U.S. Government Meddling Machine Boasts of 'Laying the Groundwork for
Insurrection' in Nicaragua
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While some corporate media outlets have portrayed the violent protest
movement gripping Nicaragua as a progressive grassroots upswell, the
country's own student leaders have suggested otherwise.
In early June, Nicaragua's leading young activists went on a junket to
Washington, DC, on the dime of the US government-funded right-wing advocacy
group Freedom House. The Nicaraguan student leaders were there to beseech
Donald Trump and other right-wing US government officials to help them in
their fight against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
On the excursion to the US capital, the young activists posed for photo-ops
with some of the most notorious neoconservatives in the US Congress:
Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The
Nicaraguan student leaders were also shepherded to meetings with top
officials from the State Department and the US government soft power
organization USAID. There, they were reassured that they would have
Washington's full-throated support.
A month before the student protesters' meetings with ultra-conservative
lawmakers in Washington, a publication funded by the US government's regime
change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), bluntly asserted
that organizations backed by the NED have spent years and millions of
dollars "laying the groundwork for insurrection" in Nicaragua.
This article openly boasting of US meddling was published in the Latin
America-focused news website Global Americans, and was authored by US
academic Benjamin Waddell, the academic director of the School for
International Training in Nicaragua. Following publication of this piece,
Global Americans replaced the term "insurrection" with the more innocuous
word "change." The original headline can however still be seen in the
article's URL.
Despite the cosmetic alteration, Waddell's article offers a remarkably
candid assessment of the impact of the National Endowment for Democracy's
sustained investments in Nicaraguan civil society. The author's conclusions
inadvertently echoed those of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his
supporters, who have framed the protests as a carefully staged plot backed
to the hilt by Washington.
"International press has depicted the rapid escalation of civil unrest in
Nicaragua as a spontaneous explosion of collective discontent, triggered by
the government's changes to its insolvent social security system and rooted
in more than a decade of authoritarian rule by the Ortega-Murillo family,"
Waddell wrote. "And while the underlying causes of the turmoil are rooted in
government mismanagement and corruption, it's becoming more and more clear
that the U.S. support has helped play a role in nurturing the current
uprisings."
In another striking passage, Waddell concluded, "the NED's current
involvement in nurturing civil society groups in Nicaragua sheds light on
the power of transnational funding to influence political outcomes in the
21st century."
A history of meddling
The NED is a leading agent of US soft power that has meddled in other
countries' affairs since its founding at the height of the Cold War, in
1983. Its first success took place in Nicaragua, where it incubated
anti-Sandinista media outfits like the La Prensa newspaper through a
cut-out, PRODEMCA, that was also covertly funded by allies of Oliver North.
In 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated at the polls by the right-wing
candidate Violeta Chamorro, whose family happened to own La Prensa.
Chamorro's victory represented the culmination of nearly $16 million dollars
in NED grants to anti-Sandinista political parties and media outlets.
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," Allen
Weinstein, a founder of the NED, commented in 1991.
In the years that followed, the NED and its partners have helped swing
elections for right-wing neoliberal candidates in Russia and Mongolia in
1996; fomented a coup that drove Haiti's democratically elected president
Jean Bertrand Aristide from power; and directed millions towards dismantling
Venezuela's socialist government, an ongoing effort complimented by crushing
US sanctions.
The protests that have erupted in Nicaragua have brought the NED's influence
back into focus all over again. According to Waddell, the NED has spent $4.1
million in the country since 2014, helping grow 54 groups into major players
on the political scene and "laying the groundwork for insurrection."
The US-backed network behind the protests
The unrest that has paralyzed Nicaragua was triggered by the announcement by
President Daniel Ortega of reforms to the nearly bankrupt social security
system. The International Monetary Fund and a local business umbrella group
had insisted on changes that would have raised the retirement age and
gradually privatized health clinics, threatening some of the most
significant gains of the Sandinista revolution.
When Ortega countered with a proposal that would have demanded a greater
contribution into the system from businesses and retirees, with business
owners paying the lion's share, a sector of the public exploded with
outrage. The angry reaction to Ortega's plan, reinforced with intensive
coverage by opposition media sources, became the spark for rolling protests
that have set the country on fire - literally, in many cases.
The most visible faces of the anti-Ortega movement have not been retirees
impacted by the social security reforms, but urban, politically unaffiliated
students seeking a total victory. They have forged an alliance with the
traditional right-wing, pro-business opponents of Sandinismo, along with a
marginal sector of former Sandinistas alienated by Ortega's rapid
consolidation of power.
Meanwhile, masked men toting homemade mortars and firearms have formed the
front line of the tranque road blocks that have already drained Nicaragua's
economy of some $250 million in revenue. To date, some 170 people have been
killed in the chaos. As the death toll mounts on both sides, talk of a new
civil war seems like a more than remote possibility.
Since the unrest began, the NED has taken measures to conceal the names of
the groups it funds in Nicaragua on the grounds that they could face
reprisals from the government. But the main recipients of backing from
Washington were already well known in the country.
Hagamos Democracia, or Let's Make Democracy, is the largest recipient of NED
funding, reaping over $525,000 in grants since 2014. The group's president,
Luciano Garcia, who oversees a network of reporters and activists, has
declared that Ortega has turned Nicaragua into a "failed state" and demanded
his immediate resignation.
The Managua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP)
has received at least $260,000 from the NED since 2014. The grants have been
earmarked to support the IEEPP's work in training activists on "encouraging
debate and generating information on security and violence." The funding has
also covered efforts to monitor the "increased presence of Russia and China
in the region," an obvious priority for Washington.
As soon as the violent protests against Ortega were ignited, IEEPP director
Felix Mariadiaga brought his agenda out into the open. A former World
Economic Forum Young Global Leader educated at Yale and Harvard, Mariadaga
was hailed by La Prensa for having "sweated, bled and cried alongside the
young students who have led the protests in Nicaragua that continue from
April until the end of May."
Asked by La Prensa if there was any way out of the violence without regime
change, Mariadaga was blunt: "I can not imagine a way out at this moment
that does not include a transition to democracy without Daniel Ortega."
"We have given ourselves a terrible image"
This June, Mariadaga led an opposition delegation to Washington to denounce
Ortega's rule before the General Assembly of the Organization for American
States. He was joined by Anibal Toruno, director of Radio Dario - another
longtime recipient of support from NED (PDF), and one of the key hubs of
anti-Ortega media in the Nicaraguan city of Leon.
While Mariadaga was in Washington, he was charged by the Nicaraguan police
with overseeing an organized criminal network that has murdered several
people during the violent unrest that has gripped the country. Mariadaga
slammed the allegations as a "political persecution" and a "ridiculous
accusation," but postponed his return to Nicaragua. The US State Department
backed him up with a statement of vehement support.
At the same time, a group of Nicaraguan student leaders of the anti-Ortega
protests were in Washington to lobby the Trump administration for help in
bringing their country's leader down.
Among the US officials to receive the students was USAID director Mark
Green. "We need to stand with those who are standing up for things that we
need to believe in," Green said of the students, in an interview with
McClatchy.
Aside from NED, USAID has been the most active promoter of regime change
against socialist-oriented governments in Latin America. In Nicaragua,
USAID's budget topped $5.2 million in 2018, with most of the funding
directed towards training civil society and media organizations.
The Nicaraguan students' junket to Washington was paid for by Freedom House,
a US government-funded NED partner whose agenda typically aligns with the
neoconservative wing of the American foreign policy establishment.
Freedom House crafted an itinerary for the students that culminated with a
photo-op with some of the most hawkish Republicans in Washington: Senators
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Back in Managua, another prominent student leader, Harley Morales, reeled in
disgust at his peers' appearance on Capitol Hill. "It was terrible," Morales
told the newspaper El Faro. "They (Cruz, Rubio, and Ros-Lehtinen) are the
extreme Republican right. We are very unhappy with this trip; they were paid
for by the United States and an agenda was imposed on them. We have given
ourselves a terrible image."
Though he hoped for "an error correction plan," Morales conceded that the
grip of powerful outside interests on the student protesters was tightening.
"All movements now have advisors," he lamented. "Movers and shakers.
Children of politicians, businessmen. They have a very clear political
line."
Max Blumenthal
