Grayzone Project
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Nicaragua July 30, 2018
An Exclusive Interview with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega
Daniel Ortega claims his Sandinista government has just defeated a US-backed
coup. In a candid and lengthy discussion with me in Managua, he discussed
the violent unrest and the factors behind it.
By Max Blumenthal
Since the sudden outbreak of protests and violence last April, an uneasy
calm had fallen over Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista
government have claimed victory over what they call a coup attempt, but they
now face condemnation from the US and its allies, who accuse them of
unleashing lethal violence against peaceful protesters.
I spent much of July inside Nicaragua, speaking with supporters of the
government and their opponents. I learned that Washington's narrative of a
despised dictator mowing down unarmed demonstrators wasn't exactly accurate.
Across the country, I observed widespread support for Ortega and the
Sandinista movement. It also became apparent from the moment I arrived that
Western media had covered up the brutality of the opposition, as well as its
anti-democratic agenda.
In the midst of what seemed to be a misinformation campaign reinforced by
right-wing members of Congress and the Organization of American States, I
approached the Nicaraguan government for a chance to hear Ortega's side of
the story. He agreed, granting me one of his first interviews in eleven
years.
Here are 13 takeaways from our wide-ranging discussion on July 25 in
Managua:
1.Ortega and his government were shocked at the outbreak of coordinated
violence that gripped the country on April 19. He said he had no advance
intelligence warnings and that "it was well worked out." Ortega blamed armed
groups that had begun to form since he was inaugurated in 2007 and which
were linked to criminal networks in Miami and Costa Rica, as well as to
American intelligence services. He likened them to the Contras, detailing
their campaign of lethal violence against Sandinista mayors, political
secretaries, police officials, and average citizens. "They are presented as
patriots" in Western media, Ortega lamented.
2.For perhaps the first time, Ortega acknowledged the presence of
pro-Sandinista paramilitaries. He explained that he had ordered his national
police to remain in their barracks as part of the national dialogue he
initiated with the opposition. He had hoped that the Catholic bishops and
his opponents would take the order as a good faith signal and lower the
intensity of opposition attacks, but instead they exploited the security
void to ratchet up the violence. This meant that for 55 days, while police
were resigned to their stations, where they found themselves under siege,
the opposition embarked on a campaign of blood vengeance against
Sandinistas. "It was really a matter of defending their lives," Ortega said
of the pro-Sandinista paramilitaries, "because those armed elements staging
the coup were on a Sandinista hunt, going into their homes, looting.
Sandinista families were victims of these attacks, citizens have a right to
defend their lives when they are under attack."
3.Ortega's government was overwhelmed by the social media blitz that drove
the protests in April and ultimately mobilized a full scale campaign for
regime change. He recalled how the social security problem that he inherited
from his predecessor, the neoliberal President Enrique Bolanos, became a
pretext for an online campaign that he described as a testing ground for
this year's coup attempt. In 2010, following the sudden spread of a
#OccupyINNS (referring to Nicaragua's social security system) hashtag
campaign, students descended on the social security building alongside
Catholic priests, demanding reforms while building opposition to Sandinista
rule. "We incorporated the changes they demanded but that weakened the
system even more," Ortega said. "That was the first social media attack we
experienced." The second attack occurred around the fire that raged in the
Indio Maiz reserve, which the opposition accused Sandinistas of setting.
"They internationalized the issue of this forest fire, claimed we set the
fire," Ortega said. "One could see that this was being articulated with
other movements here in the cities. They were thinking in broader terms. But
it didn't occur to us that this would be an attempted coup d'etat. We
thought this was just one battle to drag the government down. Firefighters
told us it would take months to put it out and then it rained." Even though
the fire was doused, the political firestorm grew into a full scale regime
change operation.
4.Ortega heaped scorn on the White House and international networks like CNN
for blaming him and his government for 100% of the over three hundred deaths
that have occurred in Nicaragua since April. He pointed out that victims of
common crime, accidents and opposition violence were conflated with the
deaths of protesters in reports by local human rights groups. He also
referred to the scores of Sandinistas who had been murdered by armed
opposition elements, including a 25-month-old baby, the child of Gabriella
Maria Aguirre, who died on July 13 in Masatepe of bronchoaspiration when her
ambulance was held up at an opposition roadblock. (Ortega's analysis of the
manipulated death toll is generally backed up by a meticulously detailed
study by independent researcher Enrique Hendrix).
5.In response to my question about the meddling of the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), the US government's regime change funding apparatus,
Ortega said his government was planning measures to limit the group's
influence, but he stopped short of vowing an absolute ban. He pointed to the
role of Felix Maradiaga, the main channel for NED money into Nicaragua, and
the group's top trainer, recalling how Maradiaga was caught on camera
plotting with armed thugs at UPOLI, the first public university occupied by
the opposition in April. Noting that Maradiaga is currently in Washington to
secure more funding for anti-Sandinista activity, Ortega warned he may face
legal consequences if he returns to Nicaragua. He also described a new
government task force, UAF, that will investigate the use of foreign money
to finance "terrorism": "The US protects itself from terror attacks and has
laws [to protect itself]. The US is careful to not let that happen, and we
have the right to not let that happen too."
6.Asked about the role of sanctions in driving opposition to his rule and
preparations for a deepened US attack on the Nicaraguan economy, Ortega put
Washington's hostility in historic context. "US policy is the same as it
ever was," he said. "They want governments that are entirely submissive to
their decisions. They've always rejected the possibility that we'd return to
power. Colin Powell came down here to tell Nicaraguans not to vote for us,
so before every election, some big shot from the US would come down and say
not to vote for us. When we did win in 2006, we knew the US would do
everything it could to degrade and wear down our government." Ortega
explained that Barack Obama imposed the first sanctions on his government,
accusing him of ceding to pressure from the Miami lobby of right-wing Cuban,
Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exiles.
7.The sanctions have disrupted the tripartite alliance Ortega's government
forged with unions and the business community of Nicaragua. "It was not an
ideological deal, but one to strengthen the economy and combat poverty," he
explained. "This alliance started to be torpedoed in Washington, with
political parties and NGO's involved in the coup lobbying in Washington to
criticize the business sector for allying with Sandinistas. That is where
the Nica Act was born. That was a very important element to create
destabilization here for their coup attempt." He said another set of
sanctions, the Global Magnitsky Act, targeted businesses that worked with
his government, and thereby generated a fracture in the tripartite
agreement. Big business "was threatened by the Magnitsky Act, and it created
conditions for the coup attempt by attacking the alliance. We know that a
law like this would affect first and foremost the poor, campesinos,
families, and laws like this one violates agreements and norms that us
operates under with international organizations."
8.Ortega emphasized Nicaragua's role as a "stopper" of mass migration and
drug trafficking to the north and warned that the US-backed campaign of
destabilization his country has witnessed will change all that. "These
terrorist activities have not only caused loss of life, but many people have
lost their jobs. Economic growth that Nicaragua had, that was sustainable
and impacted the fight against poverty, created conditions where there were
less immigrants to the US. Now, with the unemployment caused by this crisis,
people will flee to Costa Rica and also the US." Ortega warned that if the
US continues to undermine Nicaragua's security, "then what they will have
done to break open the borders and that will also mean the borders are open
to organized crime, to drug trafficking. If that is broken down, then
organized crime, youth gangs that are already penetrating Costa Rica will
end up having an influence on the Panama Canal."
9.Asked about allegations of corruption and nepotism, Ortega dismissed the
charges. He highlighted the economic progress his government has made
through the ALBA alliance of economic cooperation with Venezuela, pointing
to poverty reductions programs like Zero Usury, which gives credits for
small business people with a zero interest rate, and the Zero Hunger
initiative, which has given the rural poor small plots of farm land and
animals for free to make them productive economic subjects. Most of the
participants in these programs have been women, Ortega emphasized. "People
can't understand these programs, so they mock them," he said before ticking
off further achievements like road building and public parks with funds from
mayor's offices and the ALBA program.
10.Despite being condemned by 21 members of the Organization of American
States, an international body currently dominated by right-wing, US-allied
governments, Ortega will not terminate Nicaragua's membership. "We need to
continue the battle and defend our point of view," he said. He accused the
US of weakening institutions like the OAS by preaching human rights while
refusing to sign on to binding human rights agreements. "What most weakens
it is the revanchist attitude of right wing governments that are now a
majority in Latin America and who have joined forces with the US and are
guided by the US or the Miami lobby to fight those countries that favor
relations of respect to sovereignty, non interference in the internal
affairs of other countries," he said. Ortega added that many of the
governments that had condemned him were responsible for human rights
violations that are scarcely discussed at the OAS: "If the practice of the
OAS were to judge every country that has problems, death, disappearances,
crushed uprisings, they'd be talking about every single Latin American
country. But that doesn't happen. Countries in these groups have terrible
crimes and there is no oversight by the OAS or US."
11.The relationship with the Catholic church, whose bishops participated
directly in the effort to oust the Sandinistas this year, remains a source
of bitterness. "They were saying they didn't have experience as mediators,"
Ortega recalled. "And in the end, the influence of the opposition and the
pressure of the opposition and the media made it impossible to work [with
the bishops] in the dialogue. He lamented that, "In the first day they would
take the floor and clearly take the side of the opposition. And by doing so
they undermined the authority of the Bishop's Conference." Ortega singled
out Silvio Baez, the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, as a particularly bad
actor, criticizing him for "[tweeting] on his cellphone in the middle of
this serious dialogue in favor of the opposition and against the
government."
12.Ortega has no plans to launch a Twitter account of his own. "It would
drive me nuts," he said.
13.Asked about the fraying bonds of solidarity between the Western left and
the Sandinista movement, Ortega thanked Nicaragua's allies in the US and
Europe for "sticking to your principles." "Please look carefully at how your
authorities behave," he urged Americans and Europeans. "What right do your
authorities have to punish a country in a way that they haven't punished
other countries and impose sanctions, putting into practice measures that
interfere in their internal affairs?"
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Photo by Thomas Hedges.
