John Perry
Masaya, Nicaragua

July 19^th is a day of celebration in Nicaragua: the anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. But the international media will have it penciled in their diaries for another reason: it’s yet another opportunity to pour scorn on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. We’ll hear again about how the government “clamps down on dissent,”^[1] about its “political prisoners,”^[2] its recent “pantomime election,”^[3] its “damaging crackdown on civil society”^[4] and much more. All of these accusations have been answered but the media will continue to shut out any evidence that conflicts with the consensus narrative about Nicaragua, that its president, Daniel Ortega, has “crushed the Nicaraguan dream.”^[5]

Mainstream media tells its own story

Since the violent, U.S.-directed coup attempt in 2018, in which more than 200 people died, it has been very difficult to find objective analysis of the political situation in Nicaragua in mainstream media, much less any examination of the revolution’s achievements. In disregarding what is actually happening in the country, the media is ignoring and excluding the lived experience of ordinary Nicaraguans, as if their daily lives are irrelevant to any judgment about the direction the country is taking. Most notably, instead of recognizing that 75% of Nicaraguan voters supported the government in last November’s election, in which two-thirds of the electorate participated, the result is seen as “a turn toward an openly dictatorial model.”^[6] This judgment is backed by confected claims of electoral fraud from “secret poll watchers,”^[7] which ignore COHA’s strong evidence that no fraud took place.^[8]

Streets show the political reality

In the run-up to the anniversary of the revolution on July 19^th, Sandinista supporters have been filling the streets of every main city with celebratory marches. In Masaya, where I live, I took part in a procession with around 3,000 people and discovered afterwards that three other marches took place at the same time in different parts of Masaya, with even more people participating in each of those. People have much to celebrate: the city was one of those most damaged by the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua four years ago, but has since lived in peace.

During the attempted coup, for three months the city of Masaya was controlled by armed thugs (still regularly described in the media as “peaceful” protesters). Five police officers and several civilians were killed. The town hall, the main secondary school, the old tourist market and other government buildings were set on fire. Houses of Sandinista supporters were ransacked. Shops were looted and the economic life of one of Nicaragua’s most important commercial centers was suspended. My own doctor’s house went up in flames and a friend who was defending the municipal depot when it was ransacked was kidnapped, tortured and later had to have an arm amputated as a result.

So one strong motive for the marches is to reaffirm most people’s wishes that this should never happen again: 43 years ago a revolutionary war ended in the Sandinistas’ triumph over Somoza, but this was quickly followed by the U.S.-sponsored Contra attacks that cost thousands more lives. For anyone over 35, the violence in 2018 was a sickening reminder of these wars. Since then, not the least of the government’s achievements is that Nicaragua has returned to having the lowest homicide level in Central America,^[9] and people want it to stay that way.

Progress under Sandinistas is not recognized internationally

But this is far from the government’s only success since it returned to power in 2007. It inherited a country broken by 17 years of neoliberal governments by and for the rich (after the Sandinistas lost power in the 1990 election). Nothing worked during those years: there were daily power cuts, roads were in shocking disrepair, some 100,000s of children didn’t go to school and poverty was rampant. When the Sandinistas regained the presidency in 2007, and helped by the alliance with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and a boom in commodities prices, the government began a massive investment program. For the second poorest country in Latin America, the transformation was remarkable.

Take the practical issues that affect everyone. Power cuts stopped because the new government quickly built small new power stations and then encouraged massive investment in renewable energy. Electricity coverage now reaches over 99% of households, up from just 50% in 2016, with three-quarters now generated from renewables. Piped water reaches 93% of city dwellers compared with 65% in 2007. In 2007, Nicaragua had 2,044 km of paved roads, mostly in bad condition. Now it has 4,300 km, half of them built in the last 15 years, giving it the best roads in Central America.^[10]

Its remarkable advances in health care were evidenced by how Nicaragua handled the COVID-19 pandemic, with (according to the World Health Organization^[11]) a level of excess mortality far lower than that of many wealthier countries in Latin America, including neighboring Costa Rica. It now has one of the world’s highest levels of completed vaccinations against the virus (83%),^[12] exceeding levels in the U.S. and many European countries. There has been massive investment in the public health service: Nicaragua has built 23 new hospitals in the past 15 years and now has more hospital beds (1.8 per 1,000 population)^[13] than richer countries such as Mexico (1.5) and Colombia (1.7).^[14] The country has one of the highest regional levels of public health spending, relative to GDP (“PIB” in Spanish – see chart), and its service is completely free.

Nicaragua is 6th out of 17
Latin American countries in public health investment

Look at education. School attendance increased from 79% to 91% when charges imposed by previous governments were abolished; now pupils get help with uniforms and books and all receive free school lunches. Free education now extends into adulthood, so out of a population of 6.6 million, some 1.7 million are currently receiving public education in some form. Under neoliberal governments illiteracy rose to 22% of the population, and now it’s down to 4-6%.

Strides in gender parity: another victory

Nicaraguan women have been integral to the revolution. More than half of ministerial posts are held by women, an achievement for which Nicaragua is ranked seventh in the world in gender equality in 2022.^[15] Only two countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have a smaller gender pay gap than Nicaragua. More than a third of police officers are female and there are special women’s centers in 119 police stations. Maternal health has been significantly improved, with maternal mortality falling from 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006, to 31.6 in 2021, a reduction of 66%.^[16] This is partly due to the 180 casas maternas where women stay close to a hospital or health center for the weeks before giving birth. The state also provides family planning free of charge in all health centers, including tubal ligations for women who do not wish to have more children. It is also true, of course, that abortion is illegal, but (unlike in other Latin American countries) no woman or doctor has ever been prosecuted under this law.

At the moment, people’s biggest concern is the state of the economy and the cost-of-living crisis. Nicaragua has advantages here, too: it is more than 80% self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs and prices have been controlled because the government is capping the cost of fuel (both for vehicles and for cooking). Nicaragua’s economy grew by more than 10% in 2021, returning to 2019, pre-pandemic economic levels, although growth was still not sufficient for the country to recover from the economic damage caused by the 2018 coup attempt. Government debt (forecast to be 46% of GDP in 2022) is lower than its neighbors, especially that of Costa Rica (70%), where poverty now extends to 30% of the population. However, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are economically interdependent, and the latter’s economic problems are a large part of the explanation for the growth in migration by Nicaraguans to the United States.^[17]

Daniel Ortega enjoys high approval ratings

These are only a few of the factors that underlie people’s support for Daniel Ortega’s government. And this support continues: according to polling by CID Gallup,^[18] in early January President Ortega was more popular than the then presidents of Honduras, Costa Rica or Guatemala. M&R Consultants, in a more recent poll,^[19] found that Ortega has a 70% approval rating and ranks second among Latin American presidents. This was obvious when huge numbers of Nicaraguans celebrated November’s election result and it is still obvious as they go out onto the streets during “victorious July”.

At a meeting with Central American foreign ministers in June 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken urged governments “to work to improve the lives of people in our countries in real, concrete ways.”^[20] Blinken deliberately ignores the ample proof that Daniel Ortega’s government is not only doing that but has been more successful in this respect than any other Central American government. Yet the more that the international media parrot Washington’s criticisms of Daniel Ortega, the more that people here will reaffirm their support for his government.

John Perry is a COHA Senior Research Fellow and  writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

[Main photo: Sandinista supporters in Masaya, July 2022. Credit: John Perry] 

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Sources

[1] “Nicaragua Seizes Universities, Inching Toward Dictatorship,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/world/americas/nicaragua-universities-ortega-dictatorship.html

[2] “Nicaragua’s Secretive Ruling Family Reaches Out Quietly to the U.S.,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/americas/nicaragua-ruling-family-us.html

[3] “Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/07/statement-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-on-nicaraguas-sham-elections/

[4] “Nicaragua shuts down 50 non-profits in new crackdown,” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61333797

[5] “Daniel Ortega and the Crushing of the Nicaraguan Dream,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/daniel-ortega-nicaragua-election.html

[6] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[7] “The secret-poll watchers of Nicaragua. How they monitored a questionable presidential election,” https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-10/how-hundreds-of-nicaraguans-secretly-monitored-the-presidential-election

[8] “If there was ‘fraud’ in Nicaragua’s elections, where is the proof?” https://www.coha.org/if-there-was-fraud-in-nicaraguas-elections-where-is-the-proof/

[9] See https://www.statista.com/statistics/947781/homicide-rates-latin-america-caribbean-country/

[10] “Nicaragua posee las mejores carreteras de Centroamérica,” https://revistamyt.com/nicaragua-posee-las-mejores-carreteras-de-centroamerica/

[11] See https://www.who.int/data/stories/global-excess-deaths-associated-with-covid-19-january-2020-december-2021

[12] See https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

[13] See the Nicaraguan government White paper, downloadable at https://www.el19digital.com/app/webroot/tinymce/source/2020/00-Mayo/25%20MAYO/AL%20PUEBLO%20DE%20NICARAGUA%20Y%20AL%20MUNDO-%20INFORME%20SOBRE%20EL%20COVID-19.pdf

[14] See https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/hospital-bed-density/

[15] The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report for 2022 (https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2022/)

[16] “Nicaragua ha logrado disminuir la mortalidad materna,” https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias-generales/destacado/nicaragua-ha-logrado-disminuir-la-mortalidad-materna/v

[17] “The UN Refugee Agency is exaggerating the number of Nicaraguan refugees,” https://www.coha.org/the-un-refugee-agency-is-exaggerating-the-number-of-nicaraguan-refugees/

[18] See https://www.cidgallup.com/publicaciones.php

[19] See https://www.myrconsultores.com/mr_pop-panoptico-de-opinion-publica-1ra-edicion-correspondiente-al-primer-trimestre-2022/

[20] “Blinken urges Central America to defend democracy to alleviate migration,” https://ticotimes.net/2021/06/02/blinken-urges-central-america-to-defend-democracy-to-alleviate-migration

By John Perry
Managua, Nicaragua

Two years ago, COHA reported on the manufactured “refugee” crisis around Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica.^[1] Now the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is saying that “102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica” in 2021. As this article shows, this statement is inaccurate, adding further to the myth that Nicaragua is suffering a refugee crisis.

On June 20, a group called “SOSNicaragua” which is based in Costa Rica, held a conference to mark World Refugee Day. Called “Breaking down walls, building hope,” it was addressed by the head of the Costa Rican government’s Refugee Unit, Esther Núñez.^[2] She confirmed that, since 2018, Costa Rica had received 175,055 applications for asylum, the majority from Nicaragua. However, the rest of her message must have been less welcome to the participants. Her unit had limited capacity to deal with these cases, she said, but in any case “a large proportion” of the people who apply for refugee status in Costa Rica do so “because they need to regulate their migratory status, but they do not really qualify for asylum” [my emphasis].

A closer look at asylum claims of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica

Núñez was repeating a point made by the then president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, when numbers of asylum claims first began to grow, after the violent, US-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. He declared that more than 80% of recent asylum requests came from people who had been living in Costa Rica without documents before Nicaragua’s crisis.^[3] In the four years since this statement, Costa Rica has made a decision on just 7,803 asylum claims from Nicaraguans and has rejected 60% of them.^[4] Even getting an initial appointment to make a claim means a wait of two to three years, according to a Costa Rican NGO that assists refugees.^[5]

Yet the UN behaves as if all the asylum claims are not only justified but are made by people who have recently crossed the border, driven by political persecution in Nicaragua. On June 16, the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, warned that “sociopolitical, economic and human rights crises” in Nicaragua are forcing thousands to leave their homes, in a wave of migration that is growing in “unprecedented numbers.”^[6] Bachelet said that over the last eight months “the number of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum seekers in Costa Rica has doubled, reaching a total of 150,000 new applicants since 2018.″ She made no reference to the Costa Rican government’s assertions that most of these claims come from Nicaraguans already living there before 2018. Nor did she explain that claims have only “doubled” because significant numbers of them have reached the formal stages after sometimes waiting for years to be processed.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua are economically interdependent

As Jeff Abbott points out in The Progressive, “Nicaraguans have been migrating to Costa Rica for decades. The two countries are historically and geographically tied together, with seasonal migration filling important jobs within the Costa Rican economy.”^[7] He quotes the coordinator of Costa Rica’s  Nicaraguan Links Association, describing the “economic interdependence between the two countries.” In fact, around 385,000 Nicaraguans are officially residents in Costa Rica, with perhaps another 200,000 there without official documents, totaling about 10% of the population. In a typical year, there are more than 900,000 official cross-border movements by Nicaraguans, with similar numbers leaving as there are entering the country: principally, migrant workers traveling back and forth, according to Costa Rica’s seasonal job opportunities (see table). Thousands more make unofficial crossings to avoid paying the border fees.

However, official cross-border movements fell by two-thirds in 2020, during the pandemic. Costa Rica was desperate to keep its Nicaraguan workers, with the then vice-president urging Nicaraguans to stay.^[8] But the country was hit hard by COVID-19, which badly affected its tourist trade: The Economist reported that government debt reached one of the highest levels in Latin America and, in return for loans to bail out the government, the IMF insisted on spending cuts.^[9] Poverty now affects nearly one-third of Costa Rican households.^[10] In 2021, over 5,000 more Nicaraguans left Costa Rica than entered it. Although traffic has increased in the first months of 2022, it is still less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Lack of job opportunities in Costa Rica, for Nicaraguans who have historically worked there, is one of the factors leading to more migration north to the United States.

Of course, Nicaragua was also affected by the pandemic, as well as the additional damage caused in November 2020 by two devastating hurricanes. Its economy grew by 10% in 2021, which returned it to pre-pandemic levels, but growth was still not sufficient for the country to recover from the harsh economic effects of the 2018 coup attempt. It is therefore not surprising that, while far fewer Nicaraguans are traveling to Costa Rica to work, a proportion of those already there are looking to regularize their immigration status by seeking asylum, as Esther Núñez pointed out.

Migrants are instead heading to the United States

The temporary breakdown of the historic economic ties between the two countries has almost certainly given extra impetus to Nicaraguan migration northwards, to the United States. Some 163,000 Nicaraguans have been encountered after crossing the U.S. border since January 2020, while before then numbers amounted to a few hundred each month. While (again) this increase is blamed (by the BBC, for example)^[11] on the “atmosphere of terror” in Nicaragua, the reality is more mundane.

As Tom Ricker points out, writing for the Quixote Center,^[12] while political instability may be a factor, it is certainly no more of a factor than it is for the larger migration flows from the “northern triangle” countries (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala). Post-COVID economic problems are also as great, perhaps greater, in the northern triangle. But there are factors unique to Nicaragua: reduced job opportunities in Costa Rica, the growing effect of U.S. sanctions, and the relatively more favorable treatment which Nicaraguans have received after crossing the U.S. border. Indeed, the BBC quotes the case of a Nicaraguan who declared himself to the U.S. border patrol, was detained for a few weeks and then released to await a court hearing on his case. Many new arrivals get travel permits to join relatives elsewhere in the U.S., and the government pays for bus and air transport. The perception that well-paying U.S. jobs are readily available to Nicaraguans has been created by advertising in social media and the activities of the “coyotes” who facilitate the journey north.

The UN Refugee Agency gets it wrong – again

However, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) appears to be blind to economic factors driving migration, and ever keener to claim that Nicaraguans are escaping political repression. In its recently issued report on Global Trends 2021,^[13] it picks out Nicaragua on a world map showing forced displacement, and a chart shows Nicaragua ranked #2 in the world for asylum applications last year, below Afghanistan but ahead of Syria (see chart).

Of the 111,600 claims attributed to Nicaraguans in 2021, almost all (102,000) are made in Costa Rica. However, the official Costa Rican figure for claims registered by Nicaraguans in 2021 is only slightly more than half of this, at 52,894. How does UNHCR arrive at the higher figure? Key to understanding the statistics is awareness of the extreme slowness with which Costa Rica deals with asylum applications. By the end of 2021, it had dealt with fewer than 7% of the 116,970 applications from Nicaraguans received over the previous four years. In addition to these formal claims, there are around 50,000 more applications at various stages before registration, many of them lodged before 2021. In correspondence with the UNHCR statistics office, they revealed that “In agreement with the Government of Costa Rica,” they added this backlog of what might be called “pre-applications” to the official tally of registered claims, to produce a total of 102,000. But the Global Trends report, far from making this clear, treats this number as relating to new claims in 2021 alone, and concludes that 102,000 Nicaraguans “fled” their country last year (see picture). The caption maintains:“In 2021 some 102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica.”

Disinformation, used by opposition media

Why the UNHCR wants to portray Nicaraguans as being as much at risk as people fleeing Afghanistan and Syria is a question only they can answer. It is a convenient ploy for the Costa Rican government, since it receives UN financial assistance to respond to the plight of Nicaraguans.^[14] However, it also gives added momentum to the media message that Nicaraguans are fleeing persecution. Because the increase in Nicaraguan migration northwards is a focus of media attention, exaggerating the flows southwards to Costa Rica adds to the impression of a country in crisis. This adds fuel to the flames for Nicaragua’s opposition media, of course. For example, Confidencial, a web outlet much cited by international media, gives ever more exaggerated versions of the migration figures. It claimed in June that some 400,000 Nicaraguans had left the country since the beginning of 2020. Yet even adding together the encounters over that period at U.S. borders (163,000), with the accumulation of asylum applications in Costa Rica over the same period (93,000), only produces a total of 256,000. And as we have seen, this does not compare like-with-like.

The empirical evidence indicates  that migration to Costa Rica has almost certainly fallen sharply, while there has been a matching increase in migration to the United States. Economic motives are likely to be predominant, although there are political factors too. However, it is far from an “exodus” and it is ridiculous to create a headline (as the BBC does) suggesting that most people would “rather die” than stay in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, and irresponsibly, the UN Refugee Agency is adding to the scare stories, rather than sticking to the facts.

John Perry, Senior Research Fellow at COHA, is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

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Sources

[1] “Nicaraguans in Costa Rica: A Manufactured “Refugee” Crisis,” https://www.coha.org/nicaraguans-in-costa-rica-a-manufactured-refugee-crisis/

[2] “Costa Rica ha recibido casi 200.000 solicitudes de refugio en última década,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/d%C3%ADa-refugiados-costa-rica_costa-rica-ha-recibido-casi-200.000-solicitudes-de-refugio-en-%C3%BAltima-d%C3%A9cada/47689826

[3] “Presidente de Costa Rica defiende atención a migración nicaragüense por crisis,” https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/472337-costa-rica-atencion-migracion-nicaraguense-crisis/

[4] Detailed figures quoted are taken from statistical section of the Costa Rica Migration Department website (https://www.migracion.go.cr/Paginas/Centro%20de%20Documentaci%C3%B3n/Estad%C3%ADsticas.aspx), and are correct to April or May 2022, or to December 2021, according to the latest available data.

[5] “More than 20,000 Nicaraguans request asylum in Costa Rica in the first quarter of 2022,” https://www.confidencial.digital/english/more-than-20000-nicaraguans-request-asylum-in-costa-rica-in-the-first-quarter-of-2022/amp/

[6] “UN rights chief warns of ‘unprecedented’ exodus from Nicaragua,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/16/un-rights-chief-warns-of-unprecedented-exodus-from-nicaragua

[7] “The Other Americans: Is Costa Rica Becoming Another Brick in the U.S. Border Wall?” https://progressive.org/latest/costa-rica-brick-in-us-border-wall-abbott-220420/

[8] “Gobierno pide a residentes nicaragüenses no abandonar el país en los próximos días,” https://semanariouniversidad.com/pais/gobierno-pide-a-residentes-nicaraguenses-no-abandonar-el-pais-en-los-proximos-dias/

[9] “Costa Rica is struggling to maintain its welfare state,” https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/15/costa-rica-is-struggling-to-maintain-its-welfare-state

[10] “Tres de cada 10 familias se encuentran en situación de pobreza,” https://www.nodal.am/2022/06/costa-rica-tres-de-cada-10-familias-se-encuentran-en-situacion-de-pobreza/

[11] “US immigration: ‘They’d rather die than return to Nicaragua’,” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61735603

[12] “Migration from Nicaragua is up since October 2021,” https://www.quixote.org/migration-from-nicaragua-is-up-since-october-2021/

[13] https://www.unhcr.org/publications/brochures/62a9d1494/global-trends-report-2021.html

[14] “Costa Rica ha recibido casi 200.000 solicitudes de refugio en última década,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/d%C3%ADa-refugiados-costa-rica_costa-rica-ha-recibido-casi-200.000-solicitudes-de-refugio-en-%C3%BAltima-d%C3%A9cada/47689826

By Ben Gutman
From Washington D.C.

In a bold and consequential decision with rippling geopolitical implications, Nicaragua recognized the “One-China Principle” and resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the first time since the beginning of the neoliberal period in 1990.^[1] This was announced December 9, 2021 shortly after a meeting of the China-CELAC Forum in which CELAC’s 32 Latin American member states^[2] agreed to adopt a China-CELAC Joint Action Plan for Cooperation. The strengthening of Chinese ties with Western Hemisphere partners in a forum without US presence comes as a red flag for US hegemony and control over its own “backyard,” which, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, has been firmly fenced off from other “external” global actors seeking influence in the region. However, unlike the last two centuries of US imperialism, China offers an approach that respects the rule of law and national sovereignty.

Last January 16, the replacement of Taiwanese investment with the sustainable socio-economic development model of the PRC’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in Nicaragua is particularly threatening to regional US economic domination. In 2014, Nicaragua partnered with a Chinese firm to initiate construction of a second shipping lane connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in addition to the current US-dominated Panama Canal.^[3] The anti-Sandinista opposition party Unamos (formerly known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement or MRS), whose leaders frequently met and provided information to the US embassy, helped organize  an NED-engineered pseudo-movement in opposition to the project, which eventually came to a halt during the political violence of 2018.^[4] The potential relaunch of the Nicaraguan canal project could prove to be a pivotal point in the US’s New Cold War and flailing bid to remain the world’s lone superpower.

Nicaragua leaves the OAS, the de facto diplomatic branch of the US in the Americas

On November 19, following the re-election of President Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), joining Venezuela and Cuba in what former Bolivian president Evo Morales called “an act of dignity.”^[5] In an official letter to OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada repeated previous condemnation of the OAS as an “instrument of interference and intervention” with the “mission to facilitate hegemony of the United States with its interventionism against the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.”^[6]

As reported by John Perry for COHA, the OAS produced a 16-page report within 48 hours of the alleged “illegitimate elections” that contained no evidence of fraud on election day. In lockstep with the White House’s perverse and ridiculous claim of support for the “inalienable right to democratic self-determination of the Nicaraguan people,” Almagro’s coup-fomenting false narrative of fraud came straight out of the US/OAS playbook used during their facilitation of the 2019 coup d’état against Morales’ MAS party in Bolivia.^[7] Constructed by the US as an anti-socialist alliance of right-wing regimes at the onset of the First Cold War, the OAS and its delegitimization of the 2021 Nicaraguan election reflects continuity of its role as “Ministry of Colonies” of the United States, as it was referred to by Fidel Castro.^[8]

Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS and its reestablishment of relations with the PRC are bold decisions that flex Nicaraguan sovereignty and communicate to developing countries that a path of resistance against Western coercion leads to independence, inclusive development, and promising new opportunities. The Sandinista Front’s defeat of a three-year long US regime change operation, which culminated in the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on January 10, 2022, has translated the sacrifices made by the Nicaraguan people into a concrete plan to further the egalitarian principles of the Sandinista Revolution.

Against a militarized and neoliberal model for Central America

With support from the fastest growing economy in the world with a population of 1.4 billion, in addition to an array of other governments and solidarity movements, Nicaragua has earned the ability to lead a more aggressive charge against Washington’s proposed militarized security and neoliberal development model for Central America.^[9] Such a model which aims to enrich corporations through private investment and austerity to the detriment of the poor and working-class remains the antithesis to the Chinese and Sandinista revolutions. During his inauguration speech, President Ortega elucidated this key point, stating that the “Chinese revolution and the Sandinista revolution [have] the same north, the same path, the same destiny, which is to end poverty.”

As the process of poverty alleviation runs contrary to the exploitative goals of Western imperialists, the US and EU levied coordinated unilateral coercive measures against Nicaraguan officials on the day of President Ortega’s inauguration.^[10] However, the strategy of relentless hybrid warfare used to isolate and punish “enemy states” like Nicaragua has lost some of its impact. “The unipolar world is over. It’s a multipolar world,” said Black Alliance for Peace’s Margaret Kimberley at the inauguration. The Nicaraguan people’s defeat of US regime change attempts over the last three years is a remarkable accomplishment that helped the paradigm shift towards a multi-polar world. However, it is important to recognize the inevitable sacrifices that come with resistance, to dissect imperial destabilization strategies, and to reflect on the manufactured policies that have brought us to where we are today.

Revisiting the 2018 Attempted Coup, and the US media supported narrative

In Nicaragua-based journalist Ben Norton’s investigation titled “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation,” Norton presents documented evidence that the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation received more than $7 million of the $10 million funneled to Nicaraguan opposition media from the US’s soft-power arm the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) between 2014 and 2021.^[11] The majority of this funding was distributed amongst some 25 publications including Chamorro Foundation-owned outlets that are widely quoted by the international press and elite US think tanks like the Open Society Foundation, which characterized El Nuevo Diario, Confidencial, and La Prensa (all Chamorro owned) as “the most important online news providers” in Nicaragua.^[12] As reported by Norton, the foreign funding and cultivation of these opposition and media groups led to arrests under Nicaragua’s law 1055, which was then framed by the corporate media as an authoritarian crackdown against opposition leaders.

Many international corporate media outlets like the BBC framed “Nicaragua’s worsening crisis” in 2018 as “unexpected” and a result of grassroots movements peacefully protesting against a corrupt dictatorship.^[13] This false narrative was exposed by John Perry in a report for The Grayzone titled “A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua: It Was a Coup, Not a ‘Massacre.’” First, Perry points out that even anti-Ortega mainstream academics had admitted that US institutions like the USAID and NED were “laying the groundwork for insurrection,” debunking the narrative that the protests were organic and fortuitous.^[14] Second, Perry makes it clear that in an attempt to facilitate the established “peaceful protester” narrative by white-washing violence perpetrated by coup-supporters, academics and corporate media engaged in the systematic omission of inconvenient facts including the murder of 22 police officers and the torture of Sandinista civilians. The Nicaragua-based anti-imperialist collective Tortilla con Sal published independent researcher Enrique Hendrix’s in-depth analysis of this bad-faith framing as well as additional evidence backing claims of torture used against Sandinistas.

Much like corporate media and billionaire-funded foundations, a Nicaraguan human rights industry intricately connected and funded by US and European governments pushed propaganda, including the decontextualization of deaths and faulty death count figures, to provide cover for US regime change goals masquerading as unprovoked government repression.^[15] In the article “The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ organizations” published in the Alliance for Global Justice’s NicaNotes, John Perry relays how three vocally anti-Sandinista human rights groups wielded disproportionate influence over the narratives presented in international bodies such as Amnesty International and the UN Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR). For example, included in the UNCHR’s 2018 report on Nicaragua were detailed references to the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), which was created by the Reagan administration to whitewash Contra atrocities and received $88,000 from the NED and $348,000 from other US sources in 2018.

In June of 2019, to the dismay of many Sandinistas whose family members were murdered during the coup attempt, the Nicaraguan government passed an Amnesty Law pardoning and expunging the records of those involved in violent and treasonous acts as part of a national dialogue with the opposition.^[16] This clemency came even after the opposition refused to ask the United States to end illegal unilateral coercive measures packaged as the 2018 NICA Act (passed in the US House of Representatives with zero opposition by a 435-0 margin), which opposition activists themselves had requested in 2015.^[17] During coverage of the peace and reconciliation process and in a continuation of the 2018 information warfare campaign, corporate media outlets like Reuters took a rather one-sided approach highlighting the law’s “protection to police and others who took part in a violent clampdown on anti-government protesters,” but failed to mention the violent acts committed against the police by these so-called anti-government protesters.^[18]

US Hybrid Warfare Revisited during the 2021 Nicaraguan Presidential Election

In the months prior to the November 7 election, the US government and its affiliated ecosystem of obedient corporate media, social media, and hawkish think tanks took aim at Nicaragua in an effort to further isolate the nation with the ultimate goal of regime change to a more business-friendly neoliberal leadership.

A USAID regime change document leaked to independent Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby in July 2020 and analyzed in John Perry’s “The US Contracts Out its Regime Change Operation in Nicaragua” provides useful insight into US destabilization plans. This RAIN or Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua document provides Terms of Reference for a contract to hire a company to oversee the “transition to democracy” in Nicaragua. The word “transition,” an obvious euphemism for regime change, is used more than 60 times throughout the document to describe different post-election scenarios. In the case of a “delayed transition” or Sandinista victory, the hired company would provide “research and planning for USAID and for civil society leadership with discrete technical assistance.” In other words, the company would continue USAID’s work subverting Nicaragua’s democratic process by funding, training, and directing opposition groups and media hostile to the FSLN.

However, despite clear evidence that the US was engaged in a multidimensional destabilization campaign before, during, and after the 2018 coup attempt, even progressive publications like NACLA failed to accurately report on events in Nicaragua. In the article “How Can Some Progressives Get Basic Information About Nicaragua So Wrong?” John Perry and Rick Stirling dismantle a popular State Department narrative promoted by NACLA that the November 7 election was rigged because seven potential candidates were prevented from running for president, by laying out the real crimes of which they are accused and the dubiousness of their candidacies. While the corporate media pushed this narrative ad nauseum regarding Nicaragua, it was almost completely absent prior to the 2021 Ecuadorian presidential election during which neoliberal president Lenin Moreno jailed, exiled, and banned Correístas from running in elections.^[19]

In addition to news media propaganda, a bizarre censorship campaign launched by social media monopoly Facebook in the days leading up to the November 7 election silenced around 1,300 Nicaragua-based accounts run by pro-Sandinista media outlets, journalists, and activists on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, as reported by The Grayzone’s Ben Norton.^[20] Facebook justified this action by claiming that the censored accounts were part of a “troll farm run by the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party.”^[21] In John Perry’s COHA article titled “Facebook Does the US Government’s Censorship Work in Nicaraguan Elections”, Perry points out that “many commentators suffered double censorship: blocked because they were falsely accused of being bots, then prevented from proving that the accusations were false when they posted videos of themselves as real people.” Facebook and other tech giants like Google and Microsoft have an extensive history of collaboration with the U.S. security state, often enjoying lucrative U.S. Defense Department contracts, and are known to have a revolving door with the public sector.^[22] Norton shows this connection by exposing Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher as the former director for cybersecurity policy at the White House National Security Council who had also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Despite intense and ongoing hybrid warfare targeting the integrity of Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, 65% of the eligible 4.4 million Nicaraguans voted and 75% of those voters chose to re-elect Comandante Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista Front. While the Nicaraguan government did prevent the OAS from sending observers given its role in the 2019 Bolivian coup, there were 165 election observers and 67 journalists from 27 countries present on November 7.^[23] Members of delegations from the U.S. and Canada, including COHA’s Jill Clark-Gollub, who observed the elections held a press conference during which they characterized the election process as “efficient, transparent, with widespread turnout and participation of opposition parties.”^[24] In the COHA report “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN”, Clark-Gollub expressed her disbelief that corporate media and the Biden administration had declared the vote a fraud with as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. “This flies in the face of my own experience,” Clark-Gollub said.^[25] However, despite US and NATO rejection of the election results, 153 sovereign nations around the world supported Nicaraguan democracy by recognizing the election results at the United Nations.^[26]

Conclusion: A Brighter Future for Inclusive Economic Development in Nicaragua?

After more than a century of US aggression, including three decades of global hegemonic control, Obama’s “pivot” to Asia in 2016 marked a paradigm shift and the start of a New Cold War against China. The People’s Republic of China’s unparalleled economic growth and eagerness to use its deep coffers to jumpstart economic development projects in the “third world” is a direct threat to neoliberal capitalist hegemony, as China offers developing nations an alternative to the predatory debt traps sprung by western lending institutions like the World Bank and IMF.

Mere weeks after Nicaragua’s resumption of diplomatic relations with the PRC, Chinese government representative Yu Bo extended an invitation to Nicaragua to join its Belt and Road Initiative during the newly established Chinese embassy’s flag-raising ceremony in Managua. Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada responded to the invitation with approval stating, “we are sure that we will continue working together, strengthening each day the fraternal ties of friendship, cooperation, investment, [and] expanding communication channels with the Belt and Road…”.

This bilateral economic partnership brings a potential scaffolding with which the “pueblo presidente” can “start with a clean slate” and get back on the road to the progress being made prior to April 2018. In the words of Comandante Ortega, this means “building peace to combat poverty…so that there can be roads and paths…so families can feel confident; their children can feel confident in their work; [and so] they feel confident in having a dignified life.” Nicaraguans can also feel confident that economic development in partnership with the Chinese will not come with the relinquishment of national sovereignty through coerced neoliberal structural adjustment programs or debt trap gangsterism.

If the Sandinista government chooses to reject future development proposals put forth by China through Belt and Road, they can expect good faith negotiation without the threat of violent hybrid warfare favored by the U.S. and NATO. In a 2019 interview,  Jamaican-British rapper Akala explains this key difference in the context of Jamaican participation in the Belt and Road Initiative: “there are several projects that the Chinese have proposed in Jamaica that the Jamaican people said ‘no’ to [so] the Jamaican government had to say ‘no’… what was the Chinese response? Was it to send the CIA in? Was it to overthrow the Jamaican democracy? Was it to cut off aid to Jamaica? No. They said ok, we proposed a business deal and you said no. Here’s another one.”

Ben Gutman is an independent writer, researcher, and organizer pursuing an MA in Global Communication from The George Washington University. He is currently working on his capstone research and digital media project on the outsourcing of US border militarization to Guatemala in collaboration with the Guatemala Solidarity Project and the Promoters of Migrant Liberation.    

Jill-Clark Gollub, COHA’s Asistant Editor, and Patricio Zamorano, COHA’s Director, contributed as editors of this essay

[Main photo: video-screenshot from Kawsachun News]

---

Sources

[1] Escalante, Camila. “China and Nicaragua to Collab on New Multipolar World.” Kawsachun News, 10 Dec. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/china-and-nicaragua-to-collab-on-new-multipolar-world.

[2] Officially formalized in 2011 as an alternative to the OAS, CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) is a cooperative venture among developing nations.

[3] Voltaire Network. “Nicaragua Could Bring Canal Project Back to Life.” Voltaire Network, 12 Dec. 2021, www.voltairenet.org/article215032.html.

[4] Norton, B. (2021, November 18). From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her mrs party. The Grayzone. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/05/nicaragua-us-informant-dora-maria-tellez-mrs/

[5] JF, teleSUR/. “Withdrawal of Nicaragua from OAS Is an Act of Dignity: Morales.” News | teleSUR English. teleSUR, November 22, 2021. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Withdrawal-Of-Nicaragua-From-OAS-Is-An-Act-Of-Dignity-Morales-20211122-0002.html.

[6] Norton, Benjamin. “Nicaragua Leaves US-Controlled, Coup-Plotting OAS: ‘We Are Not a Colony.’” Medium, 19 Nov. 2021, benjaminnorton.medium.com/nicaragua-leaves-us-controlled-coup-plotting-oas-we-are-not-a-colony-2ffe83c319ae.

[7] Curiel, John, and Jack Williams. “Bolivia Dismissed Its October Elections as Fraudulent. Our Research Found No Reason to Suspect Fraud.” Washington Post, 27 Feb. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud.

[8] Staff, Reuters. “Castro Says Cuba Doesn’t Want to Rejoin ‘Vile’ OAS.” U.S., 15 Apr. 2009, www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-castro-oas-sb-idUKTRE53E07K20090415.

[9] Chomsky, A. (2021, March 30). Will Biden’s central american plan slow migration (or speed it up)? TomDispatch.com. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://tomdispatch.com/will-bidens-central-american-plan-slow-migration-or-speed-it-up/

[10] Al Jazeera. (2022, January 10). US slaps new sanctions on Nicaragua on Ortega’s Inauguration Day. Elections News | Al Jazeera. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/10/us-slaps-new-sanctions-on-nicaragua-on-ortegas-inauguration-day

[11] Norton, Ben. “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation.” The Grayzone, 26 June 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/06/01/cia-usaid-nicaragua-right-wing-media.

[12] Perry, John. “NPR Should Ask Where Nicaraguan Non-Profits’ Money Comes From.” CounterPunch.Org, 23 May 2021, www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24/npr-should-ask-where-nicaraguan-non-profits-money-comes-from.

[13] BBC News. “Downward Spiral: Nicaragua’s Worsening Crisis.” BBC News, 16 July 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44398673.

[14] Waddell, Benjamin. “Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection: A Closer Look at the U.S. Role in Nicaragua’s Social Unrest.” Global Americans, 10 July 2020, theglobalamericans.org/2018/05/laying-groundwork-insurrection-closer-look-u-s-role-nicaraguas-social-unrest.

[15] Perry, John. “NicaNotes: The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ Organizations.” Alliance for Global Justice, 21 Aug. 2019, afgj.org/nicanotes-the-rise-and-fall-of-nicaraguas-human-rights-organizations.

[16] teleSUR/ov-MV. “Nicaragua Approves Amnesty Law To Bring Peace.” News | TeleSUR English, 9 June 2019, www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nicaragua-Approves-Amnesty-Law-To-Bring-Peace-20190609-0001.html.

[17] Nicanotes: The revolution won’t be stopped: Nicaragua advances despite US unconventional warfare. Alliance for Global Justice. (2020, July 22). Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://afgj.org/nicanotes-the-revolution-wont-be-stopped-nicaragua-advances-despite-us-unconventional-warfare

[18] Lopez, Ismael. “Nicaraguan Congress Approves Ortega-Backed Amnesty Law.” U.S., 9 June 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-amnesty-idUSKCN1TA00U.

[19] Emersberger, J. (2021, February 16). Ignoring repression and dirty tricks in coverage of Ecuador’s election. FAIR. Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://fair.org/home/ignoring-repression-and-dirty-tricks-in-coverage-of-ecuadors-election/

[20] Norton, Ben. “Meet the Nicaraguans Facebook Falsely Branded Bots and Censored Days before Elections.” The Grayzone, 2 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/02/facebook-twitter-purge-sandinista-nicaragua.

[21] Company, Facebook. “October 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report.” Meta, 5 Nov. 2021, about.fb.com/news/2021/11/october-2021-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-report.

[22] Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. Icon Books Ltd, 2019.

[23] Norton, Ben. “Debunking Myths about Nicaragua’s 2021 Elections, under Attack by USA/EU/OAS.” The Grayzone, 12 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections.

[24] Escalante, Camilla. “North Americans Debunk US & OAS Claims on Nicaragua Election.” Kawsachun News, 10 Nov. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/north-americans-debunk-us-oas-claims-on-nicaragua-election.

[25] Clark-Gollub, Rita Jill. “Despite US Led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 12 Nov. 2021, www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dirty-campaign-nicaraguans-came-out-in-force-in-support-of-the-fsln.

[26] Kohn, Richard. “NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s Election Was Free and Fair.” Alliance for Global Justice, 2 Dec. 2021, afgj.org/nicanotes-12-02-2021.

By Joe Emersberger

Both Ecuador and Nicaragua elected a president and national assembly this year.  Ecuador’s elections took place in February, with the second round of its presidential election in April. Nicaragua’s took place on November 7. Just by scanning headlines in Western media, as most readers do, it’s easy to tell which was a U.S. ally and which was an official enemy.

(By “enemy,” I mean a government that poses no threat to the U.S.,  but still gets hit with  crippling sanctions, or worse, that it endures as best it can.)

A search of the Nexis news database for the word “crackdown” in articles about Ecuador and Nicaragua in newspapers in the U.S.,  Canada, and the UK for a five-month period before the election in each country reveals a significant contrast between reporting on Nicaragua and Ecuador. In the case of Ecuador, not a single headline alleged any kind of  crackdown on opposition to the government. In the case of Nicaragua, 55 headlines alleged an unjustifiable crackdown. Some examples:

• “Nicaragua’s Democracy Hangs by Thread as Crackdown Deepens” (New York Times, 6/6/21)
• “Human Rights Groups Have Eyes on Growing Crackdown; UN, Other Organizations Fear Upcoming Elections Won’t Be Fair and Free” (Toronto Star, 6/27/21)
• “Nicaragua Arrests Seventh Presidential Contender in November 7 vote” (Independent, 7/24/21)
• “We Are in This Nightmare’: Nicaragua Continues Its Brazen Crackdown” (Guardian, 8/12/21)
• “‘Everyone Is on the List’: Fear Grips Nicaragua as It Veers to Dictatorship” (New York Times, 9/5/21)
• “Nicaraguan Business Leaders Arrested in Ortega’s Pre-Election Crackdown” (Guardian, 10/22/21)
• “An Election in Nicaragua That Could Further Dim Democracy; Daniel Ortega Runs for His Fourth Consecutive Term as President of Nicaragua Virtually Uncontested, Having Imprisoned All His Political Rivals” (Christian Science Monitor, 11/4/21)

There was actually a crackdown in Nicaragua, but it was a defensible crackdown on persons receiving (and laundering) money from the U.S.,  a foreign power that has victimized Nicaragua for over a century. If one disregards that history, it’s easy, especially from afar, to take a libertarian position that the crackdown was unjustified. That was clearly the western media’s approach.

A U.S. crackdown since 1912

Remarkably, Daniel Ortega is the only president Nicaragua has had since 1912 who has not owed his position to murderous U.S. support. From 1912 until 1933, U.S. occupation troops ran the country directly, and structured the Nicaraguan military to ensure that brutal pro-US dictatorships (primarily of the Somoza family) would govern for decades afterwards.

Ortega first became president in 1979, after his Sandinista political movement overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in an armed revolution. Ortega was elected in 1984 (the first free and fair elections Nicaragua ever had–Extra!, 10-11/87), despite the country having to contend with US-backed terrorists known as the Contras, and with ruinous sanctions the U.S. imposed on the country throughout the 1980s (FAIR.org, 8/23/18).

By 1990, the Contra war had claimed 30,000 lives and, combined with U.S. sanctions, left the economy devastated. U.S. allies, backed by seditious media outlets in Nicaragua like La Prensa, secured Ortega’s defeat at the polls that year. The real winner was U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Allegations that Putin’s Russia influenced the 2016 election in the United States by hacking the DNC’s emails are a joke compared to what the U.S. undeniably achieved in 1990 in Nicaragua: The U.S. used terrorism and economic blackmail against an entire country to achieve an “electoral” victory in 1990.

In its coverage of the 2021 election, Reuters (11/5/21) referred to the 1990 triumph of U.S. aggression in Nicaragua by saying that Ortega’s “defeat left a deep mark on the leftist leader. Battling 16 years to regain the presidency, his opponents say he is now determined to retain power at any cost.” The article’s headline was “Ortega and Murillo, the Presidential Couple With an Iron Grip on Nicaragua.” (Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spouse, is also his vice president.)

Ironically, the article actually mentioned some facts that expose the iron grip the U.S. has usually had on Nicaragua for over a century–referring to Somoza, for example, as “the last dictator of a US-backed family dynasty established in the 1930s.” But the article did not link that history to the grave threat the U.S. poses to Nicaragua today. That’s something it could easily have done by quoting independent critics of U.S. foreign policy who would have made that connection.

Ortega’s electoral record

Ortega regained the presidency in the 2006 elections, one of many left-leaning Latin American presidents (like Rafael Correa in Ecuador) who won elections in this century, after a disastrous neoliberal era under right-wing governments. By 2017, impressive economic gains by the Ortega  government made it the most popular in the Americas among 18 surveyed by Latinobarómetro, a Chile-based pollster funded by Western governments, including the US. The 67% approval rate for the Nicaraguan government in that poll was actually higher than the 47% of eligible voters who handed Ortega his 2016 re-election electoral victory (72% of the vote on a 66% turnout).

By December 2020, Latinobarómetro found Ortega’s government  enjoyed 42% approval (in a report that repeatedly called Nicaragua a “dictatorship”)–still above average in the region, despite the US-backed coup attempt in 2018, subsequent U.S. sanctions and threats, as well as the pandemic. That points to a substantial hardcore base of support for Ortega–and poll numbers (again, from a hostile pollster funded by hostile governments) that are not out of line with the 46% of the eligible vote Ortega won on November 7 (in an election with 65% turnout).  It’s worth stressing that Ortega is the historic leader of the movement that overthrew the Somoza family, a fact that by itself makes the existence of a hardcore Sandinista base easy to credit.

In mid-October, less than a month before the 2021 election, Nicaragua’s right-wing media hyped a poll by CID Gallup claiming that Ortega’s support had dropped to 19%, but the same poll suggested turnout in the election (in which there was allegedly no opposition) would be between 51% and 68%. It claimed 51% were very likely to vote and another 17% somewhat likely. In the wake of Ortega’s win, that contradictory finding in the CID Gallup poll (evidence that it was badly skewed in favor of anti-Sandinistas) was ignored to allege massive abstention of about 80%.

As usual, pollsters, independent election observers and independent journalists on the ground who refuted Western media claims about the election were simply ignored, in some cases suspended from social media, and in one instance subjected to vulgar abuse by a prominent U.S. pundit.

Coup attempt of 2018

In 2018, Ortega’s unpopular US-backed opponents clearly applied the lesson of 1990: Violence and sabotage backed by a superpower and its propagandists may eventually produce an “electoral” victory. Violent protests aimed at driving Ortega from office were launched in 2018 from mid-April until late July.

La Prensa–an anti-Sandinista paper that has been funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which ex-Contra spokesperson Edgar Chammoro described as a CIA “propaganda asset” (Extra!, 10–11/87)–predictably supported the 2018 coup attempt, claiming in June of that year that 70% of Nicaragua’s roads were blocked by protesters. Imagine how violent and well-armed U.S. protesters would need to be to block a large majority of the country’s roads for months. In 2011, 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were immediately arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours. In fact, careful assessments of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, that relied heavily on anti-Sandinista sources,  showed that the opposition was responsible for about as many deaths as the government and its supporters.

The coup attempt was defeated, but it gave the U.S. a “human rights” pretext to vilify and sanction Nicaragua’s government. Independent journalist John Perry, a Nicaraguan resident, recently noted in FAIR.org (11/3/21) that hundreds of people involved in the coup attempt actually benefited from an amnesty law passed in 2019. But Washington demands total impunity–no jail time and full political rights–for all the criminals it supports. Ben Norton explained the consequences of pressure the U.S.,  OAS and prominent human rights NGOs applied for the release of alleged poltical prisoners: “Droves of criminals with lengthy rap sheets have been freed, and one has already murdered a pregnant 22-year-old woman”.

In other cases, charges against Ortega’s opponents stemmed from  the “passage of a ‘foreign agents’ law designed to track foreign funding of organizations operating in the country,” as the Associated Press (9/2/21) put it. AP neglected to clarify that the law is aimed at disrupting the free flow of U.S. government funds to political groups that indisputably tried to overthrow Ortega in 2018 (COHA, 6/8/21). The wire service obscured these key facts by using vague language and by presenting facts as mere allegations made by Ortega, who “has claimed that organizations receiving funding from abroad were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office in 2018.”

Further highlighting that Ortega’s opponents and its U.S. sponsors feel entitled to overthrow the government, the “foreign agents” law indirectly led to charges against children of Violeta Chamorro, the ex-president who in 1990 scored an“electoral” victory over Ortega that was a product of US-backed terrorism.  The Chamorro Foundation received millions in USAID funding until it shut itself down in protest at the “foriegn agents” law. Ortega’s government then charged its director Cristiana María Chamorro Barríos with money laundering based on the allegation that she did not properly account for where all that money went.

No opposition in DC

On November 3, as Ortega and the Sandinistas were days away from an electoral victory, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to intensify sanctions on Nicaragua’s government. Reuters (11/3/21) reported that the “House of Representatives passed the bill 387–35 with strong bipartisan support, following a similar vote by the Senate this week.”  At the same time, U.S.-based social media corporations cracked down on pro-Sandinista accounts. In other words, U.S. state and private power united in attacking Nicaragua’s government while hypocritically alleging that Ortega had no real opposition.

Perry noted that among the participants on November 7 were “two opposition parties that formed governments between 1990 and 2007, and still have significant support.” But the larger point is that Ortega’s most dangerous opposition resides in Washington, and it has always tormented Nicaragua with complete impunity.

A popular government defending itself against a violent US-backed opposition was depicted by Western media as instigating an unprovoked crackdown on defenders of democracy–ignoring the US’s grim record of successfully crushing Nicaraguan democracy since 1912.

Betrayal in Ecuador

That’s not the treatment the media dished out to the former president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, during elections this year.

The crackdown in Ecuador that merited no accusatory headlines was driven by a stunning betrayal of Ecuadorian voters in 2017. That year, then-Vice President Lenín Moreno ran as a staunch loyalist to left wing incumbent President Rafael Correa, who held office from 2007 to 2017. But after defeating right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso at the polls, Moreno proceeded to implement Lasso’s political platform for the next four years.

Western media outlets were delighted with Moreno’s cynicism (FAIR.org, 2/4/18, Counterpunch.org, 2/9/18). Voters were not so delighted, however, and by 2020 his approval rating fell to 9%, according to Latinobarómetro.

To pull off his betrayal of the political movement that got him elected, Moreno jailed, exiled and banned Correa loyalists from running in elections throughout his years in office (CounterPunch.org, 12/21/18, 10/15/19, 12/3/19; FAIR.org, 2/16/21). Moreno’s pretext was that Correa (whom he had always praised extravagantly) was actually corrupt, and had left the country heavily indebted. The lie about Ecuador’s debt was especially easy to refute, but Western media happily spread it anyway (FAIR.org 10/23/19).

Moreno’s harassment of WikiLeaks‘ Julian Assange (whom Correa had protected for years after he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London) also failed to damage Moreno’s credibility with Western media (FAIR.org, 11/3/18). Moreno eventually handed Assange over to UK police (FAIR.org, 4/12/19), thereby helping the U.S. crack down on press freedom around the world.

Banned for ‘psychic influence’

This year, Lasso ran against Andrés Arauz, a pragmatic leftist who tried to register Correa as his running mate. Lasso’s win in the fairly close runoff election owed an enormous debt to the persecution of Correa loyalists that Moreno had perpetrated for years (MRonline.org, 5/6/21).

Shortly before the election, Correa was banned from running for vice president, thanks to a farcical judgment (sped through judicial appeals in record time, despite the pandemic, to beat the electoral calendar) that found him guilty of “psychic influence” over officials who had taken bribes. Correa was therefore not just banned from running: He’d also be jailed if he returned to Ecuador.

Absurd rulings like this were possible because Moreno trampled all over judicial independence while in office. In 2018, a body that Moreno handpicked fired and appointed replacements to the Judicial Council and the entire Constitutional Court. (Counterpunch, 10/12/2018) The same handpicked body (the CPCCS-T in its Spanish acronym) also appointed a new attorney general and a new electoral council. [1]

Correa’s former vice president (Jorge Glas) has been jailed since 2017 on similarly trumped-up grounds.  Prominent Correa allies like Ricardo Patiño and Gabriela Rivadeneira remain in exile. Electoral authorities even banned the use of Correa’s image in campaign ads by his loyalists.

Several months before the election, a Moreno cabinet secretary openly bragged about the crackdown in a TV interview (FAIR.org 2/16/21), saying that it was a “big risk being a Correaist candidate, because the justice system will have its eyes on those who have not yet fled or been convicted.”

A key to Moreno’s crackdown was that Ecuador’s state media and big private TV were united in vilifying Correa and his loyalists. Weeks before the runoff election in April, Moreno’s attorney general appeared before the media with her Colombian counterpart to bolster absurd accusations that Arauz had been funded by the Colombian rebel group ELN.  Ten days later, the U.S. State Department singled out Ecuador’s attorney general as one of its “anti corruption champions.” (Incidentally, Arauz has just come under investigation again in retaliation for explaining exactly how Pandora Papers revelations prove that Lasso’s entire 2021 campaign was illegal.)

As Moreno’s term ended, the New York Times (2/7/21) portrayed this cynical authoritarian as a “highly unpopular” but sincere reformer–a man who merely punished corruption, and who genuinely worried that “leaders with too tight a grip on power are unhealthy for democracies.”

Correa and his political movement had become dominant in Ecuador for a decade by winning elections and implementing successful policies that broke with neoliberalism.  A ten year break from neoliberalism was a threat to democracy that warranted a crackdown in the eyes of the New York Times, not over a century (and counting) of a lethal U.S. assault on Nicaragua’s sovereignty.

Concealing Western hypocrisy is essential to helping the world’s most powerful state behave like a global dictator, and Western media reliably provide that assistance.

Research assistance: Jasmine Watson

[Main photo credit: by Becca Mohally Renk, from JHC-CDCA]

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NOTE

[1] The National Assembly had 20 days to choose seven standing and seven alternates from a shortlist of 21 names Moreno gave them. Any posts left vacant by the National Assembly would be automatically filled from Moreno’s list taking into account in the order in which Moreno listed them;ee “Lenín Moreno presentó los 21 nombres de las ternas para el Cpccs transitorio,” El Comercio, February 19, 2018

By John Perry
From Masaya, Nicaragua

Official results from Nicaragua’s elections on November 7 showed Daniel Ortega re-elected as president with 75% of the vote. On the same day, President Joe Biden dismissed the ballot as a “pantomime election”^[1] and within 48 hours the Organization of American States (OAS) had produced a 16-page report setting out its criticisms.^[2] It demanded the annulment of the elections and the holding of new ones, disregarding international and OAS rules that require respect for the sovereignty of nations. Yet it contained no evidence of problems on election day itself that would substantiate its objections. Nevertheless, local and international media were quick to endorse the accusations that widespread fraud had taken place.

This article tries to identify the basis of these accusations, examines the evidence offered to support them and shows why, in practice, the massive fraud being alleged was very unlikely to have happened.

The electoral process – in brief

Before addressing the allegations, let’s look briefly at the process. Nicaragua has developed an electoral system which is probably one of the most secure and tamper-proof in Latin America, with multiple checks on the identity of voters and the validity of ballots.^[3] There were 13,459 polling stations covering up to 400 voters each, in an operation involving about 245,000 volunteers and officials across the country.

Jill Clark-Gollub has described at COHA how this worked on the day.^[4] Briefly, each voter must:

1. Go to vote in person (there are no postal or proxy votes).
2. Have a valid identity card that carries their photo and signature.
3. Be entered on the electoral register for the polling station, where their name is ticked off (in most cases this is computerized).
4. Have their ID checked against a print-out which has a small version of their photo and their signature: they sign on top of this to certify that they are going to use their vote.
5. Be given a ballot paper, which is stamped and initialed by an official before being handed over (see photo).
6. Make their vote in secret and put the paper in a ballot box.
7. Retrieve their ID card, and have their right thumb marked with indelible ink to show they have voted.

Each polling station has representatives of the political parties (in the U.S. they would be called party poll watchers). The poll watchers are there from the time the polling station opens until it closes – they watch everything – and at the end of the day they also sign the record of the polling. The numbers of votes, in total and for each party, are counted when polling closes and the results certified by the party representatives. The ballot boxes are then taken to a central counting center, accompanied by police or army officers, with each box tagged to ensure that it cannot be tampered with or replaced. The count at the center must match the count in the polling station, and this is again monitored by the poll watchers. Counting starts as the boxes are received and continues non-stop until every vote has been dealt with.

Despite these precautions, the international media and the opposition groups who were not represented on the ballot have not hesitated to condemn the process. For example, William Robinson, writing for NACLA, claims there was “a total absence of safeguards against fraud.”^[5] The different critics make one or more of these accusations:

1. That opponents who would have entered the election were prevented from running, and their participation would have secured Ortega’s defeat.
2. That the size of the registered electorate was manipulated in the government’s favor.
3. That polls showed that the government was deeply unpopular, therefore the election result must have been a fake.
4. That the high proportion of spoiled ballots was a concerted “protest vote.”
5. That, after the opposition called on its supporters to abstain, most people did so.
6. That the government “added” one million votes in its favor.

Here we show the plentiful evidence to contest these allegations.

1. Potential election winners were excluded

“After methodically choking off competition and dissent, Mr. Ortega has all but ensured his victory in presidential elections on Sunday, representing a turn toward an openly dictatorial model that could set an example for other leaders across Latin America.” (New York Times, November 7)^[6]

Most of the international media ignored who was on the ballot and focused instead on the arrests of opposition figures earlier this year, which allegedly removed all effective opposition. The reasons for the arrests have been dealt with by Yader Lanuza and Peter Bolton,^[7] but briefly they were for violations of laws relating to improper use of money sent to non-profit organizations, receiving money from a foreign power intended to undermine the Nicaraguan state and influence its elections, and seeking international sanctions against Nicaragua.

But in fact, the ballot included five candidates challenging Daniel Ortega for the presidency (see photo). The NYT said, wrongly, that all “are little-known members of parties aligned with his Sandinista government”). However, these are historic parties – two of them (the PLC and PLI) had formed governments in the years 1990-2006, and in the case of the PLC in particular enjoy strong traditional support. The Sandinista front itself won as part of an alliance of nine legal parties.

Regardless of the arguments about the validity of the arrests, there is no plausible scenario where, if one of those arrested had been eligible to stand, they would have amassed sufficient votes to win. Not only was this unlikely because of the math (see below), but also because not a single one of those arrested had then been chosen as a candidate, the newer opposition parties that might have chosen them were unable to agree on how to stand or who to choose, and none had any program other than vague calls to re-establish “democracy” and “release political prisoners.”

Nevertheless, according to a CID-Gallup poll in October,^[8] the most popular opposition figure, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, had 63% popular support. Let us take a look at a possible scenario, assuming he had been allowed to stand for one of the newer parties:

• Suppose that, as a consequence of his participation, electoral turnout had increased, reaching its highest in recent elections (73.9% in 2011). This would have produced a total of 3,309,000 valid votes, an increase of around 400,000.
• Assume for the moment that the Ortega vote remained the same, and that Chamorro had gained all the non-Ortega votes, including all those won by the other opposition parties:

Chamorro’s total vote would have been about 1,200,000.

• However, it would still have fallen short of Ortega’s by more than 800,000 votes.
• So to have won, Chamorro would have needed to persuade over a fifth of Ortega voters (almost 440,000) to swap sides, despite the deep hostility towards the Chamorros shown by most Sandinistas.

In practice, of course, it was highly unlikely that Chamorro would have stood as the sole opposition candidate, not only because he had rivals from the “traditional” opposition parties such as the PLC, but also because even as the election approached the newer opposition was divided into different groups backing different potential candidates. A divided opposition would have had an even smaller chance of winning.

2. The size of the registered electorate was manipulated

“In order to put Ortega’s electoral victory cards on the table, the CSE [Electoral Council] proceeded to increase the registration of the number of people eligible to vote.” (Confidencial)

“…experts estimated that this year’s roll should be at least 5.5 million.” (La Prensa)

The second accusation is that the electoral register of 4,478,334 potential voters was manipulated in the government’s favor, although critics can’t agree on whether the register was inflated or deliberately shrunk.

Opposition website Confidencial argued that the growth since 2016 of around 600,000 in the total numbers eligible to vote was implausible, and it was also implausible that 97% of those eligible were actually registered.^[9] However, when opposition newspaper La Prensa assessed the size of the registered electorate, their complaint was that it was too small.^[10] According to their analysis, the register should have had approximately 5.5 million voters, so the government was presumably intent on cutting out voters in areas where it has low support.

Either accusation is easily answered. The natural growth in the tranche of the population aged over 16 (those eligible to vote) accounts for about half the increase in the size of the register.^[11] Both Confidencial and La Prensa deliberately ignore the huge improvement in the registry of citizenship since 2016, so that almost all the adult population now have identity cards, needed for many everyday transactions, and which automatically enter the holder on the electoral register. Rather than being implausible that 97% of citizens are registered, as Confidencial claimed, it is an intended outcome of the modernized system, which aims for 100% registration. This means that the register has gained in accuracy as the campaign to extend ID cards to the whole population nears its goal.

3. The government is deeply unpopular, contradicting the election result

“A recent poll showed that 78 percent of Nicaraguans see the possible re-election of Mr. Ortega as illegitimate and that just 9 percent support the governing party.” (New York Times, November 7)^[12]

The official election results give the ruling Sandinista Front 71.67% of the votes, if spoiled ballots are included (75.87% if they are excluded). This is similar to the 72.44% vote share obtained in the 2016 election. The second party, the PLC, gained 14% of the vote, similar to its 15% share in 2016.

Opinion polls cited by the international media and the opposition purport to tell an entirely different story. According to a poll by Costa Rican firm CID Gallup (not part of the internationally known Gallup organization), in September-October only 19% of adults would have voted for Ortega had the election been held then, while 65% would support an opposition candidate. In a slightly later CID Gallup survey, paid for by Confidencial, 76% of adults questioned said that Ortega’s re-election would be “illegitimate;” his party’s level of support had by then fallen to only 9% (i.e. about 400,000 potential votes).

The CID Gallup poll’s findings on levels of support for different political parties are rather baffling. While some 68% of those questioned said they were likely to vote, the vast majority (77%) claimed to favor no particular party. Levels of support for individual parties were therefore tiny: the Sandinista Front was judged to have most support, but favored by only 8% of voters, while others had even smaller followings. Those questioned had the option of choosing one of the supposedly popular parties that were prevented from running, but these also received miniscule support: 5% for the CxL (Ciudadanos por la Libertad) and just 2% for the UNAB (Unidad Azul y Blanco). Had these parties been allowed to take part in the election, their candidates might have been one of the supposedly popular figures arrested beforehand, such as Juan Sebastián Chamorro.

None of the international media who cite the CID Gallup poll question the credibility and consistency of these findings. Nor do they ever mention the more regular and more extensive opinion polls conducted by Nicaragua-based M&R Consultores, which gave a much different picture (see chart). Their results show Daniel Ortega with a 70% share of the vote, a percentage which had increased steadily as the polls approached. M&R claims its surveys are more rigorous, covering more of the country, with 4,282 face-to-face interviews while CID Gallup relies on cell phone calls for its 1,200 responses.

Adding to the implausibility of the CID Gallup poll findings is the fact that some 2.1 million Nicaraguans, slightly under half the adult population, are card-carrying members (militantes) of the Sandinista Front, following a membership drive over the last two years. That less than a quarter of these would vote for the party of which they are members seems, at best, highly unlikely. CID Gallup’s findings would also of course imply that no one who was not a party member would support the government, which is also highly unlikely. Nevertheless, even on election day, opposition leaders such as Kitty Monterrey (herself prevented from standing) hubristically claimed that more than 90% of voters would cast their ballot against Ortega.^[13]

4. Invalid votes “won”

“Null votes confirm Daniel Ortega’s re-election farce” (headline in El Faro)

Because the CID Gallup poll appeared to show a high proportion of voters having no party allegiance, there have been a couple of attempts to argue that a protest vote, ie. people spoiling their ballots, “won” the election. There is some very limited truth in this, in that the proportion of ballots spoiled was notably higher than usual, at about 5%, rather than a more typical 1-2%, and these additional spoiled ballots may have represented a “protest vote.”

The El Salvadoran website El Faro, which regularly gives a platform to Nicaragua’s opposition, tried to show “the strength of the invalid votes.” After claiming that abstentions reflected a “third force,” El Faro published a graphic (below) showing how spoiled ballots “outvoted” the opposition parties.^[14]

However, a proper comparison between the percentage of invalid votes and those gained by the different parties puts this in perspective (see pie chart). As can be seen, the partial graphic displayed by El Faro gives the votos nulos far more importance than they merit: yes, there were more spoilt ballots than votes for some of the minor parties, but the proportion was well below that gained by the PLC and, of course, by the FSLN. The 161,687 spoiled votes hardly show the electoral “farce,” depicted by El Faro. They were presumably hoping that their readers, glancing at the story and the graphic, would get the impression that the protest vote had “won.” Inadvertently, El Faro’s story also undermines the accusation (see below) that abstentions “won.” If it were really true that only 850,000 people voted, as the abstention camp claims, the 161,687 spoiled votes would have formed an improbably high proportion (19%) of the total.

Another approach to exaggerating the importance of votos nulos was pursued by La Prensa.^[15] On each ballot paper there were four voting options so, according to La Prensa, the protest vote was four times the actual total of invalid votes, therefore reaching 666,866, rather than 161,687. This suggests a degree of desperation on La Prensa’s part in its search for ways to discredit the election.

5. Abstentions “won”

“Once polls opened early on Sunday morning, some polling stations had lines as Nicaraguans turned out to cast their ballots. But as the day progressed, many of the stations were largely empty. The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.” (New York Times, November 7)^[16]

Official results show 66% of registered voters took part in the election, a level within the range (61-74%) of the previous three elections. It is also a level of participation similar to the last elections in the U.S. and the U.K. (which were both higher than normal) and in the middle of the range of participation in other countries’ recent elections.^[17]

The international media largely ignore this and cite the opposition website Urnas Abiertas (“Open ballot boxes”) which claims that 81.5% of voters abstained (see graphic).^[18] In other words, while officially 2,921,430 voted (including spoiled ballots), Urnas Abiertas say the real figure was more like 850,000.

Urnas Abiertas do not, however, provide any evidence of it other than their claimed survey of attendance at a sample of polling stations, which is only briefly described in a few lines of their four-page report.^[19] It offers no technical details of their work or examples of polling stations which they surveyed. Described as “independent” by right-wing newspaper La Prensa,^[20] Ben Norton shows how Urnas Abiertas is an obscure organization with few followers and is operated by known opposition supporters.^[21]

Various opposition media, such as 100% Noticias, published pictures of “empty streets” or empty polling stations” on November 7, presumably as evidence that the opposition’s campaign to boycott the elections had been successful.^[22] In typical fashion, international media picked up the story and, of course, opposition supporters were busy phoning their contacts in the U.S. and elsewhere to give the story credence.

The local media had conveniently forgotten a story they covered earlier in the year. In July, the electoral authorities published a provisional electoral register, and invited voters to verify their entries and check they were allocated to the correct polling station. This exercise was massively supported, by 2.82 million voters out of a possible 4.34 million then registered (the registered total has since increased by about 130,000 as entries were updated).^[23] The opposition media, intent on showing supposed anomalies in this process, inadvertently also showed the scale of the response it received from the public, with videos of queues of people waiting to verify their vote.^[24] The likelihood is that, having turned up at the polling station to check their right to vote, people turned up again on November 7 to use it, and the similarity in numbers who did both confirms that this was the case.

The photos of “empty streets” and “empty polling stations” were in any case highly misleading: it is easy to take such shots, especially on a Sunday when businesses and schools are closed, and especially at the hottest time of day. Furthermore, a simple calculation of the likely attendance at each polling station, open for 11 hours with (on average) 333 potential voters and 216 who actually voted, shows that roughly 20 people an hour would have passed through each one. Given that each person needs only a few minutes to vote, it is obvious why queues occurred only when groups of voters arrived simultaneously.

6. The Sandinistas added at least one million votes

“To the amount of votes reported in favor of Ortega, the CSE [Electoral Council] fraud added about one million extra votes.” (Confidencial)

Critics argue that massive abstentions mean that fake votes were created, but they can’t agree how many. Confidencial suggests that it was 1,069,225, while the implication of the “survey” by Urnas Abiertas is that false votes totaled 2,032,067. Confidencial helpfully produced a table (see above) comparing the official (CSE) result with its own and those from Urnas Abiertas, adding for comparison the official results from previous elections.^[25] (As with many of the other opposition graphics, one suspects that spurious accuracy is given to their data to make them appear more authentic.)

An attempt was made to substantiate the fraud accusation when a false image of a “manipulated” electoral scrutiny form was circulated by the opposition ahead of the election, suggesting that exaggerated vote totals were being prepared in readiness for November 7.^[26] It proved to be a copy of a sample document circulated openly in its briefing materials by the Electoral Council.

In practice, the obstacles to the organization of this scale of fraud can be seen from the brief description already given of how votes were verified on polling day. Clearly, creating 1 to 2 million false votes would require a large proportion of the 13,459 polling stations and 245,000 officials to be engaged in the process. This is because the fraud would have to start at the points where votes were cast, because if the false votes had been created centrally the discrepancy with local voting tallies would be blatantly obvious.

Is it really feasible that every polling station (or most of them) created up to 200 false votes from entries on their register using blank ballot forms, stamped as authorized by officials, at the risk that real people with those votes would turn up and find they had already “voted”? Or, if it was done after polls closed, would there have been no complaint from poll watchers from rival parties, and would none of the 245,000 people involved have leaked the truth about what really happened, in a country as chismoso (gossipy) as Nicaragua? The whole notion is absurd.

As I write this, it is one week since the election took place. I have been unable to find any evidence of actual fraud (as opposed to speculation about fraud) in any of the main media which support the main opposition groups.

The real response to the accusations

While this article has exposed the implausibility of the various accusations, the real response to them was the scenes on the streets on election day and during the celebrations when the results were announced officially on November 8. While some of the media portrayed empty streets and deserted polling stations, there were hundreds of photos (see below, from Bilwí) which showed the opposite.

Many international representatives who acted as election “accompaniers” confirm that the polls were well attended and that people talked freely and often enthusiastically about the process, even those opposed to the government (see reports by, for example, Roger Harris, Rick Sterling and Margaret Kimberley).^[27]

Living in Masaya, which had been a stronghold of opposition support in the violence of 2018, I was amazed by the response to the president’s speech after the result was announced: tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets on Monday November 8, especially in poorer barrios, waving Sandinista flags and even holding up portraits of Daniel Ortega. While clearly a minority opposed his re-election, it was equally clear that the majority supported it.

John Perry is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

[Main Photo: People waiting in line to vote. Credit photo: El 19 Digital)

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Sources

[1] “Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/07/statement-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-on-nicaraguas-sham-elections/

[2] See https://twitter.com/OAS_official/status/1458059374077911051?s=20

[3] Nan McCurdy provides a detailed description here: http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/13116

[4] “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN,” https://www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dirty-campaign-nicaraguans-came-out-in-force-in-support-of-the-fsln/

[5] “Nicaragua: Chronicle of an Election Foretold,” https://nacla.org/news/2021/11/08/nicaragua-election-ortega

[6] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[7] “United States Once Again Attacking Government of Nicaragua,” https://afgj.org/nicanotes-09-23-2021; “Here’s what the corporate-owned media won’t tell you about the arrests in Nicaragua,” https://www.thecanary.co/global/2021/06/18/heres-what-the-corporate-owned-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-arrests-in-nicaragua/

[8] “CID-Gallup: Candidato opositor barrería a Ortega el 7 de noviembre: 65% vs. 19%,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/cid-gallup-candidato-opositor-barreria-a-ortega-el-7-de-noviembre-65-vs-19/

[9] “Chronicle of a massive and premeditated electoral fraud on November 7,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/chronicle-of-a-massive-and-premeditated-electoral-fraud-on-november-7/

[10] “CSE publica Padrón Electoral definitivo que usará en la votación del 7 de noviembre,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/09/26/politica/2885887-cse-publica-padron-electoral-definitivo-que-usara-en-la-votacion-del-7-de-noviembre

[11] Data on the age-ranges of the Nicaraguan population can be found at https://datosmacro.expansion.com/demografia/estructura-poblacion/nicaragua

[12] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[13] “Más del 90% va a votar en contra de Ortega en las elecciones en Nicaragua, asegura opositora,” https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/mas-del-90-de-la-poblaci%C3%B3n-esta-en-contra-de-ortega-kitty-monterrey/6303518.html

[14] “Los votos nulos confirman la farsa en la reelección de Daniel Ortega,” https://elfaro.net/es/202111/centroamerica/25834/Los-votos-nulos-confirman-la-farsa-en-la-reelecci%C3%B3n-de-Daniel-Ortega.htm

[15] “El voto nulo y el abstencionismo, los dos grandes ganadores en las votaciones,” https://nicaraguainvestiga.com/politica/65446-no-voto-abstencionismo-grandes-ganadores-votaciones/

[16] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[17] “In past elections, U.S. trailed most developed countries in voter turnout,” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/03/in-past-elections-u-s-trailed-most-developed-countries-in-voter-turnout/

[18] “Urnas Abiertas estima 81.5% de abstención en votaciones,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/votacion-plagada-de-violencia-politica-irregularidades-y-coaccion-del-voto-denuncia-urnas-abiertas/

[19] Downloadable at https://urnasabiertas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ENG-Nicaragua-2021_Election-Day.pdf

[20] “¿Qué hay detrás del 75 por ciento que se recetó Ortega como resultado electoral?,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/11/13/politica/2909124-que-hay-detras-del-75-por-ciento-que-se-receto-ortega-como-resultado-electoral

[21] “Debunking Myths About Nicaragua’s 2021 Election,” https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections/

[22] “Calles vacías en Managua, ante inicio de proceso de votaciones electorales,” https://100noticias.com.ni/galerias/18537/

[23] “Casi tres millones se verificaron para votar en Nicaragua, según Electoral,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/nicaragua-elecciones_casi-tres-millones-se-verificaron-para-votar-en-nicaragua–seg%C3%BAn-electoral/46818586

[24] “Padrón con personas fallecidas, asedio y control del FSLN marcan verificación ciudadana en Nicaragua,” https://www.expedientepublico.org/padron-con-personas-fallecidas-asedio-y-control-del-fsln-marcan-verificacion-ciudadana-en-nicaragua/

[25] “Crónica de un fraude electoral masivo (y premeditado) el 7 de noviembre,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/opinion/cronica-de-un-fraude-electoral-masivo-y-premeditado-el-7-de-noviembre/

[26] “La foto que muestra una acta de escrutinio electoral de Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, es falsa,” https://www.despacho505.com/la-foto-que-muestra-una-acta-de-escrutinio-electoral-de-jalapa-nueva-segovia-es-falsa/

[27] See respectively: https://popularresistance.org/nicaragua-celebrates-democracy-election-day-report/; https://www.laprogressive.com/election-day-in-nicaragua/; https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-threatens-regime-change-nicaragua

By Rita Jill Clark-Gollub
Managua, Nicaragua

Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council declared President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) winners in an election that drew 65% of the eligible 4.4 million voters. Although Washington and its allies in the region denounced the election as a fraud preceded by repression of the opposition, there was significant participation of the electorate; moreover, despite claims that Ortega ran virtually unopposed, his ticket was contested by several long-standing opposition parties. Winning 75% of the vote, the FSLN demonstrated solid strength despite the U.S. government and mainstream media campaign to delegitimize this election.

Rita Jill Clark-Gollub shares her report from the ground in Nicaragua:

On Sunday, November 7, 2021, millions of Nicaraguan voters showed up at the polls to cast their votes in an orderly, calm election process. I was one of over 165 international accompaniers and at least 40 independent international  journalists who collectively observed the vote at about 60 voting centers in 10 of Nicaragua’s 15 departments as well as its two autonomous regions.

Gender equity

Two pieces of background information provide helpful context. First, the Nicaraguan constitution creates an independent, non-partisan fourth branch of government to run elections, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). Second, the electoral law was updated this year to bring computer technology into the system, and to bring gender equity to the staff running the elections, thus completing implementation of the gender parity law passed in 2014. This means that all aspects of the CSE must be staffed with an equal number of men and women, and half of all poll workers, including poll watchers designated by the various political parties, must be women.

My observations were in the country’s second largest city, León. My first stop was a voting center at a school in the indigenous neighborhood of Subtiava, where 5,000 people are registered to vote.

Day of the election

Voters had shown up before the doors opened at 7:00 AM, and by 7:40, 500 people had already voted. A voter’s experience started by checking-in with staff manning four laptops. There had been a massive update and confirmation of the voter rolls earlier this year that informed people of their polling places. Voters were able to verify this information on paper and online, which minimized any issues at check-in. On election day, the entire voter roll for the individual voting centers was posted outside. This not only confirmed to people their voting place, but also allowed neighbors to identify names that should not be on the rolls, such as people who had died or moved away. Because of these updates and use of electronic tools, the check-in process was more efficient than people remembered in the past. Some of my fellow accompaniers even timed voters’ experiences and found the whole process usually took less than nine minutes.

After a voter checked in, he or she went to one of 13 classrooms to cast their vote. These are called Juntas Receptoras de Votos (Vote Intake Boards–JRV). Each one is designated to serve between 380-400 voters. Again, the voter roll for that JRV is posted outside the door. When voters came in, they gave their name to the three CSE workers who then checked them off on a paper printout of the roll. Then the CSE checked to find the voter on the pages with printouts of government-issued photo identification cards, and had the voter sign under their picture. After that they were given a copy of the ballot and directed to the three voting booths to mark the ballot. As you can see from this photo of the ballot, it is rather straightforward in showing the various parties running for President and Vice-President, National Assembly, and Central American Parliament. Voters then  placed their folded ballots into the ballot boxes. After that, one of the three CSE members proceeded to mark the voters’ thumbs with indelible ink so that they could not vote twice.

Also present in the room were poll watchers (each party on the ballot is allowed to have a poll watcher present in each JRV for the entire election day) and elections police. The latter primarily provide alcohol to disinfect hands (a common practice in Nicaragua during the pandemic) and assist people with mobility issues to move within the classroom, as well as keeping disorderly people (such as drunks), from disrupting the process. I did not witness any such disruptions, nor did I hear of them (no liquor can be sold on election day). An interesting thing about the Nicaraguan voting process is that the vote tally takes place with paper ballots in the same room in which the votes are cast, and in the presence of the poll watchers. The number of ballots counted, plus the unused ballots, must match the number of ballots given to that room at the beginning of the day. A paper copy of the vote count is submitted to the central CSE, and it is also communicated electronically, but it is the paper trail that prevails in this case. Other international accompaniers who have witnessed elections in several countries said that this provides the most secure elections integrity possible.

“Nicaraguans want peace”

I saw this process repeated numerous times in the four voting centers I visited. I also asked people if they would like to answer a question, and virtually everyone I approached was eager to speak.  I asked: What is the significance of what is happening in Nicaragua today? The answer was surprisingly unanimous among the dozens of people I spoke to: They said, “Nicaraguans want peace.” They also overwhelmingly said that they want to determine their future for themselves and want respect for their sovereignty without interference from the outside.

Plenty presence of the opposition

I found it particularly interesting to speak to the poll watchers from opposition parties that were present in the voting rooms. It bears noting that five traditional opposition parties, some of which have held the presidency in the 21^st century,  ran candidates for president, despite the reports we hear from the U.S. about Daniel Ortega eliminating his opponents. I asked them what they thought about participating in this election as part of the opposition. They generally indicated that it had been a smooth and respectful experience. One gentleman from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) said, “We want to see what the people think. If a majority of people come out to vote—60 or 70 percent—then the election results will tell us what the people want. But if fewer than half of the electorate turns out to vote, that will mean that people felt they did not have a real choice in this election.”

I imagine the PLI will continue to participate in Nicaragua’s democratic process, despite the fact that the U.S. government is calling for sanctions on participating opposition parties, because of the high turnout. The landslide electoral victory indicates a clear mandate to stay on the path the country has been following since Daniel Ortega came back into office in 2007. If I needed further confirmation that this reflected the will of the people, I got it on the way back to my hotel late Sunday night from seeing people dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks in Managua.

Young voters

Another thing that was very palpable about the Nicaraguan elections experience was the massive involvement of young people. Not only were voters as young as 16 years old (the Nicaraguan voting age) turning out in large numbers, they were also working as poll watchers and accompanying entire families during what they called “a civic festival of democracy.”

As in most countries, the youth are big users of social media. But in Nicaragua about a week before the vote, over a thousand of these young people had their social media accounts shut down, causing them to collectively lose hundreds of thousands of followers. The Silicon Valley platforms said they were stopping a Nicaraguan government troll farm. I spoke with several people who were incensed by this because they personally knew real people who were accused of being bots, or were shut down themselves. A young Sandinista named Xochitl shared with me the screenshots of her FloryCantoX account that had 28,228 followers before Twitter shut it down, telling her that she violated their rules on using spam. This also happened to some of the international visitors to Nicaragua. And I have just heard from Dr. Richard Kohn, who was in Nicaragua observing the elections in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, that all of his photos and videos uploaded to Twitter on election day were removed.

The lies about the process

I am astounded at reports in the mainstream media and from the Biden administration declaring the vote a fraud, and that as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. This flies in the face of my own experience. If I keep talking about it, will I, too, be accused of being a bot? And what does this information warfare mean for democracy in the United States and the American people’s right to know what is happening in other countries?

The Nicaraguan people know their lived reality. We need to continue helping to disseminate their truth.

[Credit main photo: Rita Jill Clark-Gollub/COHA]

By John Perry
From Masaya, Nicaragua

A few days before the Nicaraguan presidential elections on November 7, Facebook and other social media companies began closing down many of the pages used by Sandinista supporters in their campaign to re-elect President Daniel Ortega. This blatant censorship move was said to be because they had discovered “troll farms” operated by government agencies. But many of the 1,500 accounts closed appear simply to belong to pro-Sandinista journalists or young commentators. TikTok, Twitter and Instagram took similar action, and Google said that it has closed 82 YouTube channels and three blogs in a related operation.

Among those closed were several well-known pro-Sandinista accounts with thousands of followers on Facebook-owned Instagram, including those of the online new sites Barricada, Redvolución and Red de Comunicadores.^[1] They even suspended the popular fashion organization Nicaragua Diseña.^[2] When such websites attempted to create new accounts, they were also blocked.

Censorship extended to neutral websites covering the election. For example, Carta Bodan’s daily newsletter on November 2 carried brief descriptions of five opposition candidates.^[3] When colleagues tried to share this link on their Facebook pages it was rejected. The fact that there are five opponents of Daniel Ortega standing might be an inconvenient truth, of course, given that many of the reports of Facebook’s censorship repeated the U.S. government’s contention that the Nicaraguan elections are a “sham” with no real opponents (despite the fact that two of the parties standing were in government between 1990 and 2007).^[4]

Facebook’s head of security, Nathaniel Gleicher, tweeted justifications for its actions, even admitting that “this is a domestic op, with links to multiple gov’t institutions and the FSLN party. We don’t see evidence of foreign actors behind this campaign.” Gleicher failed to respond to accusations that huge numbers of genuine accounts had been disabled.^[5]

The Grayzone’s Ben Norton contacted several pro-Sandinista journalists and commentators who had lost their Facebook or Twitter accounts.^[6] These included young Sandinista Ligia Sevilla, who attempted to show her genuine status on her Twitter account, which was immediately suspended.^[7] The same happened to well-known Sandinista activist Daniela Cienfuegos.^[8] Darling Huete, a journalist, had the same experience.^[9] Some, like ElCuervoNica,^[10] managed to set up alternative accounts. Effectively many commentators suffered double censorship: blocked because they were falsely accused of being bots, then prevented from proving that the accusations were false when they posted videos of themselves as real people. One journalist who complained to Facebook was simply told that “For security reasons we can’t tell you why your account was removed.”

Exploring the motivations for Facebook’s actions, Norton points out its government connections. For example, Gleicher was director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council and previously worked at the Department of Justice. Other senior Facebook executives involved have similar government connections.

International media such as Reuters and the BBC simply took Facebook’s justification at face value – that it had disabled a “cross-government troll operation.”^[11] Even media such as Aljazeera, often critical of the U.S. government, carried reports on what Facebook had done without adverse comment.^[12] Apart from The Grayzone, only the U.K.’s Morning Star appears to have criticized Facebook’s decisions.^[13] Anti-Sandinista news sites, such as Artículo 66, listed the accounts affected, calling them “propaganda” and disseminators of “false news,” even though they are themselves well-established propaganda sources for the opposition.^[14] None questioned why this had occurred days before a crucial election, or how it happened that action was coordinated across different social media outlets. The Financial Times reported, without comment, that the Facebook pages were followed by 784,500 users, even though this might have alerted them to the fact that most if not all the pages were genuine.^[15]

The FT even compared the government’s operation to that of the Russian government’s St. Petersburg troll farm, accused of meddling in two recent U.S. elections.^[16] It ignored a crucial difference: that the Nicaraguan accounts closed were engaged in campaigning during their own country’s elections, not interfering in anyone else’s. Even more obviously, having made this comparison, it failed to ask why Facebook is itself interfering in an election campaign, and whether it is doing so at the behest of the U.S. government.

John Perry is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

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Sources

[1] Original links: https://instagram.com/barricada79; https://instagram.com/redvolucionnic; https://instagram.com/somosredjs

[2] Original link: https://www.instagram.com/nicaragua_disena/

[3] See http://cartabodan.net/boletin/01nov21pm.html

[4] “Blinken accuses Nicaragua’s Ortega of preparing ‘sham election’,” https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/blinken-accuses-nicaraguas-ortega-preparing-sham-election-2021-10-22/

[5] See https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1455241703678365696

[6] “xxx,” https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/02/facebook-twitter-purge-sandinista-nicaragua/

[7] See https://twitter.com/ligiasevilla_

[8] See https://twitter.com/dani100sweet

[9] See https://twitter.com/DarlingHHuete

[10] See https://twitter.com/elcuerv0nica

[11] See “Facebook says it removed troll farm run by Nicaraguan government,” https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/facebook-says-it-removed-troll-farm-run-by-nicaraguan-government-2021-11-01/ xxx and “Cómo funcionaba la ‘granja de troles’ desmantelada por Facebook en Nicaragua,” https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-59136577

[12] “Facebook says it shut down Nicaraguan government-run troll farm,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/1/facebook-says-it-shut-down-nicaraguan-government-run-troll-farm

[13] “Facebook accused of censoring Sandinista media organisations ahead of Sunday’s election,” https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/facebook-accused-of-censoring-sandinista-media-organisations-ahead-of-sunday-election

[14] “Estas son las cuentas de troles orteguistas,” https://www.articulo66.com/2021/11/01/troles-orteguistas-facebook-instagram-cuentas-eliminadas-manipulacion-nicaragua/

[15] “Nicaragua’s government accused by Facebook of running social media troll farm,” https://www.ft.com/content/0998f9ac-7e37-430e-a411-2456b9124e7c

[16] “Russian troll farm makes US comeback,” https://www.ft.com/content/447724b0-bc98-4690-a150-674f451d1b3e

By Richard Kohn, Ph.D.
From Columbia, MD

Recently, there have been reports in the news media that Nicaragua is destroying its rain forests and allowing beef ranchers to convert them to pastures in the country’s vast nature reserves.  A network of supposed human rights and environmental groups are calling for an increase in the intensity of sanctions against Nicaragua, ending beef imports from Nicaragua, and ending international carbon trading credits that support reforestation programs there.

Contrary to this misleading narrative, the nature reserves in Nicaragua are not being deforested, and the Nicaraguan government has been promoting more sustainable beef production and reforestation.  Economic sanctions could jeopardize these efforts.

My personal experience refutes misleading news

I am a professor of animal science at the University of Maryland specializing in evaluating environmental impacts of animal production systems–especially for beef and dairy.  I am very familiar with Nicaragua since I lived there from 1987 to 1988 working with ranchers as an extensionist. I have visited since then, most recently in January of 2020 when I attended a study delegation that examined agroecology as practiced in Nicaragua. On this last trip, I started a dialogue with counterparts in my field through the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers Association) to lay the groundwork for a University of Maryland study abroad course in Nicaragua in agriculture and environmental studies. After seeing the statements in the U.S. media about Nicaraguan beef production that were inconsistent with my first-hand knowledge of the country, I decided to investigate the issue.

Nicaragua is a member of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which has enabled it to benefit from higher prices for grass-fed beef.  In an apparent violation of the agreement, in 2018 the U.S. applied sanctions on Nicaragua that interrupted free trade. These sanctions prevent Nicaragua from obtaining loans from international lending authorities and freeze the foreign assets of many individual Nicaraguans.^[1]  Now there is a bill called the RENACER Act in front of both houses of Congress^[2]  which would impose harsh economic sanctions on the country aimed at returning it to extreme poverty in order to help an opposition candidate win this year’s election in Nicaragua. And if that fails, win support for the possibility of a planned coup attempt thereafter.^[3]

Beef production and the environment

The U.S. news media often exaggerate the environmental impact of beef production. For example, articles online and in the popular press attribute as much as 60% of greenhouse gas emissions to consumption of meat. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the actual contribution is estimated to be about 2% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.^[4] Fossil fuel production and use is responsible for 90%.  A little more greenhouse gas is emitted from production of imported beef, but it doesn’t appreciably affect the total.

The mainstream news media often misinform about beef production to an even greater extent when that beef production occurs in a country the U.S. government has selected for regime change. The percentage of domestic greenhouse gas emissions coming from beef production is higher for Nicaragua than that for the U.S. because Nicaragua has much lower total greenhouse gas emissions from other sources, including fossil fuels. The total greenhouse gas production per capita in the U.S. excluding land use change (mostly from fossil fuels) is eight times higher than for Nicaragua.^[5]

Often, reported greenhouse gas emissions from beef production include land-use changes for expanded beef production.  Although the estimates published in the mainstream media are often too high, there can be some increase in greenhouse gas emissions from land use change.  When land is converted from forest to pasture, less carbon is stored in the forest canopy, and therefore the carbon is presumed to be added to the atmosphere.  The deforestation that occurs in developing countries occurs for many reasons besides the need for cattle grazing. Furthermore, when forests are converted to row crops for food production, even less carbon is stored in crop cover and soil compared with either cattle grazing or forestry.  The U.S. converted much of its forest to agricultural land decades ago, so currently there isn’t much land use change associated with conversion of forests to agriculture in this country.  In developing countries however, ongoing land use change accounts for a significant percentage of estimated greenhouse gas emissions.

International climate agreements such as the Paris Accords charge each country with decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by a similar percentage irrespective of what industries they have, what products they import or export, or whether they already have low greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that already have low greenhouse gas emissions could have a more difficult time cutting the few emissions they have; reforestation is one option.  Reforestation decreases estimates of global greenhouse gas emissions no matter where the reforestation occurs, but developing countries face greater pressure to protect and replant their forests since they can’t decrease greenhouse gas emissions as easily as wealthy countries by using less fossil fuel because they already use very little.

A little summary on U.S. intervention in Nicaragua

For many years, Nicaragua exported beef as well as coffee and bananas, and the U.S. government supported international agribusinesses and the wealthy landowners in that country.  The U.S. Marines invaded Nicaragua in 1909 to protect U.S. investments.  A Nicaraguan revolutionary, Augusto Sandino, fought a guerilla campaign that ousted the U.S. Marines in 1933.  The U.S. then negotiated the installation of one of the world’s most notorious dictators, Anastasio Somoza, whose family ruled Nicaragua until 1979.   A guerrilla army calling itself the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN), or Sandinistas, deposed the Somoza dynasty after 45 years of dictatorship.  The Sandinistas established democratic elections and converted themselves from guerrilla army to political party.  Many wealthy landowners fled the country and the new government redistributed abandoned properties to peasant farmers.^[6]

Then the U.S. organized the so-called Contras–right wing rebel groups, including former Somoza National Guard fighters in Honduras– who crossed over the border at night and attacked the symbols of the Sandinista revolution: healthcare clinics, schools, and of course, small farms. Most of the fighting was in rural areas.  This, together with a harsh economic embargo and the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors by the CIA, soon had the country mired in more poverty and hardship.  A U.S.-backed Presidential candidate won elections in 1990 even though most people polled supported the Sandinistas but were tired of war. Three successive neo-liberal governments ruled Nicaragua over the next 16 years.  Facing continued poverty, the population re-elected Daniel Ortega from the FSLN Party as President in 2006, and he has repeatedly won re-election thereafter.  Since the Sandinistas returned to office, poverty and extreme poverty decreased to half of previous levels; literacy and healthcare have improved; and many indigenous people have been given title to collectively own land in eastern Nicaragua.^[7]

The previous U.S.-backed governments in Nicaragua re-directed the economy toward servicing the interests of the United States: large private farms were engaged exclusively in export agriculture while most landless peasants went hungry.  Since 2007 the Sandinistas have diversified agriculture to meet the needs of their own population.  Although the Sandinistas support a variety of food production practices, and the country has become more than 90% food self-sufficient,^[8] the export of crops like beef and coffee is still important to Nicaragua’s economy. Increasing sanctions by stopping export of beef to the US would be yet another blow to the country’s efforts to improve the standard of living of its people.

Improved cattle management in Nicaragua

Cattle do contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but proper management can mitigate this. Good cattle feeding and waste management practices can decrease methane and nitrous oxide emissions, and cropping and grazing practices can either deplete or accumulate carbon stores in soils and crops. In many parts of Nicaragua, grass-fed beef ranching and milk production are practiced sustainably, and several beef and dairy producers’ organizations have recently signed an agreement to promote more sustainable practices.^[9] Managing cattle for faster rates of growth is one way to decrease emissions of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide. U.S. beef production is highly efficient in this regard, but there is a lot of opportunity in Nicaragua to improve pastures’ ability to support faster growth by using more digestible plants.

Another sustainable practice is to have continuous pastures with trees that constantly build and trap organic matter in soils. This is particularly helpful since much of Nicaraguan land is too hilly or receives too little rainfall to be suitable for annual row crops; torrential rains routinely come at the end of the dry season, washing away soils on any hilly fields that lack groundcover.  When forests on steep slopes are destroyed and carelessly converted to agriculture without consideration of the long-term potential for erosion, soil carbon can be depleted and soon the tired soils also produce less vegetation. The carbon lost is added to the air. Here, mitigation by including trees in pastures is important. Although forests capture more carbon than pastures, trees in pastures grow faster and trap more carbon per tree.  In 2020, I showed a picture to a Nicaraguan farmer of a beautiful pasture with trees interspersed within it and framed by rustic fence posts. He said it was nice, but they should have used trees in place of the fence posts, as is now the norm.  He was right and there definitely have been campaigns to improve grazing practices and plant more trees.

A final point to bear in mind is that the beef industry brings significant revenue to the country—money that is currently used for poverty alleviation programs and reforestation—but has a small impact on U.S. industry. The 700 million U.S. dollars Nicaragua exports annually in beef and dairy accounts for 25% of the nation’s foreign exchange, but only 5% of the U.S.’ imports (after Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.)^[10]

Nicaragua and its programs to replant trees

The Nicaraguan government has been using carbon trading programs to incentivize tree planting and improve pastures with more nutritious plants. These practices decrease the greenhouse gas impact of beef ranching in Nicaragua.

The World Bank published the tree coverage maps in Figure 1.⁷ Much of the deforestation had already occurred before the Sandinistas returned to power, as one can see from thinning of the forests in the northeast between 2000 and 2005 during the end of the neoliberal governments, and further thinning in the region between 2010 and 2014.  This territory is controlled by indigenous communities and they have developed some of it for domestic use in crops and livestock, but the large natural reserves remain. The 2014 map shows recovering tree coverage once trees were planted throughout the country since the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007.

False news that doesn’t recognize Nicaragua’s success

The mainstream news media and websites claiming to represent environmental organizations have been calling to defund Nicaragua. They accuse the Sandinistas of contributing to climate change by destroying forests to convert land to pastures to export beef.  For example, last October, PBS Newshour ran a story called “Conflict Beef”, claiming that indigenous people were being run off their land and killed to make room for more cattle ranching.^[11]  They claimed the disputes were driven by the sudden increase in demand for beef in the U.S. because of lower domestic beef production due to the pandemic.  The implication was that the U.S. should stop importing beef from Nicaragua for humanitarian reasons.  It should be noted that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were no increases in beef imports to the U.S. from Nicaragua during the pandemic.^[12]  Furthermore, the large nature reserves in Nicaragua have not been deforested, and although there have been illegal land grabs in some remote areas, the government has been attempting to prevent them.

Some groups have called for the World Bank to stop funding Nicaragua’s reforestation programs.  For example, the anti-Sandinista environmental organization COCIBOLCA, which is led by the celebrity Bianca Jagger, opposes World Bank funding of reforestation programs in Nicaragua.^[13]  The Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista newspaper La Prensa reported^[14] that funding for the program to continue reforestation in Nicaragua has already been canceled according to sources from the World Bank.  However, reports in La Prensa are often inaccurate, and information directly from the World Bank has indicated a high   level of satisfaction with the Nicaraguan government’s administration of its programs. ^[15]

Whether or not international funding for reforestation has already been cut, pressure from the vast media network against Nicaragua will be used to continue pushing for more sanctions and more interference with its economy.

U.S. sanctions have the potential to create a large impact on Nicaragua’s forests.  It is the small military and police force that are charged with protecting land resources and indigenous people who live in remote forested areas, and US sanctions directly target those entities. The latest round of sanctions before the U.S. Congress will completely embargo supplies to the military and police from imported goods from the U.S., for example. Other U.S. sanctions block international funding for programs in Nicaragua which may include reforestation programs. Because the U.S. sanctions are broad and vague and the enforcement is arbitrary and severe, there is a real risk of over-enforcement in which investors avoid Nicaragua all together.  The economic damage done by the sanctions will force the Nicaraguan government to choose between feeding the population and preserving the forests, as it will likely no longer be able to do both.

Campaign to benefit U.S. political allies in Nicaragua

The carbon footprint of the average Nicaraguan is miniscule compared to that of the average U.S. citizen.  The Sandinista-led government has been planting trees and improving environmental efficiency of beef production while the previous U.S.-backed administrations saw the overharvesting of forests to increase beef exports.

The result of current and proposed U.S. sanctions on Nicaragua will be to plunge the country back into poverty, increase hunger, and prevent Nicaragua from decreasing its greenhouse gas emissions.  The objective is to blame all of these problems on the Sandinistas in order to favor candidates that will better serve the interests of U.S. corporations.  Those interests include the deregulated cheap exploitation of Nicaragua’s labor, land, and other natural resources.

Therefore, sanctions on Nicaragua are likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions whether or not they cause the replacement of the Nicaraguan government.

Richard Kohn is a professor of Animal Science at the University of Maryland. His research interests include evaluating the environmental impacts of animal production systems.

[Main photo: Pasture in Estelí Department, Nicaragua. The long dry season and low water table limit the amount of row crops that can be grown.  Stockpiled pastures like this keep the ground covered to prevent erosion. Photo credit: R. Kohn, 2020]

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Sources

[1] Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act, 2018. House Resolution 1918. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1918

[2] RENACER Act, 2021. Senate Bill 1041 and 1064. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1041

[3] Perry, J. The US contracts out its regime change operation in Nicaragua. Council on Hemispheric Affairs. August 4, 2020. https://www.coha.org/the-us-contracts-out-its-regime-change-operation-in-nicaragua/

[4] US Environmental Protection Agency, 2021. Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Agricultural Sector Emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions

[5] https://www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions?breakBy=countries&calculation=PER_CAPITA&end_year=2018&regions=NIC%2CUSA&sectors=total-excluding-lucf&source=CAIT&start_year=1990

[6] Collins, J. 1982. What Difference Could a Revolution Make? Food and Farming in the New Nicaragua. Institute of Food and Development Policy.

[7] World Bank 2021. World Bank Data: Country Specific, Nicaragua. Accessed May, 29, 2021. https://data.worldbank.org/country/NI

[8] World Bank 2015. Agriculture in Nicaragua: Performance, Challenges, and Options.

http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/532131485440242670/pdf/102989-WP-P152101-Box394848B-OUO-9.pdf

[9] Cattle and Dairy Sector Signs Environmental Sustainability Agenda. Yahoo Finance (online) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cattle-dairy-sector-signs-environmental-110000324.html

[10] United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Data downloaded July 6, 2021. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data/

[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ULooc8pdJ4

[12] United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Data downloaded July 6, 2021. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data/

[13] López, L. B. 2019. Dictadura de Nicaragua da por hecho que echó mano a los 55 millones de dólares de los fondos verdes del Banco Mundial. La Prensa, Nov. 14, 2019. https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2019/11/14/nacionales/2610668-dictadura-de-nicaragua-fondos-verdes-del-banco-mundial.

[14] Estrada Galo, J. 2021.  Banco Mundial niega al régimen fondos por US$55 millones para la reducción de emisión de carbono. La Prensa, Feb. 24, 2021. https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/02/24/nacionales/2788559-banco-mundial-niega-al-regimen-fondos-por-55-millones-para-la-reduccion-de-carbono

[15] Scott Kinnon. 2020. Letter to COCIBOLCA from World Bank on the effectiveness of Nicaragua’s reforestation programs. Sep. 23, 2020. https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/system/files/documents/Bank%20response%20to%20Letter%20from%20environmental%20organizations%20in%20Nicaragua.pdf

By John Perry
From Masaya, Nicaragua

Both Honduras and Nicaragua hold presidential elections in November 2021 and the US government has a strong interest in both, although for rather different reasons. Both have incumbent presidents who will either stand again or, in the case of Honduras, more likely be replaced as candidate by a successor seen as reliably committed to the same style of government. Given that both countries are economically and militarily tiny, it might be thought that Washington would be unconcerned by their internal affairs, but in reality it sees much at stake.

Promoting democracy or promoting “polyarchy”?

The issues that concern the US in Central America are rooted in more than a century of intervention in its politics. The forms of intervention have changed, of course, but always based on the fundamental aim of pursuing US corporate interests. For decades this meant supporting dictators like Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza or Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt, but later it was more convenient to “promote democracy” until, two decades ago, democratic elections in Latin America produced the “wrong” results. This brought a further shift in US intervention, towards what William Robinson (who worked in Nicaragua in the 1980s) called promoting polyarchy,^[1] a limited form of democracy with “elite rule by transnational capitalists and agents or allies, in which the participation of the masses is limited to choosing among competing elites in tightly controlled elections” (a system which has applied in Honduras for several decades). Robinson added that “democracy promotion” and electoral intervention programs were combined with “coercive and other forms of diplomacy, economic aid or sanctions, international media and propaganda campaigns(…) military or paramilitary actions, covert operations and so on” to destabilize undesirable left-wing governments. Timothy Gill argues that this policy now has a further twist,^[2] towards “supporting opposition actors to unseat democratically-elected far leftist leaders,” using agencies like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. Such measures have been deployed in Nicaragua for the last 15 years.^[3]

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In considering the dilemmas Washington faces in pursuing its interests, this article sets aside for the moment the obvious case for respecting the sovereignty of both countries as the US has no legitimate right to interfere in them. Not only is this argument correct but it is one deployed by the US itself in relation to its own elections: it has complained loudly about alleged Russian interference and has strict laws in place to deter foreign influence in US politics. Yet it openly tries to influence other countries’ elections and condemns as ‘repressive’ those governments which deploy similar laws. A former US Congressman, the libertarian Ron Paul, is reported to have said that “It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections ‘promoting democracy.’ How would we Americans feel if for example the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China?”^[4]

US concerns in Central America

What are US concerns in Central America? Foremost in its effect on US domestic politics is the issue of migrants crossing its southwest border, which in 2021 has hit levels not seen for two decades^[5] and is forecast by officials to reach one million arrivals over the course of the year,^[6] with many of these coming from Honduras but few from Nicaragua. Drug trafficking is another concern related to the US’s porous border, with Central America used as a staging post for shipments from Colombia and elsewhere. A third concern is that, despite their small size, the US considers both countries to be of strategic importance. Honduras is a US military asset because its base at Soto Cano (one of 76 in Latin America), gives it quick access to the rest of the region. In contrast, Nicaragua is categorized as “an extraordinary and unusual threat” to US security which, according to Admiral Fuller,^[7] head of the US Southern Command, is “trying to destabilize democracies in the area.” Fourth, in terms of human rights, the US categorizes both countries as deficient, although the State Department’s recent 2020 reports suggest far greater concern with Nicaragua (to which it devotes 39 pages) than Honduras (just 27 pages).^[8]

The fifth factor driving US interest in the outcome of the November elections is one largely unmentioned in official discourse but is perhaps the most important: that the two countries represent completely different economic models. While both are open to international markets and for both the US is their main trading partner, Honduras is pursuing an extreme, neoliberal development model based on the extraction of natural resources at whatever cost to local communities, a minimal role for the public sector, and maintaining the continent’s second most unequal income distribution (after Brazil)^[9]. On the other hand, Nicaragua has a mixed economy, with policies focused on public sector and social investment, anti-poverty initiatives, and promotion of small enterprise and food sovereignty, which have cut extreme poverty by more than half since 2007^[10].

Given the importance of this fifth factor, the US might be expected to support the present governing model in Honduras while favoring the opposition in Nicaragua. Indeed, as far as the latter is concerned, this is what is happening: the US has maintained an antagonistic stance towards Daniel Ortega’s government with sanctions aimed both at Nicaragua’s economy and at individual government officials; it has persuaded allies such as the European Union and the UK to follow suit; it is proactively funding opposition groups and local media through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, and it has instituted the “RAIN” programme (“Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua”)^[11] which is explicitly aimed at achieving Ortega’s electoral downfall.

However, while this may be the obvious stance for the US to take, with clear precedents from the 1980s and earlier, it is far from clear that it really serves US interests, as we shall see.

The US dilemma in Honduras

In Honduras, the US faces a dilemma. Its president, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), was favored by the Trump administration principally because he is a strongman (utilizing la mano dura, in Spanish) who is willing to forcibly stop Honduran migrants from leaving the country and who signed an absurd “safe country” agreement implying that Honduras was a haven for asylum seekers. A similar agreement with Guatemala led a Trump-era official to declare that “The Guatemalan border with Chiapas [in Mexico] is now our southern border.”^[12] In return, Trump was willing to acquiesce in the disastrous domestic policies being pursued by JOH even though they are pushing more Hondurans to attempt to leave.

Part of President Joe Biden’s problem in dealing with Honduras is that the blame for its disastrous policies extends back to Barack Obama’s presidency when, in 2009, he turned a blind eye^[13] to the military coup which deposed the progressive President Manuel Zelaya. The coup led to a succession of neoliberal governments and legitimized a series of flawed elections which culminated, in 2017, with JOH being returned as president even though the counting of the vote was clearly fraudulent.^[14] Since 2009, opposition has been suppressed by increasingly militarized police forces (the country has several different ones)^[15] which, far from preventing the endemic gang violence, appear to have fostered it, so that many migrants say they are literally running for their lives. Human rights abuses were brought to international attention by the murder of Indigenous land rights activist Berta Cáceres in 2016,^[16] the most notorious of a continuing series of assassinations and disappearances of community activists. Corruption is also rife, with the US-favored elites able to steal from the state with virtual impunity after the failure and disbanding of a US-sponsored anti-corruption body known as the MACCIH (Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras).^[17] Since it was closed, 93% of those accused in corruption cases begun by the MACCIH have been freed.^[18]

Honduras, a new “narcostate”

Nothing has illustrated Biden’s dilemma more clearly than two recent US prosecutions for drug-running which have implicated numerous Honduran government officials and led to it being labelled a “narcostate”. The first was the conviction of JOH’s brother Tony,^[19] who faces at least 30 years in prison for bringing 200,000 kilos of cocaine into the US. The prosecution concluded that drug traffickers “infiltrated” and “controlled” the Honduran government.^[20] The defendant in the second case, Geovanny Fuentes, claimed that his drug labs were protected by the military on the orders of JOH himself,^[21] quoting him as saying that he would “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the US with cocaine. While JOH was quick to deny the allegations and to remind Biden of their past friendship, the new administration has been obliged to distance itself, saying that “We are committed to partnering (…) with those in the Honduran Government that are committed to working with us to root out the corruption that has become really endemic to that country.”^[22] A US Special Envoy recently went on a four-day visit to Guatemala and El Salvador to investigate the root causes of migration, but not to Honduras.^[23] To worsen matters, Honduras is reported to have been “flooded” with Colombian cocaine since the start of 2021.^[24]

Corruption affects fight against COVID-19

A combination of natural disasters has highlighted the ways in which the narcostate fails not just the poor but the majority of Hondurans. In November 2020, two hurricanes hit a country totally unprepared for them, destroying 6,000 homes and seriously damaging 85,000 more.^[25] Six months afterwards, the international organization Médecins Sans Frontières said the government’s response had been “inadequate”, leaving more than 55,000 people still living in temporary shelters.^[26] Poverty in Honduras increased to 70% in 2020,^[27] up 10.7 percentage points from 59.3% in 2019, driven by tropical storm damage and by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The massive disruption has provoked a fresh peak of coronavirus infections in 2021. Honduras has the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in Central America, to the point where mayors in seven cities near the border with El Salvador asked for and received vaccines from their Salvadoran counterparts.^[28] Hondurans living near the Nicaraguan border are crossing it to get vaccinated.^[29] Weakened by corruption and underfunding, the health service has been overwhelmed. In April, a senior doctor reported “the collapse of the hospital network” which is now on a “war footing.”^[30] Of seven mobile hospitals ordered last year to fill the gaps, only two are working properly. The head of the agency which made the $47 million deal to buy the hospitals, accused of corruption, was sacked. People protested at one of the mobile units under the banner: “If it were a narco lab, it would be working.”^[31]

Despite its terrible track record, the National Party, in power since the 2009 coup, faces a divided opposition, posing further dilemmas for the US. Opinion polls suggest that the left-of-center LIBRE party, headed by Xiomara Castro, wife of Manual Zelaya who was deposed in the 2009 coup, is best-placed to threaten the National Party.^[32] Her position could have been strengthened via an alliance with other opposition parties but this has not happened. Although the Liberal Party represents the traditional opposition, its candidate Yani Rosenthal served a prison sentence in the United States in 2017 for money laundering, meaning that Biden cannot easily back him. In any case, most observers think that JOH’s National Party will prevail, either through renewed electoral fraud^[33] or by buying votes, or both, as it did in 2017. JOH has resisted pressure for transparency in election funding,^[34] was accused by opponents of having no interest in electoral reform,^[35] and pushed through purely cosmetic changes to electoral law on the last possible day in the election timetable.^[36]

Nevertheless, the US State Department urged the Honduran Congress^[37] to approve the new law and, when it did, the Organization of American States (OAS) called it a “significant step forward.”^[38] They did this despite having produced clear evidence of fraud in the last elections, which the OAS said had “low integrity,” even calling for the elections to be rerun.^[39] Maneuvers like these suggest that the US might well swallow its objections to corruption and back the National Party, while insisting that it choose a candidate to replace JOH. But – if his successor governs in the same mold – corruption, poverty, and violence are likely to continue, spurring fresh migration.

The US dilemma in Nicaragua: Ortega leads the polls

Notwithstanding its political hostility towards Daniel Ortega’s government, the US cannot avoid noting that few Nicaraguans head north towards its southwest border. Nicaragua is also more successful than its neighbors in combating the drug trade.^[40] It recently regained its status as one of the safest countries in Latin America,^[41] despite the violent protests of 2018, even while Honduras remains one of the most dangerous. After a two-month peak of COVID-19 infections and deaths in mid-2020, Nicaragua has had a much lower incidence of the virus than its neighbors; as a result, the  economic damage it experienced in 2020 was about half the average for Latin America generally.^[42] The two November hurricanes, which hit Nicaragua first, caused relatively few deaths and aid was quickly sent to the regions most affected.^[43]

As in Honduras, the Nicaraguan opposition is divided, but this gives the US a different problem: should it urge Ortega’s opponents to unite behind a single candidate whom it backs to win, or should it denounce the election as a fraud (as it last did in 1984), persuade the opposition to stand down, and attempt to delegitimize the winner? The latest opinion poll gives Ortega a substantial lead (69% of voting intentions compared with 21% for the opposition if it has a single candidate), making Washington’s dilemma worse: as things appear now, barely six months from the polls, there might be a decisive Sandinista win that would be difficult for the US to discredit, especially as several political parties are now committed to taking part. Inevitably Washington is laying the groundwork to do this, joining the OAS in criticizing Nicaragua for not implementing radical electoral reforms, even though there were no more than minor criticisms of the electoral process last time around (the OAS said at the time that any faults in the 2017 election “have not substantially affected the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box.”)^[44]

Most recently, Washington has had new opportunities to attack the Nicaraguan electoral process as its authorities have moved to take legal action against opposition figures involved in corrupt practices. Washington alleges that the Ortega government is trying to debar them from standing in the elections, describing as ‘candidates’ those accused of the crimes, even though no party has yet selected who will stand. The most notable case is that of Cristiana Chamorro, under investigation for illegal use of foreign funds sent to the Nicaraguan non-profit that she controls. The money came from USAID and other US or European sources of the kind noted by Timothy Gill (see above), and was redirected to right-wing media outlets hostile to the Sandinista government. Chamorro closed her non-profit foundation in February this year, ostensibly to avoid compliance with a new Nicaraguan law controlling the receipt of funds from foreign governments which is very similar to the US’s own Foreign Agents Registration Act. In other words, Nicaragua is now, and perhaps belatedly, using the same measures to control foreign influence over its politics as the US government has had in place since 1938. Ben Norton, who has analyzed in detail the sources of Chamorro’s funding, says that the Nicaraguan media it finances “are an integral part of a political opposition that Washington has carefully managed, trained, and funded with millions of dollars over the past decade.”

The US faces a deeper dilemma in Nicaragua of which it must surely be aware, even if it ignores it in public discourse. None of the Nicaraguan opposition groups which it supports have so far put forward any platform other than vague intentions to “promote democracy.” But several were Trump supporters or have befriended right-wing US politicians such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and others. Many were also prominent figures in Nicaragua’s neoliberal governments between 1990 and 2006, under which poverty deepened and corruption became rampant. The opposition coup attempt in 2018 was fueled by the free flow of money, weapons, and drugs to those who held cities under siege when the country was paralyzed by roadblocks.^[45] It therefore seems highly likely that if Sandinismo were to be displaced, the outcome would be a neoliberal government of the kind that has produced social collapse in Honduras.

In 2005, when neoliberal policies were at their worst, surveys suggested that almost 70% of Nicaraguans wanted to emigrate, compared with fewer than half that number now.^[46] This could easily change. It can hardly be in the interest of the US for “caravans” of Nicaraguan migrants to start heading north towards its southwest border, along with their neighbors from Honduras. Yet  Washington’s conflicted policies in Central America are likely to drive more migration, not reduce it.

John Perry is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

[Main Photo-Credit: Public domain, U.S. Joint Task Force – Bravo Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras. Flickr.com]

---

Sources

[1] “Promoting polyarchy: 20 years later,” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0047117813489655a

[2] “From Promoting Political Polyarchy to Defeating Participatory Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy towards the Far Left in Latin America,” https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/750/1020

[3] “How the USAID prepared the conditions for a non-violent coup,” https://bbackdoors.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/how-the-usaid-prepared-the-conditions-for-a-non-violent-coup-detat-against-the-nicaraguan-government-part-i/

[4] Quoted in “America’s new regime change formula,” http://dailyalochona.blogspot.com/2011/02/alochona-americas-new-regime-change.html

[5] “Southwest border crossings on pace for highest levels in 20 years, Biden admin says,” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/southwest-border-crossings-pace-highest-levels-20-years-biden-admin-n1261192

[6] “More than a million migrants expected at U.S.-Mexico border this year – U.S. official,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-border-idUSKBN2BM3FN

[7] “Admiral Says U.S. Aims to Expand Competitive Space in Latin America,” https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2473739/admiral-says-us-aims-to-expand-competitive-space-in-latin-america/

[8] Available at https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/

[9] “Income distribution inequality based on Gini coefficient in Latin America as of 2017, by country,” https://www.statista.com/statistics/980285/income-distribution-gini-coefficient-latin-america-caribbean-country/

[10] Paper presented by Nicaraguan Government to the Virtual High-Level Meeting on Poverty Eradication “Trends, Options And Strategies In Global Poverty Eradication,” United Nations, 30 June 2020.

[11] “The US contracts out its regime change operation in Nicaragua,” https://www.coha.org/the-us-contracts-out-its-regime-change-operation-in-nicaragua/

[12] “Our southern border is now with Guatemala,” http://latinalista.com/general/historic-partnership-agreements-signed

[13] “Yes, it was a coup,” http://latinalista.com/general/historic-partnership-agreements-signed

[14] “Low integrity,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/december/low-integrity

[15] “The plunder continues,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/december/the-plunder-continues

[16] “The Murder of Berta Cáceres,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/march/the-murder-of-berta-caceres

[17] “A Death Foretold: MACCIH Shuts Down in Honduras,” https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/a-death-foretold-maccih-shuts-down-in-honduras/

[18] “El 93 por ciento de acusados por la extinta MACCIH fueron puestos en libertad,” https://elpulso.hn/2021/05/19/el-93-por-ciento-de-acusados-por-la-extinta-maccih-fueron-puestos-en-libertad/

[19] “The Hernández Brothers,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/october/the-hernandez-brothers

[20] “Honduran President’s Brother Is Found Guilty of Drug Trafficking,” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/americas/honduras-president-brother-drug-trafficking.html

[21] “If it were a narco lab, it would be working,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/february/if-it-were-a-narco-lab-it-would-be-working

[22] “Canciller Rosales discute sobre migración y daños de Eta e Iota con el titular de Seguridad Nacional de EEUU,” https://proceso.hn/canciller-rosales-discute-sobre-migracion-tps-y-danos-de-huracanes-con-el-secretario-de-seguridad-nacional-de-eeuu/

[23] “Subrayan que la no visita a Honduras de Ricardo Zúñiga, deja claro el rechazo del gobierno de Juan Orlando Hernández,” https://confidencialhn.com/subrayan-que-la-no-visita-a-honduras-de-ricardo-zuniga-deja-claro-el-rechazo-del-gobierno-de-juan-orlando-hernandez/

[24] “Carteles colombianos inundan de cocaína a Honduras,” https://proceso.hn/carteles-colombianos-inundan-honduras-de-cocaina/

[25] “Hurricane Eta hits the Mosquito Coast,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/november/hurricane-eta-hits-the-mosquito-coast

[26] “Respuesta de gobierno a seis meses de Eta y Iota ha sido insuficiente, alerta MSF,” https://proceso.hn/respuesta-de-gobierno-a-seis-meses-de-eta-e-iota-ha-sido-insuficiente-alerta-msf/

[27] “La pobreza en Honduras subió a 70 % en 2020 por culpa de Eta, Iota y la COVID,” https://proceso.hn/la-pobreza-en-honduras-subio-a-70-en-2020-por-culpa-de-eta-iota-y-la-covid/

[28] “Honduras recibe 17 mil dosis de vacunas,” https://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/1463583-466/honduras-vacunas-donadas-salvador-bukele-alcaldes

[29] “Hondureños ven a Nicaragua como destino de vacunación,” https://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/1466318-466/hondurenos-nicaragua-destino-vacuna-covid

[30] “HOSPITALES ACTIVAN “CÓDIGO DE GUERRA” ANTE COLAPSO POR COVID,” http://www.web.ellibertador.hn/index.php/noticias/nacionales/2825-honduras-hospitales-activan-codigo-de-guerra-ante-colapso-por-covid

[31] “If it were a narco lab, it would be working,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/february/if-it-were-a-narco-lab-it-would-be-working

[32] “Esposa de Zelaya en empate técnico por presidencia de Honduras,” https://www.radiotelevisionmarti.com/a/honduras-manuel-zelaya-esposa/18968.html; but see also this more recent poll showing the National Party in the lead: http://cespad.org.hn/2021/05/13/analisis-fragmentacion-y-necesidad-de-articulacion-politica-un-analisis-sobre-la-fidelidad-partidaria-y-la-intencion-del-voto-en-honduras/

[33] “Denuncian que el oficialismo se opone a nueva Ley Electoral para “cometer fraude” en noviembre,” https://elpulso.hn/2021/04/30/denuncian-que-el-oficialismo-se-opone-a-nueva-ley-electoral-para-cometer-fraude-en-noviembre/

[34] “Demandan organizaciones ante IAIP: Resolución que reserva información sobre campañas políticas debe ser anulada,” https://pasosdeanimalgrande.com/es-co/contexto/item/3161-demandan-organizaciones-ante-iaip-resolucion-que-reserva-informacion-sobre-campanas-politicas-debe-ser-anulada

[35] “Jari Dixon: El más interesado en no tener nueva Ley Electoral es el Partido Nacional,” https://confidencialhn.com/jari-dixon-el-mas-interesado-en-no-tener-nueva-ley-electoral-es-el-partido-nacional/

[36] “Nueva Ley Electoral de Honduras no garantiza evitar una nueva crisis, según analistas,” https://contracorriente.red/2021/05/27/nueva-ley-electoral-de-honduras-no-garantiza-evitar-una-nueva-crisis-segun-analistas/

[37] See https://twitter.com/WHAAsstSecty/status/1395873650386014215

[38] “OEA califica como avance significativo aprobación de la nueva Ley Electoral de Honduras,”  https://proceso.hn/oea-califica-como-avance-significativo-aprobacion-de-la-nueva-ley-electoral-de-honduras/

[39] “Low integrity,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/december/low-integrity

[40] “GameChangers 2020: The Resurgence of the Central American Cocaine Highway,” https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/resurgence-central-american-cocaine-highway/

[41] “Balance de InSight Crime de los homicidios en 2020,” https://es.insightcrime.org/noticias/analisis/balance-insight-crime-homicidios-2020/

[42] See https://statistics.cepal.org/yearbook/2020/

[43] “Hurricane Eta hits the Mosquito Coast,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/november/hurricane-eta-hits-the-mosquito-coast

[44] See the OAS preliminary report at https://www.oas.org/es/centro_noticias/comunicado_prensa.asp?sCodigo=C-079/17

[45] “Objetivos y estrategias en el intento de golpe de Estado en 2018,” ​https://www.unan.edu.ni/index.php/articulos-entrevistas-reportajes/las-estrategias-en-el-intento-de-golpe-de-abril.odp

[46] See https://www.myrconsultores.com/nicaragua-rumbo-a-noviembre-2021/

By William Camacaro
New York

“There will be some who will remember Ramsey Clark as an outsider. There are many more who remember him as a friend of justice, the oppressed, the exploited, and the rule of law. Perhaps he himself would like to be remembered merely as someone who used the law to help others.”

Curtis Doebbler, International Law Attorney

During the heat of the Gulf War under the George H. Bush administration, I had the opportunity in New York to meet an extraordinary human being: Ramsey Clark. It was an event to protest the State Department and Pentagon’s arrogantly labeled “Operation Desert Storm.”

Ramsey was a quixotic figure admired by everyone on stage at the event. This former U.S. Attorney General, incredibly, opposed U.S. intervention in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. On that occasion he gave a detailed speech about the conflict unfolding before our eyes, a war in living color brought into our homes courtesy of CNN. But we saw no blood or dead bodies, only fireworks in what looked like a Nintendo video game in which very little “collateral damage” was shown. It was a long-distance war for which television viewers were kept far removed from the pain and suffering of the Iraqi victims.

Ramsey Clark—a fighter for social movements

Ramsey Clark was an extraordinary anomaly within the U.S. establishment. A lawyer by profession, he rose to be Attorney General, an office which placed him at the forefront of many important struggles for civil and human rights. After leaving the pinnacle of power, he embraced progressive causes around the world, even if it brought him into direct confrontation with U.S. hegemony. This included his opposition to the strategy of applying illegal unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) against countries that did not fall in line with Washington’s foreign policy.

The second time I met Ramsey Clark I knew that he was traveling to Iraq to serve as a defense attorney for Saddam Hussein in a trial imposed by the Western world to convict almost the entire Iraqi cabinet—proceedings that many experts in international law considered illegal. Ramsey also opposed the death penalty as a matter of principle. I was able to overcome my feelings of intimidation before this renowned figure, and approached him. I asked, “Don’t you think it will be very hard for you to accomplish anything in that kangaroo court?”

He answered, “Yes, but it would be worse to do nothing. We must march into battle even though we know we will lose. We must go knowing that we are on the side of truth and justice.” We looked at each other and smiled.

At the top of the U.S judicial system

Ramsey served his country as the 66^th U.S. Attorney General from 1967 to 1969 during the Johnson administration. In his previous post as Assistant Attorney General he had been pivotal in the drafting of some of the most important environmental and civil rights legislation produced by any generation before or since. He contributed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and legislation that later inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency  (EPA).

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After leaving public office, he ran for President of the United States in 1972 and for Senate in 1974 and 1977. He was the son of Supreme Court Justice and former Attorney General, Tom C. Clark. Ramsey also founded the International Action Center with the idea of building a platform for social justice and creating a more just and equal world.

His activism took him to such countries as Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, and many others that were under attack or faced potential aggression from the United States, putting his life in danger countless times.

Lauded the world over

Ramsey opposed the Vietnam war from the outset and remained steadfast in his opposition to unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States around the world.

He was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize in 1992^[1] and the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights on December 10, 2008, the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.^[2] He was also given the International Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey Foundation.^[3]

All of this not only garnered Ramsey tremendous admiration, but also the antagonism of those in the Establishment whom he challenged incessantly.

Solidarity with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela

In Latin America he became very engaged in solidarity with Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela. In 1984 the Sandinista government sued the United States at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest court, for its support of the contra army. But Washington withdrew its recognition of the Court’s jurisdiction. The case had both political and legal ramifications for the United States. Ramsey Clark served as an advisor at that time to a young attorney named Paul Reichler who was leading the case.

When he travelled to Nicaragua Ramsey stayed in the home of the revered priest and former Foreign Minister, Father Miguel d’Escoto, who had also served as President of the United Nations General Assembly. They were close friends. On these visits Fr. d’Escoto arranged gatherings with Latin American leaders, and the two of them worked together on a variety of issues for over 40 years, including the situations of Cuba and Nicaragua.

Personal memories of a meeting with a young Nicolás Maduro

Some of my personal experiences speak clearly to the very human nature of Ramsey Clark. In 2000 a young man just elected to the new National Assembly of Venezuela arrived in New York and asked me to arrange his itinerary. The first meeting that the newly elected Bolivarian legislator had in New York was with Ramsey Clark, at his law firm on 12^th Street in downtown Manhattan. This young legislator, Nicolás Maduro, was delighted with this very fraternal conversation with the former Attorney General. And I was able to arrange this even though I had contacted Ramsey at the last minute. He not only received us, but indulged us in a lengthy conversation about almost everything happening in Latin America.

Solidarity with Venezuela based on respect for the rule of law

Ramsey was a leading figure in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela at many key moments. His support was not ideological, but based on principle. He refused to accept the illegal sanctions policy or any interventionism that violated the sovereignty of other countries. For this reason, he did not hesitate to defend the people and denounce wrongdoing.

On November 8, 2005 at the historic Town Hall of Times Square, New York, we held the biggest event the United States had seen in support of the Venezuelan Revolution, called “Night of Solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela.” The large venue was near capacity and a Miami Herald journalist in attendance wrote, “Chávez must have a lot of supporters to fill a venue like that in the heart of Manhattan… it must mean that the Bolivarian Revolution has thousands of followers.”

On Saturday, September 23, 2006, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who was part of Venezuela’s delegation attending meetings at the United Nations, was detained by authorities at JFK International Airport for 90 minutes as he was boarding a plane to return home. I was broadcasting live on Radio Pacifica at that time when the Foreign Minister’s assistant called me to explain the situation. I immediately called Ramsey and told him what was happening, asking whether he could help us and go to the Venezuelan mission to the UN. I did not expect him to be able to help at that late hour with such a sudden request, but I was to learn that day about his commitment and devotion to justice. Arrive he did. I was shocked to see him waiting calmly, unrecognized by the Venezuelan diplomats scurrying to and fro. When then Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro arrived, he saw Ramsey and greeted him outside the Venezuelan mission. Roy Chatterton, who was Venezuela’s ambassador to the OAS at the time, served as interpreter for them as they found a quiet place to talk about what to say or not say to the press. The future President of Venezuela listened attentively. Ambassador Chatterton ended it by saying, “A very important suggestion.” Ramsey’s opinions were highly regarded.

Later, on September 13, 2013, I invited Ramsey to another protest, this time before the United States’ diplomatic mission to the United Nations. He attended, without fail, as always. At that event we were going to deliver a document denouncing U.S. intervention in Venezuela. I asked Ramsey if he would mind wearing a tricolor coat with the colors of the Venezuelan flag. He responded, “If I am going to represent Venezuela, I had better put on that coat and it will be an honor.” From a distance we were able to observe the disgruntled face of the First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy to the UN.

Ramsey accompanied us in countless activities, not only in New York city, but also in Washington, DC and Boston. He was an unconditional ally.

Support for the independence and sovereignty of Cuba

Ramsey not only supported Venezuela’s sovereignty, but Cuba’s as well. He was a strong critic of the legal proceedings against the “Cuban Five,” denouncing all the judicial irregularities in the trial. “If I were Attorney General today and learned about this propaganda campaign during the trial of the Cuban Five, I would have to dismiss the charges. Any Attorney General should do the same,” he said.

He had always appreciated the Cuban Revolution. He told the press that, “Fidel has shown that a country in the midst of struggle and short on resources can educate, house, and provide healthcare, jobs, and everything that humanity needs. And look at the rest of the world. We need that model.”

Ramsey Clark died on April 9, 2021 at his home in New York city at the age of 93. He was an example of love for one’s neighbor, respect for life, and passion for justice.

As Curtis Doebbler, colleague and friend to Ramsey Clark for some 30 years, put it,

“There will be some who will remember Ramsey Clark as an outsider. There are many more who remember him as a friend of justice, the oppressed, the exploited, and the rule of law. Perhaps he himself would like to be remembered merely as someone who used the law to help others.”

William Camacaro is a Senior Analyst at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, DC (COHA).

This article was edited by Patricio Zamorano, Director of COHA

Translation by Rita Jill Clark-Gollub, Assistant Editor/Translator, COHA

---

Sources

^[1]  “Ramsey Clark”, https://www.amacad.org/person/ramsey-clark

^[2]  “United Nations Human Rights Prize 2008”, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NEWSEVENTS/Pages/UNHRPrize2008.aspx

^[3]  “International Courage of Conscience Award”, https://www.peaceabbey.org/list-of-award-recipients/

John Perry
From Masaya

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched another attack on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government last month, accusing President Daniel Ortega of being a “dictator” who is “doubling down on repression and refusing to honor the democratic aspirations of the Nicaraguan people.”^[1] The State Department openly supports what it calls “a return to democracy in Nicaragua”, saying that “the people of Nicaragua rose up peacefully to call for change.”^[2]

Pompeo’s accusations came in a month in which Nicaragua’s National Assembly made three new legislative proposals, the most important of which aims to limit this kind of foreign interference in Nicaraguan politics. Predictably, a range of international bodies echoed Pompeo’s criticisms. Human Rights Watch said that Ortega is “tightening his authoritarian grip.”^[3] Amnesty International claimed that Daniel Ortega plans “to silence those who criticize government policies, inform the population and defend human rights.”^[4] Reporters without Frontiers, the Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN International all sprang to the defense of press freedom.^[5] Fox News called this response “an international outcry” and Reuters said that the government plans to “silence” the opposition.^[6]

So what is the Nicaraguan government really doing? Are its action unusual compared with other countries?  Is there a need for the new law?

Three bills have been introduced in the Nicaraguan legislature, its National Assembly, and are currently being debated:

• One is to regulate “foreign agents.” New regulations would require those receiving foreign money for “political purposes” to register with the Ministry of the Interior and explain what the money is used for. Similar regulations exist in the US.
• The second is to tackle cybercrime and penalize hacking; it would prohibit publication or dissemination of false or distorted information, “likely to spread anxiety, anguish or fear.”
• The third is to enable sentences of life imprisonment for the worst violent crimes (as applies in the US, except of course in states which use capital punishment).

This article concentrates on the first of these new laws, as it is the most controversial, but we will briefly explain the other two.

Fake news and fake deaths

The second proposal arises from the desire to curb the massive “fake news” campaigns that began in 2018, with announcements of deaths that never took place. It also aims to prevent social media posts that call for attacks on people or publicize violent crimes such as torture by filming them and posting them. Most recently, there have been campaigns aimed at convincing people with COVID-19 symptoms not to go to hospital, and these undoubtedly did deter some people from getting help and made it more difficult for the government to control the pandemic.^[7] Whether such fake news can be successfully restricted is, of course, a debatable point, but the government’s legislative changes are explicable even if their likely effectiveness might be uncertain.

The third proposal also has origins in the violence of 2018, when opposition mobs kidnapped and tortured police officers, government officials and Sandinista supporters. But its immediate justification is the recent horrific rape and murder of two young sisters in the rural town of Mulukukú, by a criminal who had taken part in an opposition attack on the local police station in 2018, in which three police officers were killed.^[8] He had been captured in 2018, found guilty and imprisoned, but was included by the opposition in their list of so-called “political prisoners.” He was then released as part of the general amnesty of June 2019, instituted by the government under tremendous international pressure. Nicaragua’s legal system has no death sentences and limits prison terms to a maximum of 30 years; the law would enable judges to imprison for life those found guilty of the worst crimes. The Washington Post interpreted the law as threatening life sentences for government opponents, which is far from the truth.^[9]

The law to regulate “foreign agents”

The proposal causing the biggest outcry is the far more straightforward “foreign agents” bill. It would require all organizations, agencies or individuals, who work with, receive funds from or respond to organizations that are owned or controlled directly or indirectly by foreign governments or entities, to register as foreign agents with the Ministry of the Interior. Anonymous donations are prohibited. Donations must be received through any supervised financial institution and must explain amounts, destinations, uses and purposes of the money donated. Foreign agents must refrain from intervening in domestic political issues, which means that any organization, movement, political party, coalition or political alliance or association that receives foreign funding could not be involved in Nicaraguan politics. Wálmaro Gutiérrez, Chairman of the National Assembly Committee responsible for scrutiny of the new bill, offered this synopsis: “Only we Nicaraguans can resolve in Nicaragua the issues that concern us. In summary, that is what the foreign agents law says.”^[10]

Despite the protests from Amnesty International and others, and the Financial Times calling the new measure “Putin Law,”^[11] the world is full of precedents to control foreign involvement in political activities. For example, of the countries within the European Union, 13 have very strict laws relating to foreign political funding and only four have no restrictions at all.^[12] In Sweden, receiving money from a foreign power or someone acting on behalf of a foreign power is a criminal offence if the aim is to influence public opinion on matters relating to governance of the country or national security.^[13] The US Library of Congress has further examples from many different countries illustrating the wide range of different powers used.^[14]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the widest and strictest legal provisions apply in the United States.^[15] They prevent not just foreign governments, but foreign entities of any kind, from involvement in US political activity. Particular restrictions are imposed by the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which requires a wide range of bodies that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” with severe penalties for non-compliance.^[16] A recent case involving a non-governmental organization (NGO) showed that the law requires registration for activities that are so broad in scope that most people would not consider them to be “political” at all (the NGO deals with environmental projects).^[17] The lawyers reporting this case advise NGOs that “they may be required to register under FARA, even if funding they receive from foreign governments is only part of the organization’s financial resources and the proposed work aligns with the non-profit’s existing mission.”

Political parties are not the only target of the new law

Why is the new law not limited to political parties, like the similar restrictions in (for example) some European countries? The reason is that Nicaragua has a small number of very politicized third-sector organizations: NGOs, “human rights” bodies and media organizations that receive foreign funding for political purposes (it also, of course, has thousands of NGOs that receive foreign money for legitimate purposes, such as poverty relief). An example occurred as this article was being written.

Posters have appeared on the streets of the capital, Managua, with messages such as “For Nicaragua, I’m able to change” or “Nicaragua matters to me” (see first photo). Allegedly, the poster campaign, run by Nicaragua’s Bishops’ Conference, began after Catholic bishops who support opposition groups met with US embassy officials, who agreed to pay the costs of the campaign.^[18] Whether or not this is true, the purpose of the posters is clear. While to someone unfamiliar with Nicaraguan politics the messages may appear harmless or even anodyne, to local people the words and colors make it obvious that they are publicity supporting the loose coalition of groups and parties who aim to oust Daniel Ortega in next year’s election. Indeed, as can be seen from the second photo, memes parodying the originals have already begun to appear in social media.

The posters may also form part of the latest US operation, known as “RAIN” (“Responsive Resistance in Nicaragua”),^[19] recently reported by COHA, through which the US plans to interfere in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections via USAID. But the US government’s practice of using third-sector bodies to influence Nicaraguan politics has a long history. It dates back at least to the time of the “Contra” war in the 1980s, a massive illegal operation funded and directed by the US that left tens of thousands of Nicaraguans dead and for which the International Court of Justice ordered the United States to pay compensation to Nicaragua. One of the legacies of that proxy war is that the Reagan administration created a Nicaraguan “human rights” NGO, the Nicaragua Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), to whitewash evidence of atrocities by the US’s own Contra forces. That NGO still operates today and continues to answer to the US by attributing opposition atrocities to the Nicaraguan government. (A short history of the ANPDH and similar bodies and their links to the US has appeared in The Grayzone.)^[20]

US funding of Nicaraguan “civil society” organizations resumed soon after the Sandinistas regained power in the election of 2006. The blog Behind Back Doors published documents revealing that one US agency, USAID, began a strategy in 2010 to influence the Nicaraguan elections over the following decade, allocating $76 million to projects with political parties, NGOs and opposition media.^[21] Some of this funding was directed via the National Democratic Institute (NDI), specifically to strengthen six opposition political parties (even though equivalent work by a foreign government in the US would of course be illegal). Among the many NGOs to receive funding was one, the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (named after the president who succeeded Daniel Ortega in 1990, and run by the most prominent of the opposition political families), which received over $6 million that it then directed to opposition media outlets (including ones owned by the Chamorros themselves). The aim of the program was to “undermin[e] the image of the Nicaraguan government at the beginning of the electoral process of 2016.” In the last two years, USAID audits, the most recent from August 2020, show that a further $2 million has been allocated under the same program.^[22] As Nicaraguan commentator William Grigsby explained in his radio program Sin Fronteras, one result of US funding is that more than 25 TV and radio stations, syndicated TV and radio programs, newspapers and websites freely produce anti-Sandinista rhetoric.^[23]

It is noteworthy that, when the Financial Times (FT) reported critical responses to the planned new laws, they included ones from the Chamorro family and from the body that represents the “independent” press, without pointing out their financial stake in continued US funding.^[24] The FT also reported criticism by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), without pointing out that it is one of the US state organs that is driving the problem which the Nicaraguan government seeks to tackle.

Why is the funding of local NGOs being challenged now?

Sandinista governments have been in power over much of the period since the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, during most of which time opposition NGOs have been able to operate within a normal framework of regulation of a kind that operates in most (if not all) countries of the world. The need for tighter controls became apparent two years ago. April 2018 saw the start of what the US still calls “peaceful public protests” but which in fact were very violent, with several NGOs, “human rights” bodies and opposition media actively supporting the violence or creating fake news as to who was responsible for it.

There is plentiful evidence of this violence, of course. The most recent, detailed reports come from central Nicaragua, in a series of harrowing interviews with victims recently conducted by Stephen Sefton.^[25] The NGOs and media bodies being targeted by the new law either denied that this violence was occurring or attempted to blame it on the police or Sandinistas. Many of the same NGOs and media were also involved in undermining the government’s strategy for dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, as COHA has already reported.^[26] Their campaigns caused suffering and loss of life among people deterred from going to public hospitals as a result of fake news about clandestine burials, deaths of prominent public figures or a collapse of the hospital system, often illustrated with photos or videos from other countries which they claimed were from Nicaragua.

As the 2021 election year approaches, the scale of the newly started “RAIN” project suggests to many observers that it has a dual purpose: supporting the opposition’s election campaign, but also laying the groundwork to delegitimize the elections in the event of another Sandinista victory. The US Embassy and the State Department will continue to assert that the Nicaraguan government is running “a sustained campaign of violence and repression,” contrary to Nicaraguans’ “right to free assembly and expression,” regardless of whether the new law is implemented. It is clearer than ever that some NGOs and similar bodies are an integral part of this offensive.

This abusive extension of the role of NGOs is, of course, a trend across Latin America and indeed the rest of the world. An article in the magazine of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, asks whether the “N” in “NGOs” has gone missing?^[27] It warns that, as “a significant proportion of their income comes from official government channels, NGOs will resemble more an instrument of foreign policy and less a force for change and advocacy.” In particular, it might be argued, those NGOs that allow themselves to be enlisted by the US government in its beneficial-sounding programs to “promote democracy” in different countries are in practice signing up to a very different purpose. There is now a range of US government bodies and private US institutions who work together to exercise soft power on behalf of the US regime change agenda in various countries through the medium of local NGOs.^[28]

William Robinson, who worked in Nicaragua in the 1980s, argues that the real objective is not only regime change:^[29]

“‘Democracy promotion’ programmes seek to cultivate these transnationally oriented elites who are favourably disposed to open up their countries to free trade and transnational corporate investment. They also seek to isolate those counter-elites who are not amenable to the transnational project and also to contain the masses from becoming politicized and mobilized on their own, independent of or in opposition to the transnational elite project by incorporating them ‘consensually’ into the political order these programmes seek to establish.”

In the context of Nicaragua, this suggests that democracy promotion through local NGOs, “human rights” bodies and media organizations is not merely about seeking Daniel Ortega’s defeat at the polls, but achieving a paradigm shift away from governments that prioritize the needs of the poor to put power back into the hands of the elite who answer to transnational interests, as in other countries of Central America which have not experienced Nicaragua’s revolutionary change.

Nicaragua is only exercising the same rights as those used by the United States

Chuck Kaufman of the Alliance for Global Justice maintains that Nicaragua has the right to know about and protect itself from foreign funding of its domestic opposition. He goes on to argue that “a country is not required to cooperate in its own overthrow by a foreign power.”^[30] This does of course have echoes of the United States’ own actions in rejecting foreign interference in its domestic politics. William Grigsby of Radio La Primerísima argues that the US is hypocritical in criticizing Nicaragua’s restrictions on foreign influence on local media outlets when the US government has itself put restrictions on the US media operations of companies based in China, Venezuela, Russia, and Qatar.^[31] Former libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is reported to have said, “It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections ‘promoting democracy.’ How would we Americans feel if for example the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China?”^[32]

A year ago the US Senate Intelligence Committee, reviewing foreign interference in the 2016 US election, decried the fact that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”^[33] Yet if this sentence were amended to refer to “US goals,” “Nicaragua’s” democratic process and “Daniel Ortega,” it would precisely describe the dishonest practices that the US is following in Nicaragua, which the Sandinista government is determined to stop.

John Perry is a writer living in Managua, Nicaragua.

 [Credit photo: Rosa_Poser, from Flirck.com. Open source]

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End notes

^[1] “The United States Condemns the Ortega Regime’s Attack on the Free Press,” https://ni.usembassy.gov/press-statement-the-united-states-condemns-the-ortega-regimes-attack-on-the-free-press/

^[2] “U.S. Support for a Return to Democracy in Nicaragua,” https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-a-return-to-democracy-in-nicaragua/

^[3] “Ortega tightening authoritarian grip,” https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/08/nicaragua-ortega-tightening-authoritarian-grip

^[4] “Nicaragua: Ortega government appears to be preparing for a new phase of repression,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/nicaragua-gobierno-pareciera-preparar-nueva-fase-represion/

^[5] “RSF and PEN urge Nicaraguan legislators to reject ‘foreign agents’ bill,” https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-and-pen-urge-nicaraguan-legislators-reject-foreign-agents-bill; “Nicaraguan ruling party legislators propose law requiring some media outlets, journalists to register as ‘foreign agents’,” https://cpj.org/2020/09/nicaraguan-ruling-party-legislators-propose-law-requiring-some-media-outlets-journalists-to-register-as-foreign-agents/

^[6] “Nicaragua proposed law seeks to make fake news punishable by prison,” https://www.foxnews.com/world/nicaragua-proposed-law-seeks-to-make-fake-news-punishable-by-prison; “Nicaragua proposes limits on media, NGOs; critics see attempt to silence opposition,” https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nicaragua-human-rights/nicaragua-proposes-limits-on-media-ngos-critics-see-attempt-to-silence-opposition-idUKKBN26J393?il=0

^[7] “Coronavirus y noticias falsas en Nicaragua,” https://juventudpresidente.com.ni/coronavirus-y-noticias-falsas-en-nicaragua/

^[8] See https://elindionica.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/rosario-soza-centeno-el-preso-politico-que-la-derecha-no-reclamo/;  https://juventudpresidente.com.ni/mulukuku-muertes-silenciadas/

^[9] “Nicaragua’s Ortega threatens life sentences for opponents,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/nicaraguas-ortega-threatens-life-sentences-for-opponents/2020/09/16/6f2b5958-f7d4-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html

^[10] Interview with Alberto Mora. See https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:107753-nicaragua-ley-de-regulacion-de-agentes-extranjeros-en-proceso-de-consulta-y-dictamen

^[11] See https://www.ft.com/content/2c0ed64d-db7b-4bd4-acd1-61a978da9f84

^[12] “Foreign Funding Threats to the EU’s 2019 Elections,” https://www.gmfus.org/blog/2018/10/09/foreign-funding-threats-eus-2019-elections

^[13] See details at http://www.aalep.eu/ban-donations-foreign-interests-political-parties-th-eu

^[14] See details at https://www.loc.gov/law/help/elections/foreign-involvement/index.php and linked pages.

^[15] See details at https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

^[16] “Registering As A “Foreign Agent:” Advisors to Foreign Entities Risk Criminal and Civil Penalties as DOJ Doubles Down on FARA Enforcement,” https://www.natlawreview.com/article/registering-foreign-agent-advisors-to-foreign-entities-risk-criminal-and-civil

^[17] “Foreign Agent Registration Act Advisory Opinion Update,” https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c0743ab9-3a2c-40f4-bed3-7d36bf365070

^[18] See https://www.facebook.com/groups/SandinistaNicaraguaFriends/permalink/677150526543297/

^[19] “The US contracts out its regime change operation in Nicaragua,” https://www.coha.org/the-us-contracts-out-its-regime-change-operation-in-nicaragua/

^[20] “Counting deaths for dollars: The rise and fall of Nicaragua’s ‘human rights’ organizations,” https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/25/deaths-for-dollars-nicaraguas-human-rights-organizations/

^[21] See https://bbackdoors.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/how-the-usaid-prepared-the-conditions-for-a-non-violent-coup-detat-against-the-nicaraguan-government-part-i/

^[22] See https://oig.usaid.gov/search-content?keys=Fundaci%C3%B3n+Violeta+Barrios+de+Chamorro

^[23] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oL4Kv59D8A

^[24] “Nicaragua raises alarm with repressive draft laws,” https://www.ft.com/content/2c0ed64d-db7b-4bd4-acd1-61a978da9f84

^[25] See http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/10378

^[26] See https://www.coha.org/nicaragua-battles-covid-19-and-a-disinformation-campaign/

^[27] See http://www.redcross.int/EN/mag/magazine1996_3/18-19.html

^[28] “Soft Power: Democracy-Promotion and U.S. NGOs,” https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/soft-power-democracy-promotion-and-us-ngos

^[29] “Promoting polyarchy: 20 years later,” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0047117813489655a

^[30] Author’s personal communication with Chuck Kaufman, October 6, 2020.

^[31] See http://radiosegovia.net/medios-de-comunicacion-independientes-que-reciben-financiamiento-de-la-usaid-en-nicaragua/

^[32] See http://dailyalochona.blogspot.com/2011_02_23_archive.html

^[33] “Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Active Measures: Part Two,” https://www.lawfareblog.com/senate-intelligence-committee-report-russian-active-measures-part-two