Nicaragua has chosen the path of dictatorship, and relies on the support of Russia and China to be protected against its own citizens, whose patience is wearing thin after years of abuse and corruption.
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s government has closed seven radio stations owned by the Roman Catholic church, as well as two other outlets serving the largely rural northern area with a history of opposition to his Sandinista National Liberation Front party. Police cut the power and occupied the residence of a parish priest Rolando José Álvarez in Matagalpa.
Matagalpa in the 1980s was a center of the right-wing “Contra” fighters against Ortega’s first Sandinista government after the revolution. While much of the population in the area is anti-Sandinista, Ortega’s party won local elections in Rio Blanco in 2017 in what the opposition called a fraud.
The Nicaraguan Government has unleashed unprecedented levels of violence against its own people, using killings, forced disappearances, incarceration, harassment and intimidation against political opponents as well as journalists, human rights defenders, religious and other leaders.
Religion is an important factor for many Nicaraguans when choosing who to vote for, meaning the Catholic Church possesses a great deal of influence on politicians’ stances before they get elected. In 2006, presidential candidate Daniel Ortega used a strategy similar to former president Arnoldo Aléman’s, purposely creating a strategic alliance with powerful conservative religious leaders to gain the support necessary to get elected. In order to gain these votes, Ortega married Rosario Murillo in the Catholic Church, and during his campaign, Ortega vowed to maintain the country’s ban on abortion. When he ran for re-election in 2011, Ortega’s campaign slogan was “Christiana, Socialista, Solidaria,” meaning Christian, Socialist, Solidarity.
Church continues to be inextricably interwoven with State after election.
After the church initially tried to mediate peace between protesters and the government, Ortega accused them supporting those who wanted to remove him, calling them “terrorists” and “demons in robes.”
Among the other outlets closed last two weeks there were feminist communitarian radio station Radio Vos and television station RB3, both serving largely rural populations.
The latest crackdown aims to silence any remaining voices of dissent before Nicaragua holds local elections in November, much like Ortega’s arrest of the leading potential opposition candidates before last year’s presidential election.
Ortega’s unchecked repression has emboldened other leaders who have shown little tolerance for dissenting voices.
Last week, Guatemala arrested a prominent journalist whose newspaper specializes in corruption investigations, including against current President Alejandro Giammattei. After his first appearance before a judge Wednesday on money laundering and extortion charges, José Rubén Zamora said it was a “set-up” carried out by the president and attorney general.
Zamora’s arrest followed persecution of Guatemalan judges and prosecutors specially in corruption cases, a number of whom have been driven into exile.
In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele regularly attacks nongovernmental organizations that criticize his government’s measures, most recently a more than four-month state of exception that suspended fundamental rights during which authorities have arrested more than 40,000 people for alleged gang connections.
The arrests have been popular in El Salvador, but criticized by civil rights organizations because many have occurred without investigation and due process.
Latin America has suffered a widespread backlash from powerful pro-impunity sectors and authoritarian leaders, and Nicaragua has become, let’s say, a model.
Giammattei and Bukele — both from other parts of the ideological spectrum — had taken pages from Ortega’s “playbook” in order to concentrate power.
Nicaragua’s government has shut down some 1,000 non-governmental organizations this year.
Ortega has maintained that the April 2018 protests were an attempt to oust him that received foreign support. The government clamped down on organizations receiving any international support.
Ortega will do anything to hold onto power through repression at all levels: religious, political, the press, the NGOs, the business people.
So, the Roman Catholic church had been under increasing pressure in Nicaragua. The government expelled the Vatican’s top diplomat in March. This trend will continue. Some bishops have criticized the government’s actions since the 2018 protests and had to leave.
