-15qe06i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Militias guard a barricade after police and pro-government militias stormed a rebel-held neighborhood in Masaya, Nicaragua, on July 17, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nicaragua-Unrest/35156768a79c41da9cdf81cb1e827da6/4/0">AP Photo/Cristibal Venegas</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Central American migrants have long been at the center of what consecutive U.S. administrations have called the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/crisis-border-numbers/">immigration “crisis.”</a></p>
<p>Each year, thousands of Central Americans are caught attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully. According to the <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/crisis-border-not-numbers">Migration Policy Institute</a>, the vast majority are asylum-seekers from <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/ofo-sw-border-inadmissibles-fy2017">Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador</a>, <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/understanding-central-american-refugee-crisis">fleeing</a> the region’s brutal gang violence and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-central-america-gangs-like-ms-13-are-bad-but-corrupt-politicians-may-be-worse-86113">societal chaos</a>.</p>
<p>Typically, only a tiny fraction of migrants come to the U.S. from the neighboring Central American nation of Nicaragua. Their numbers are so small that Nicaraguans are rarely even mentioned in <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions">Customs and Border Protection</a> reports. </p>
<p>But Nicaragua has been in turmoil for months, as an uprising against the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party grows ever bloodier. Last weekend, three college students were killed during a 15-hour <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/ortega-ataco-con-sana-la-unan-pese-a-%E2%80%A8negociacion-de-estudiantes/">clash at a church on the campus of the National University of Nicaragua</a>, in Managua, which had been occupied by anti-government protesters since April. </p>
<p>At least 350 people have been killed so far, <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/07/19/nacionales/2450465-los-numeros-rojos-de-la-crisis-en-nicaragua">most at the hands of pro-government forces</a>.</p>
<p>This violence may prompt many Nicaraguans to start fleeing their country soon, too.</p>
<h2>Central America’s ‘safest country’</h2>
<p>Nicaragua, home to approximately 6.2 million people, is one of the <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/LAC/chronic_poverty_overview.pdf">poorest</a> countries in the Western Hemisphere. </p>
<p>But it has largely avoided the widespread crime and instability that for decades has dogged this corner of the world. Nicaragua’s 2017 homicide rate of <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/2017-homicide-round-up/">seven killings per 100,000</a> was the lowest in Central America. </p>
<p>Neighboring El Salvador’s murder rate was <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/11/latin-americas-homicide-epidemic">60 per 100,000 in 2017</a>, and Honduras’s was 43 per 100,000. </p>
<p>When Nicaraguans migrate, typically they are seeking better-paying jobs. </p>
<p>Rather than travel all the way to the United States, economic migrants from Nicaragua mostly head to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-nicaragua-no-migrants-20140830-story.html">neighboring Costa Rica</a>, the stablest and most prosperous country in Central America. An estimated 500,000 Nicaraguans currently live and work in Costa Rica. </p>
<h2>Nicaragua in flames</h2>
<p>This migration pattern may soon change. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.currenthistory.com/Article.php?ID=1215">My research on violence in Central America</a> reveals that the destabilizing conditions that have historically prompted many Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans to flee are now taking root in Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Since April, the government of Daniel Ortega has been trying to crush a nationwide protest movement that <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">demands his resignation</a>. </p>
<p>Demonstrations <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/violence-protests-nicaragua-leave-dead-55126320">first erupted</a> in Nicaragua on April 16, 2018, after the government announced social security reforms that would raise costs for retirees and workers. Police soon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/world/americas/nicaragua-uprising-protesters.html">cracked down on protesters</a>. Students took to the streets. </p>
<p>Within days, <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1A6-4s-QqWSNKKm3vXDkqrdxM38Plyxnq&usp=sharing">tens of thousands of Nicaraguans</a> were protesting in cities and towns nationwide.</p>
<p>In response, the regime dispatched <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/nicaragua-violence-soars-doubts-responsible-dwindle/">police clad in riot gear, hired henchmen and state-sponsored paramilitary groups</a> to put down the protests. So far, these pro-Ortega forces have killed hundreds of people and wounded more than 2,100, according to the nonprofit <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/10/nicaragua-senior-officials-responsible-abuse">Human Rights Watch</a>.</p>
<h2>Outsourcing violence</h2>
<p>In its attempt to suppress the uprising, Ortega’s government has supplemented its police forces with groups of armed partisans, vigilantes and death squads.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/113.asp">Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a>, which visited the country in May, the regime outsourced protest-repression duties to informal armed groups associated with the state. These so-called “para-police” – formed by citizens allied with Ortega’s Sandinista Party – work in <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/los-escuadrones-de-la-muerte-de-ortega/">coordination with the police</a>.</p>
<p>Outsourcing state violence is not a novel tactic. In <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/nicaragua-parapolice-groups-turn-criminal/">Venezuela</a>, the authoritarian government of Nicolás Maduro has also armed militant supporters and supported criminal gangs willing to “defend” the regime. </p>
<p>During Central America’s civil war period, in the 1980s, the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador also <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x">used paramilitaries, vigilantes and groups of sympathizers</a> to suppress protests and punish dissidence. </p>
<p>In Guatemala, the army mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in civilian “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/18/world/guatemala-mobilizes-700000-civilians-in-local-patrols.html">self-defense</a>” patrols to fight guerrillas who opposed the country’s military dictatorship. El Salvador’s government built <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdf">wartime death squads</a> responsible for bloody massacres against civilians, or anyone assumed to support the anti-regime insurgency.</p>
<p>As the post-war <a href="http://www.odhag.org.gt/html/Default.htm">truth and justice commissions</a> in both countries would later <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Report_of_the_Joint_Group_for_the_Invest.html?id=cb4qHAAACAAJ">document</a>, many of these armed factions survived the end of the conflicts. </p>
<p>By the late 1990s, death squads and paramilitaries were using their government connections and expertise to prey on the Central American population and <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdf">infiltrate these countries’</a> new criminal justice institutions. </p>
<p>People often associated crime in Central America with gangs like MS-13. But my <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">research</a> shows that the foundations for the region’s current criminal violence were laid decades ago, when Central American governments armed thugs and deployed them against their own people. </p>
<p>Outsourcing state violence may temporarily quash popular dissent. But it creates the conditions for more violence – not just political violence but criminal violence, too.</p>
<h2>Creating the conditions for rampant crime</h2>
<p>Nicaragua managed to avoid such post-war chaos in large part because of <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/01/12/what-explains-nicaragua-surprisingly-low-murder-rate/GTL3T5Ps1KwbbOdUMgB26I/story.html">institutional reforms</a> undertaken in the 1990s after the Sandinista revolution. </p>
<p>The Sandinista rebels <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=0ahUKEwj61d6I7qvcAhWIAHwKHcj3BJAQFgiAATAO&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Farchive%2Fpolitics%2F1978%2F10%2F15%2Frebels-train-to-overthrow-somoza%2Fb2a78bc4-1a64-465a-83cd-82876f955606%2F&usg=AOvVaw3c9ZSNjaWrtZ5W6JBeWXs5">overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979</a> and dismantled the country’s infamously brutal National Guard. However, they emerged from the revolution with firm control over the new police and army.</p>
<p>After the Sandinistas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/world/turnover-in-nicaragua-sandinistas-loss-to-be-felt-by-other-leftist-movements.html">lost</a> power in the 1990 presidential election, the new government of Violeta Chamorro undertook a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x">complex set of reforms</a> that, among other changes, established clear boundaries between law enforcement, the army and political parties in Nicaragua. </p>
<p>Those reforms strengthened the Nicaraguan state such that non-state forces could no longer violently confront – or substitute – government institutions.</p>
<p>The separation between politics and security forces began to erode when Daniel Ortega – who had previously ruled the country during the revolutionary 1980s – was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/08/1">re-elected</a> in 2006.</p>
<p>As he <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/11/16/unchecked-demise-of-nicaraguan-democracy-pub-74761">accumulated power</a>, ultimately abolishing term limits to run for a third term, Ortega and his Sandinista party systematically undermined Nicaragua’s independent <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/maltrato-corrupcion-la-pn/">law enforcement</a> institutions. </p>
<h2>Dismantling Nicaragua’s strong state</h2>
<p>Those institutions had kept Nicaraguans relatively safe for over a decade. </p>
<p>Even as criminal organizations, death squads and, increasingly, street gangs were fueling <a href="https://www.unodc.org/gsh/">record levels of violence elsewhere in Central America</a>, Nicaragua’s murder rate in the early 2010s was similar to Costa Rica’s. </p>
<p>Evidence suggests that organized crime groups and drug cartels are now <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/nicaragua-claims-no-cartel-presence-but-past-cases-tell-a-different-story/">operating in Nicaragua</a>, too, taking advantage of the ongoing chaos there to deepen and expand their networks. </p>
<p>This also follows a pattern I’ve seen before in the region. After Honduras’ 2009 coup, <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/echoes-2009-honduras-again-approaches-chaos/">political unrest</a> laid the groundwork for collusion between the state and organized crime groups. </p>
<p>Already, many Nicaraguan youths have begun <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/en-medio-de-la-represion-jovenes-huyen-de-nicaragua-a-costa-rica-por-veredas-para-salvar-el-pellejo">flocking to the Costa Rican border</a>, fleeing the paramilitary onslaught. </p>
<p>But Costa Rica has long wanted to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-anti-immigrant-attitudes-violence-and-nationalism-in-costa-rica-73899">close</a> its borders to Nicaraguan economic migrants. As Nicaragua’s crisis deepens, it will surely tighten border security. </p>
<p>Soon enough, it is likely that many more Nicaraguans will join other Central Americans on their long northward trek, seeking refuge over the U.S. border from unrelenting violence in their home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>José Miguel Cruz receives funding from the Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>Nicaragua has exploded in violence since mass protests began against President Daniel Ortega in April, with hundreds dead and thousands wounded. Amid such chaos, criminal violence is likely to follow.Jose Miguel Cruz, Director of Research, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/981232018-06-18T16:40:15Z2018-06-18T16:40:15ZNicaraguans try to topple a dictator — again<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222663/original/file-20180611-191978-ovz19w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nicaragua, which overthrew its last violent dictator in 1979, is the only Latin American country since Cuba to stage a successful revolution. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-intenta-derrocar-a-un-dictador-de-nuevo-99729"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>After months of near-constant protest in Nicaragua, at least <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44779257">300 people are dead</a>, including four police officers, 1,000 people are injured, and President Daniel Ortega – an authoritarian leader who once seemed invincible – is on his last legs.</p>
<p>Citizens first took to the streets of Managua in <a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/04/tropical-spring-land-lakes-volcanoes/">early April</a> after Ortega’s government was slow to respond to a massive forest fire inside Indio Maiz, the nation’s second-largest nature reserve. When the government quietly decided to tax retirees’ pension checks and increase employers’ insurance costs a week later, nationwide <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44398673">marches gained steam</a>. </p>
<p>Police soon began <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/4159175/student-protesters-dead-in-nicaragua-as-clashes-with-police-continue">killing protesters</a>. What started as targeted, loosely organized protests quickly transformed into a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">movement</a>. The goal: to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/world/americas/nicaragua-uprising-protesters.html">remove President Daniel Ortega</a> and his family from power.</p>
<h2>Nicaragua vs. Goliath</h2>
<p>Can Nicaragua, Latin America’s <a href="http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2016/12/nicaraguas-economy-is-growing-but-the-poor-may-be-falling-behind/">second poorest country</a>, bring down its mighty regime by simply refusing to leave the streets? Local history suggests it can.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin_Waddell">Latin American scholar currently based in Managua, Nicaragua</a>. My research on the ground suggests that presidents in this region who are challenged by mass protests fall much more frequently than one might suspect. </p>
<p>Most elected leaders in Latin America, a heavily democratic region, finish their terms. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192512115604904">According to Christopher Martinez</a>, a political science professor at Chile’s Temuco Catholic University, just 16 percent of South American presidents have resigned or been impeached since 1979. </p>
<p>However, that changes when leaders earn the ire of their citizens. Between 1985 and 2011, fully 70 percent of South American leaders who faced mass street protests <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23040829">were ultimately removed from office</a>.</p>
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<p>Nicaraguan protesters face a genuine Goliath in Daniel Ortega. In the only country since Cuba to orchestrate a <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230097">successful armed revolution</a> in Latin America, Ortega – a former Sandinista guerrilla who helped Nicaragua oust dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 – is a giant.</p>
<p>Ortega has been the most powerful person in Nicaragua for nearly 40 years and president for 16 of them. While out of office, from 1990 to 2006, Ortega effectively controlled the country as a powerful Sandinista delegate in the National Assembly. </p>
<p>Even when the Sandinistas were in the minority, Ortega could still bring the country to a halt by organizing mass protests, as he did countless times between <a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3418">1990 and 2006</a>. This irony is surely not lost on today’s anti-Ortega protesters.</p>
<p>But, as author Malcolm Gladwell writes in his latest book “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-by-malcolm-gladwell.html">David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants</a>,” “Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the source of great weakness.” </p>
<p>In other words, dictators are not toppled, they trip over their own feet. In Ortega’s case, his greatest strength – his sheer audacity – has now fostered dangerous complacency. </p>
<h2>How to topple a dictator</h2>
<p>Latin America scholar Kathryn Hochstetler <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20434009">offers</a> a basic formula for predicting whether Latin American presidents will fall to mass protest. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222664/original/file-20180611-191947-j8tocs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ortega has dominated Nicaraguan politics for 40 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If street protesters have the support of the legislature but there is no bloody crackdown, she says, a president’s odds of surviving are high. That’s how former Nicaraguan president Enrique Bolaños, who governed Nicaragua from 2002 to 2007, managed to stay in office <a href="https://www.latinnews.com/component/k2/item/2124-nicaragua--protests-take-bola%C3%B1os-administration-to-the-brink.html">despite protesters’ calls for his resignation</a>.</p>
<p>When leaders opt to use force against peaceful protesters, it seems, they enter a dangerous path. Since the early 1990s, almost every Latin American president who came to power in a free and fair election but later used violence to quell street uprisings was soon ousted. </p>
<p>The exception is in Venezuela. President Hugo Chávez went on to rule for 11 years after using deadly force against protesters during a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/the-big-picture/2018/02/hugo-chavez-coup-happened-180207062954307.html">2002 coup attempt</a>. </p>
<p>His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has remained in office despite <a href="https://www.observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve/sin-categoria/venezuela-6-729-protestas-y-157-fallecidos-desde-el-1-de-abril-de-2017">killing 163 protesters in 2017</a>, though I would argue that by the time Maduro came to power <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/venezuela/report-venezuela/">Venezuela was no longer a true democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Dictators, ¡que se vayan!</h2>
<p>In a region with a <a href="http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/democracies-and-dictatorships-latin-america">history of violent dictators</a>, state repression sparks citizens’ anger. </p>
<p>Nicaragua has seen major political conflict. The Sandinista rebels staged a seven-year insurrection in 1979 to free the country from military rule. An 11-year civil war between the Sandinista government and <a href="https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/timeline-nicaragua.php">U.S.-backed Contras</a> followed. </p>
<p>At this point, there’s clearly <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/464323-cid-gallup-ortega-pierde-apoyo/">little tolerance</a> for more bloodshed. Protesters’ resolve is likely hardened by the fact that most of the dead are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/world/americas/nicaragua-protests-killings.html">young students</a>.</p>
<p>Isolated by decades of power, Ortega seems to have underestimated the degree to which <a href="https://www.cenidh.org/recursos/57/">state violence and repression</a> would bring together factions that he had so adeptly divided for so long. Today, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-44283106">students</a>, <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/ortega-principal-responsable-violacion-derechos-humanos/">human rights groups</a>, <a href="http://www.nicaraguadigital.com/cosep-ortega-debe-irse-lo-mas-pronto-posible/">the business sector</a> and the <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/05/12/america/1526083994_942099.html">Catholic Church</a> are united behind the goal of removing the president from office. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2018/05/13/5af87a04e5fdea52458b467d.html">The military</a> has publicly said that it will not leave the barracks to repress citizens. If the generals stick to their word, I believe Ortega’s days are numbered.</p>
<h2>A fast fall from grace</h2>
<p>Ortega’s fall from grace has come remarkably fast. </p>
<p>At the 27th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in 2006, Ortega rode a white horse into frenzied crowds on the Plaza de La Paz in downtown Managua. Later that year he would be narrowly <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6117704.stm">re-elected as Nicaragua’s president</a>.</p>
<p>In the years to follow, the government began placing <a href="https://cronkite.asu.edu/buffett/nicaragua/love-him-or-hate-him-few-doubt-ortegas-political-skill/">massive billboards and posters featuring Ortega’s image around the country</a>. The president centralized power in the executive branch, took control of Nicaragua’s National Assembly and Supreme Court, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/01/nicaragua-scraps-presidential-term-limits-201412951043190534.html">abolished term limits</a>, and in 2017, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/07/nicaragua-elects-worlds-first-husband-and-wife-pair-as-president/">appointed his wife</a> as Nicaragua’s vice president.</p>
<p>Ortega was re-elected in 2016 for his third term with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/07/nicaragua-president-daniel-ortega-reelected-landslide-vote-rigging">72 percent of the vote</a>. But only <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/07/nicaragua-president-daniel-ortega-reelected-landslide-vote-rigging">30 percent of Nicaragua’s population voted</a> in that year’s presidential election, and opposition parties alleged fraud.</p>
<p>Perhaps his legitimacy was already in question back then. Now, Ortega’s demise seems as inevitable as his rise to power once did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98123/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Waddell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History shows that Latin American presidents usually don’t last long after they use violence to repress mass protests. Is Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega the next to fall?Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/957762018-05-02T10:40:45Z2018-05-02T10:40:45ZNicaragua protests threaten an authoritarian regime that looked like it might never fall<p><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/violence-protests-nicaragua-leave-dead-55126320">More than a month</a> of protests in Nicaragua have now left <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nicaraguas-army-urges-end-violence-protests-continue-55139232">at least 60 people dead</a>. President Daniel Ortega, whose government once seemed unshakable, faces <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/world/americas/nicaragua-students-protest.html">ongoing demands for his ouster</a>.</p>
<p>Demonstrations first erupted on April 16 after the government announced social security reforms that would raise costs for retirees and workers. A <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/19/departamentales/2406199-antimotines-reprimen-protestas-en-masaya-contra-reformas-al-inss">police crackdown on protesters</a> merely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/world/americas/nicaragua-uprising-protesters.html">fanned the flames</a>. Within days, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans were taking to the streets daily to protest in cities and towns <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1A6-4s-QqWSNKKm3vXDkqrdxM38Plyxnq&usp=sharing">nationwide</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega, <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/nicaragua-return-caudillismo">a former leftist revolutionary</a>, <a href="https://www.rienner.com/title/Nicaragua_Navigating_the_Politics_of_Democracy">has moved to the right since his 2006 election</a>. He has also centralized his power, controlling the media, restricting opposition and giving government jobs to family and friends. His wife, Rosario Murillo, was Ortega’s running mate in 2016 and is now Nicaragua’s vice president. </p>
<p>In 2014, Ortega <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26146038">abolished term limits for the presidency</a>, with the blessing of a National Assembly stacked with loyalists.</p>
<p>As scholars of social conflict and regime change in Latin America, we know that authoritarian governments’ survival depends on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/422435">controlling institutions</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1PlRlcgQdpMC&dq=bueno+de+mesquita+logic+of+political+survival&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s">maintaining alliances</a> with powerful forces like the military, the Church and the elite class. Nicaragua’s protest movement has imperiled Ortega’s carefully constructed coalition – perhaps fatally.</p>
<h2>Ortega then and now</h2>
<p>Ortega first came to power in 1979 after Nicaragua’s Sandinista <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_end_and_the_beginning.html?id=QZUWAAAAYAAJ">revolution overthrew dictator</a> Anastasio Somoza.</p>
<p>Back then, Ortega’s rise hinged on <a href="https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0822974797">creating a broad coalition</a>. With the support of traditional opposition parties, many business elites, students and peasants, his Sandinista National Liberation Front moved from marginal guerrilla group to ruling party. </p>
<p>The Sandinista government <a href="https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1588267989">stayed in power for 10 years</a>, creating a socialist economy, undertaking land reform and wealth redistribution. </p>
<p>Ortega returned to power by winning elections in 2006 – this time with a new, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2010.00099.x">right-leaning</a> platform that <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs41603-017-0005-6">espoused traditional Christian values</a> and pro-business economic policies.</p>
<p>Ortega had rocky relations with the Catholic Church <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ye9ECQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">during the revolution</a>. But since 2006 he <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575">has embraced both Catholic bishops and evangelical groups</a>. Beyond religious rhetoric, he has maintained Nicaragua’s <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X08326020">abortion ban</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2015.00290.x">sought to control LGBTQ activism</a>.</p>
<p>The business elite <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/nicaragua-reborn">likewise struck a new bargain</a> with <a href="http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/152/15253710006.pdf">Ortega when he was elected</a> in 2006. In the 1980s, Ortega worked to <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807844564/capitalists-and-revolution-in-nicaragua/">seize private enterprises</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=GNFRMO4QYQ8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">redistribute farmland</a>. Now, he works with business leaders to set Nicaragua’s economic policy and labor conditions. In turn, they have supported his regime.</p>
<p>For a while, this coalition held. Until recently, Ortega’s opposition was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2016.1256284">fragmented and weak</a>. Since 2007, there have been few <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2016/03/30/politica/2010156-un-ano-de-miercoles-de-protesta">protests</a>, which were usually met with <a href="https://monitor.civicus.org/newsfeed/2016/12/15/brutal-repression-protests-against-nicaragua-canal/">violent repression</a>.</p>
<h2>Fractured coalition</h2>
<p>Ortega’s unilateral announcement of the social security reforms on April 16 – a decision he made <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/461429-cosep-apelara-reformas-inss/">without consulting</a> Nicaragua’s business community – ruptured the business side of this pact. </p>
<p>By April 20, the major business associations <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/20/economia/2407132-cosep-amcham-y-conimipyme-llaman-trabajador-marchar-el-lunes-contra-reforma-la-seguridad-social">were calling on workers</a> to protest the reforms.</p>
<p>Police repression and the perceived injustice of the social security reforms drove the Church <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/29/suplemento/la-prensa-domingo/2411543-estos-son-los-rostros-de-las-protestas-de-abril">away from Ortega</a>, too. </p>
<p>First, Managua Bishop <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/monsenor-baez-su-causa-es-justa-y-la-iglesia-los-apoya/">Silvio Baéz said that</a> the protesters’ cause was “just” and offered the Cathedral in Managua as a refuge for student protesters. Soon, the bishop was publicly <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/25/nacionales/2409593-monsenor-silvio-baez-el-objeto-del-dialogo-es-la-democratizacion">calling for negotiation and</a> “democratization” in Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Ortega’s coalition has crumbled. In contrast to the spontaneous protests, this government is so unpopular that it <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/30/nacionales/2411994-gobierno-usa-transporte-publico-para-movilizar-a-sus-simpatizantes-a-marcha-oficialista">has to bus supporters</a> into Managua to stage pro-regime counterdemonstrations. </p>
<h2>Losing the military brass</h2>
<p>Suddenly, Nicaragua seems to be <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/nicaragua-on-the-brink-once-again">on the brink of momentous change</a>. What happens next depends heavily on Nicaragua’s security forces. </p>
<p>Numerous studies confirm that autocratic leaders <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/authoritarianism-9780190880200">can survive mass protest movements</a> only if <a href="https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf">police and the military</a> are willing to <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/cp/2012/00000044/00000002/art00003">continually repress citizens</a>. </p>
<p>In neighboring Honduras, the right-wing president Juan Orlando Hernández, for example, has stayed in power through deadly demonstrations against his government largely because <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/us-silent-as-honduras-protesters-killed-in-post-election-violence">security forces have suppressed protests</a>.</p>
<p>When the armed forces <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17419166.2013.802983">refuse orders</a>, dictators can fall. The 2011 Tahrir Square protests toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak within weeks, once the military <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/cp/2012/00000044/00000002/art00002">abandoned his regime</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2007, Ortega has <a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5081">worked hard to make Nicaragua’s security forces</a> <a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4802">personally loyal to him</a>. He has <a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5330">offered</a> military and police officers promotions, political positions and business opportunities. </p>
<p>These efforts partially succeeded. The police <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/26/nacionales/2409883-policia-nacional-permitio-a-paramilitares-realizar-arrestos-arbitrarios-durante-las-protestas">have actively</a> <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/19/departamentales/2406199-antimotines-reprimen-protestas-en-masaya-contra-reformas-al-inss">stifled dissent in Nicaragua</a>, beating and arresting protesters. They also cooperate with the Sandinista youth wing as a <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2017/07/20/politica/2266403-criticas-a-la-nueva-juventud-sandinista">kind of paramilitary force</a>. </p>
<p>As April’s protests expanded, Ortega appeared on television <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/nicaragua-gobierno-dice-que-busca-el-dialogo-mientras-envia-al-ejercito-a-controlar-las-protestas-que-dejan-10-muertos">flanked by</a> police commissioner Aminta Granera and military commander General Julio César Áviles, demonstrating that he would use military force to stay in power if necessary.</p>
<p>But neither the police nor soldiers seem keen to shed more blood. Some law enforcement officers <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/21/nacionales/2407691-policias-retenidos-por-negarse-reprimir-manifestantes">were actually arrested</a> in April for refusing orders to crack down on anti-regime marches. Then, on April 21, as massive protests roiled central Managua, police violence suddenly and completely ceased – a sign that police commissioner <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/ortega-decide-la-salida-de-granera/">Granera issued an order to stand down</a>. </p>
<p>On May 12, after a deadly flareup between demonstrators and security forces, the military <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nicaraguas-army-urges-end-violence-protests-continue-55139232">called for violence to end</a> and expressed solidarity with the families of protest victims. </p>
<h2>Legacy of the revolution</h2>
<p>This resistance to violence is not surprising given the history of Nicaragua’s security forces. </p>
<p>During the 1979 revolution, President Somoza’s National Guard <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1981/09/27/nicaragua-and-the-sins-of-somoza/aefecab9-6ce9-494d-89dd-2b33967f2389/">met the Sandinistas’ popular uprising with murderous repression</a>. It was Sandinista troops who helped sweep away the dictator and his predatory security apparatus. </p>
<p>Over time, these revolutionary forces <a href="http://www.resdal.org/caeef-resdal/assets/nicaragua---analisis-nicaragua.pdf">took on a professional, nonpartisan and apolitical identity</a>. Today, Nicaragua’s police and the military <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x">are considered</a> among the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-nicaraguas-homicide-rate-so-far-below-that-of-its-central-american-neighbors/">most effective</a> in Central America.</p>
<p>Somoza’s legacy looms large in Nicaragua. In our assessment, today’s military is far more likely to countenance Ortega’s ouster than to murder Nicaraguan citizens in his defense. </p>
<p>To stay in office peacefully, Ortega will have to <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/aumenta-represion-oficial-en-municipios-de-nicaragua/">negotiate</a> his way back into the good graces of the Catholic Church and business leaders – something he has expressed willingness to do. </p>
<p>This is a wily president, though. He has dominated Nicaragua’s political life and consolidated so much power for so long, however, that he can offer numerous concessions without losing much control.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Seth Mosinger received funding from the Herb F. York Global Security Fellowship at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) to conduct fieldwork in Nicaragua from 2015-2016.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kai M. Thaler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For 11 years, Daniel Ortega’s regime has been unshakable. But Nicaragua’s autocratic leader is vulnerable after weeks of deadly protest. Now, some citizens are calling for him to resign.Kai M. Thaler, Ph.D. in Government, Harvard UniversityEric Seth Mosinger, Visiting Assistant Professor, Macalester CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955472018-04-30T13:01:28Z2018-04-30T13:01:28ZOutrage at state violence puts Nicaragua’s president on notice<p>In recent days, protests against social security reform have prompted a violent crackdown in Nicaragua. <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/462489-organismos-continuan-registro-victimas/">At least 42 people have been killed</a> but the final figure will likely be much higher; the government has refused to release the bodies of some of the dead until families sign a <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/victimas-de-la-represion-sin-autopsias/">disclaimer</a> which states that the police were not responsible. This is a level of state violence Nicaragua hasn’t seen since the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown in 1979.</p>
<p>The crisis was sparked by proposed changes to the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS), <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2018/02/06/ms020618-nicaragua-staff-concluding-statement-of-an-imf-staff-visit">requested by the International Monetary Fund</a>, which would entail a rise in social security contributions and a reduction in pensions. This was a guaranteed political flashpoint; government officials have been <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2017/05/12/nacionales/2227974-10-anos-oscuros-negocios-del-inss">accused of siphoning off INSS funds</a> for years, and a previous protest at INSS changes in 2013 had triggered what was until this week one of the government’s <a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2013/06/22/actualidad/1371928618_634126.html">harshest responses to peaceful protest</a>.</p>
<p>The INSS reforms were <a href="https://www.lagaceta.gob.ni/2018/04/072/">announced</a> on April 18, when students were already in the streets protesting the government’s mismanagement of an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/nicaragua-rainforest-fire-costa-rica">ecological crisis</a>, and this contributed to the size of the protests. But it’s the violence of the government crackdown, rather than the reforms themselves, that has transformed the balance of political power. And the underlying tensions fuelling that violence have been building for more than a decade.</p>
<h2>Holding the reins</h2>
<p>Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, first <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/17/newsid_3870000/3870281.stm">came to power</a> in July 1979 as one of the leaders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which spearheaded a broad-based popular movement that toppled the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Somoza-family">Somoza dictatorship</a>. Ortega was initially co-ordinator of the country’s governing junta, and was then elected president in country’s first ever democratic elections in November 1984. A <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1981-1988/central-america">US-backed guerrilla war and economic embargo</a> took a considerable toll, and in 1990 Nicaraguans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/world/turnover-nicaragua-nicaraguan-opposition-routs-sandinistas-us-pledges-aid-tied.html">voted the Sandinistas out of office</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega was elected president once again in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/08/1">November 2006</a>, after 16 years of right-wing anti-Sandinista government. The Nicaraguan constitution limits presidents to two terms, but Ortega had the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/21/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-re-election">limit removed</a> and was re-elected in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-election/nicaraguas-ortega-wins-landslide-re-election-idUSTRE7A50D320111108">2011</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-37892477">2016</a>. He has now held office continuously for more than a decade.</p>
<p>Ortega’s so-called “second revolution” has differed substantially from the first. In an effort to broaden his appeal, Ortega has built alliances with groups that opposed the Sandinistas in the 1980s. </p>
<p>He has courted the Catholic Church, supporting a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/08/29/nicaragua-blanket-ban-abortion-harms-women">total ban on abortion</a> even where the mother’s life is at risk. He has also formed an alliance with COSEP, an association of business leaders who, until the present crisis, had tacitly supported him provided he consulted them on economic matters.</p>
<p>Alongside these innovations, Ortega has continued to rely on his traditional bases of support. Since the 1990s, Nicaragua’s army and police force have been ostensibly apolitical, but both were built from scratch during the revolutionary decade, and to this day they retain strong historical links with Ortega’s FSLN. A series of anti-poverty programmes, partially funded by Venezuela, won support from poor communities, and many poor Nicaraguans have continued to consider Ortega the standard bearer for Nicaragua’s revolutionary tradition. </p>
<p>The result was what looked like a convincing hold on power. In 2016, Vanderbilt University’s LAPOP survey found that <a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/nicaragua/RRR_Nicaragua_AB2016_v10_public_W_12.15.17.pdf">44% of Nicaraguans intended to vote for Ortega</a> in that year’s elections, far more than pledged support for any other political party. Yet by closing off all space for political dissent, Ortega and the FSLN government have squandered their advantage. </p>
<h2>Going too far</h2>
<p>Since 2008, election observers have reported <a href="https://www.panoramaelectoral.org/reportes-elecciones-2016">irregularities</a> in every local and <a href="http://eeas.europa.eu/archives/eueom/pdf/missions/moeue-nicaragua-preliminar-08112011_es.pdf">national election</a>. The most recent election was a foregone conclusion because the leader of the main opposition party was removed from office by Nicaragua’s Supreme Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/26/nicaragua-opposition-daniel-ortega-presidential-election">less than five months before the vote</a>.</p>
<p>The violence has prompted open opposition from the institutions that Ortega relies on. Senior members of the Catholic Church came out in <a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2018/04/21/el-obispo-de-managua-califico-a-los-estudiantes-que-protestan-como-la-reserva-moral-de-nicaragua/">support of the students</a>, and Managua’s cathedral was used as a centre to provide food to protesters during the worst of the violence. Two former chiefs of the <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/23/politica/2408456-general-en-retiro-joaquin-cuadra-el-ejercito-no-tiene-porque-intervenir-en-protestas">army</a> (including the president’s own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEVRyl7tQI">brother</a>) have expressed concern, while the FSLN’s former allies in the private sector participated in a <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/461876-cosep-marcha-hoy-acepta-instaurar-dialogo-urgencia/">massive demonstration</a> in Managua on April 23.</p>
<p>The history of the 1979 revolution still shapes political discourse in Nicaragua, so parallels with the violence of the Somoza era have provoked particular revulsion. The symbolism is potent: scores of demonstrators were held and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/nicaragua-unrest-dozens-detained-protesters-released-180425055125816.html">allegedly beaten</a> at El Chipote, the prison where Ortega himself was held and tortured by the Somoza regime between 1967 and 1974.</p>
<p>Ortega may be saved by the fact that there is no viable candidate to replace him. He and his family have dominated the FSLN for many years, and no opposition party can as yet claim a substantial electoral base. But as the government continues its crackdown on dissent – hospital workers and other government employees were <a href="https://twitter.com/MiguelCanal15/status/989198444504940545">reportedly fired</a> for participating in the April 23 protests – opposition continues to build. </p>
<p>Human rights organisations have <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/exigen-comision-de-la-verdad-para-investigar-represion-y-asesinatos/">demanded an independent truth commission</a> to investigate the violence of the past week. And given the outrage felt by most Nicaraguans right now, it’s difficult to see how Ortega can stay in power without acceding.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hilary Francis has received funding from the British Academy and NERC-AHRC-ESRC.</span></em></p>By remorselessly crushing political dissent, Daniel Ortega has squandered his people’s goodwill and eroded his power base.Hilary Francis, Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in Global Challenges, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.