Taiwan Presidential Office
Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, whom he appointed his vice president in 2017.
A steadily worsening political crisis in Nicaragua, led by president Daniel Ortega, has reached new authoritarian levels. Critics are being silenced, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) shuttered, journalists exiled, and opposition candidates imprisoned as Ortega works to consolidate all branches of government under his control.
The situation has accelerated during the past five years following mass protests against the regime in 2018. Ortega, a former leader of the Sandinista (FSLN) guerrilla army that successfully ousted former dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, has been president since he was re-elected to the office in 2007. He responded to the 2018 demonstrations with a heavy hand; 355 protesters were killed by military and paramilitary troops. The repression sparked an international outcry.
“The starting point of democratic regression in Nicaragua began in [April] 2018 with the repression of the protests,” Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central American analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America, tells The Progressive. “That was like the start of a huge crackdown and a [political] regression that accelerated very quickly.”
Even prior to the violent repression, Ortega had already made several moves to entrench himself in power. In 2011 and 2014, he made changes to the country’s constitution, including removing a provision that barred his consecutive reelection. In 2017, Ortega appointed his wife, Rosario Murillo, to be his vice president.
In the lead up to Nicaragua’s presidential election in 2021, forty-six opposition figures, including seven presidential candidates, were arbitrarily arrested by the Ortega regime. The trials began in 2022, following Ortega’s inauguration after he easily won his third consecutive presidential term. (Prior to changing the country’s election laws, Ortega had led the country as coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction from 1979 to 1985 and then as president from 1985 to 1990.)
Since starting his third consecutive term, Ortega has escalated the attacks on his opposition.
In March 2022, the country’s ruling-party-controlled congress approved a law to govern and control NGOs, permitting the government to close those organizations accused of undermining the Ortega regime. Since then, more than 1,000 NGOs have been closed in the purge. The Nicaraguan Catholic Church has also been targeted—nine priests are currently in police custody, and religious processions to mark Catholic holy days have been banned.
“What is happening right now is that there is immense terror. Citizens are immensely afraid of repression.”
Attacks on the press have also escalated, leading to the closure of media outlets across the country, the end of daily editions of some papers, and the exile of reporters. An estimated 120 journalists have been forced to flee the country, according to the Associated Press. On August 1, the Ortega regime shuttered six Catholic radio stations across the country.
Many former supporters of the Sandinista movement, now outspokenly critical of the regime, have been forced into exile or jail as well.
“What is happening right now is that there is immense terror,” Méndez Dardón says. “Citizens are immensely afraid of repression.”
As the situation worsens, Nicaragua has seen a massive, unprecedented migration of people fleeing the country. While many migrants have headed south to Costa Rica, many more are coming to the United States in the hopes of escaping the dictatorship. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agents’ “encounters” with Nicaraguan migrants at the United States border have spiked dramatically in 2022.
According to data from the CPB, agents detained or expelled 134,515 Nicaraguans in fiscal year 2022, up from 50,722 the previous fiscal year.
While the United States continues to expel migrants who arrive at its border with Mexico, Costa Rica has announced plans to regularize the status of more than 200,000 Nicaraguans who are currently within that country.
As the region undergoes a deterioration of democratic systems, an emerging narrative depicts countries like Guatemala and El Salvador as “other Nicaraguas.” In these countries, rightwing governments have overseen the co-optation of all branches of the state by a minority that favors impunity.
“Every country is its own country, but what is certain is that the handbook that Nicaragua began to implement was inspired by Venezuela,” where Nicolás Maduro consolidated power following the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, says Claudia Samoyoa of the human rights organization UDEFEGUA. “The control of freedom of expression or the control of NGOs is something that autocrats on the left or right have been moving towards.”
The return of authoritarianism in Central America is the result of the failure of the consolidation of fragile democracies in the years following the period of internal armed conflicts that plagued the region in the mid- to late-twentieth century.
The first steps of the new authoritarian creep have become familiar.
“Normally the first thing they seek is to co-opt or affect the independence of the judiciary,” Méndez says. “They seek to ensure that judges are no longer independent and that justice responds to [the leaders’] interests.”
She adds that other aspects of this playbook include the closure of civic spaces and attacks on the independence of the press. The final aspect of this process is the criminalization of critics and opposition members.
There are a lot of parallels between Ortega’s concentration of power and what is occurring in Guatemala under Alejandro Giammattei and El Salvador under Nayib Bukele. Both countries have also passed legislation to place more state control over NGOs, as well as co-opting the judicial branches, and attacking the independence of the press, threatening journalists who report on corruption within the countries and leading to the exile of journalists.
Guatemala is currently pursuing legislation that will grant immunity to police officers and soldiers who discharge their firearms during protests. This law has been met with public outcry across the country, but the Guatemala’s congress continues to debate the law.
While each country is taking their own path toward returning the region to authoritarianism, there is one key aspect that links them all: corruption and impunity.
“Something that is not talked about much in Nicaragua is corruption,” Méndez Dardón says. “The problem is that obviously there is no longer an active citizenry that can [protest corruption].”
The Ortega family has been accused of massive acts of corruption and various anti-democratic actions. These actions have led the U.S. State Department to include twenty-three Nicaraguans associated with the regime on the “Engel list” of corrupt and anti-democratic actors.
Corruption and impunity continue to be deeply entrenched in the region, despite international efforts to root out corruption in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. As these efforts continue to advance, the rule of law and respect of human rights remain at risk and the migration of large numbers of the population abroad, especially to the United States, will continue to increase.