Voice of America
A woman waves the national flag of Nicaragua during one of a series of fiery protests rocking cities around the country.
During a visit in April to my former home in Nicaragua, I got to see first-hand the waves of national protests sweeping the country. Tens of thousands of people have joined spontaneous demonstrations in Managua and other cities across the country, some involving violent clashes with police, and dozens of deaths. The protests, it has been reported, were sparked by a raise in retirement rates and a cut in benefits that the government of President Daniel Ortega imposed by decree on April 18.
As a longtime resident of the country, I reached out to friends and contacts, asking whether the protests were really grassroots or the result of some kind of U.S.-supported rightwing manipulation, as has occurred elsewhere in the region. I learned that the protests are real, not connected to established political parties, and that the trigger was far more than social security cuts.
Were the protests really grassroots, or some kind of U.S.-supported rightwing manipulation?
I spoke with Ernesto (a pseudonym to protect his identity), who was a fellow government worker with me during the 1980s in the midst of the Contra War. He had been an insurrectionist during the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and a Sandinista “militant” (a member of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN). During the Sandinista People’s Revolution (1979-1990), we worked together providing technical assistance to rural municipalities.
Since 2006, he told me, the government of Daniel Ortega has been hiring thugs from impoverished neighborhoods to intimidate and put down protests. Many Sandinistas, he said, are ashamed of this dirty business. “This FSLN,” he lamented, “is a different FSLN from the one we were willing to give our lives for.”
Videos taken during the recent protests clearly show goon squads in pickup trucks and on motorcycles driving up, beating protesters with clubs, pipes and heavy rocks, and then quickly leaving to the next attack, despite the presence of the police. Sources are confirming over forty deaths so far. The independent Human Rights Commision reports confirm my friend’s observations of political repression.
I listened to human rights activist Ana Quirós, director of the Center for Information and Consulting Services on Health, who treated the accusation that government critics are in the pay of the United States with derision. In a recent video conference, she simply laughed and said she would “like to go to the embassy and collect her pay.”
Quirós was sporting injuries to her face and body along with a broken hand after being beaten with a metal pipe at a protest she was trying to observe. She said the protest was peaceful and the attack on her observers, local press, and the protestors started only moments after the protests began.
On April 26, I drove out of a Managua that was cleaning up. City maintenance workers were replacing paving stones that had been pulled up to build barricades. Charred remains of burned tires were being swept up, and there was no sign of the FSLN flag or the ever-present posters of the “Presidential Couple,” Daniel Ortega and his wife and Vice President, Rosario Murillo.
The pink billboards claiming that Nicaragua is going from victory to victory under their leadership based on “Socialism, Christianity, and Solidarity” had been ripped down and about half of Rosario’s steel tree-shaped decorations that cover the city, had been burned or damaged.
Out in the countryside I found a different tone. In Sebaco, the FSLN flag flew over the bridge into town. “Protests?,” I asked. There were some, I heard, but it all passed quite peacefully.
In my old home town, the secretary of the local FSLN party was dismissive of the reports of repression and abuse. He did not trust anything that the right wing or church hierarchy had to say. He thought of the Human Rights Commission as a rightwing group, and disdained the main opposition newspaper.
Other rural Sandinistas also did not believe many of the reports of police violence, there was serious suspicion that the protestors were not really students, but affluent people obstructing the government, as in recent protests in. Venezuela. They asserted that the right wing and United States are behind the protests.
Wherever I went, there was more talk of repression than of pension reforms.
Wherever I went, there was more talk of repression than of pension reforms.
Maria (also not her real name), who worked for the social security system, believed the stories of repression were a more important issue than the retirement cutbacks, which she did not see as a bad deal. And she should know, she told me—she is on retirement!
Back in the city, Ernesto talked about how many of the students that were killed had Sandinista parents. It would not take much for someone to want revenge if they were not getting truth and justice.
It dawned on me that the protesters who were throwing fireworks, and the police attacking them, both had heavier weapons at their disposal. I mentioned how more serious weapons must be hidden away somewhere, left over from decades of war. My fellow ex-combatants blushed and went silent.
José, another former Sandinista revolutionary who was now close to the independent opposition, felt that, unfortunately, “the seats on the roundtable” being set up for a national dialogue were all being “chosen by Rosario,” who has enormous influence in national decision making. However, “who will talk about what” in that dialogue, he says, is “still in flux.”
“But,” he continued, “the church will be the mediator, and this dialog may be the only way to keep the peace.”
“In Nicaragua, nothing will be the same as it was before April,” Ernesto told me. “It does not matter what the outcome of events is. Nicaraguan society has empowered itself, lost its fear and has disputed the government's power. The environment is full of many questions, but also many hopes.”
In the end, Ernesto is worried. “It would be very easy for Nicaragua to have a civil war,” he said quietly.
Don Macleay was one of the thousands of international volunteers who worked in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Together with engineer Ben Linder, he worked to bring hydroelectric power to the small northern village of El Cuá. Today, he is a public schools activist and lives in Oakland, California.