OPINION | Nicaragua, a setback and a paradoxical tragedy

Editor’s note: Jorge G. Castañeda is a CNN contributor. He was Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2003. He is currently a professor at New York University and his most recent book, “America Through Foreign Eyes,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

(CNN Spanish) – The offensive launched by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega against his electoral opponents, both political and business – and even cultural – in recent weeks, has been widely commented on by the international press. Likewise, it has been condemned by several countries and different multilateral bodies. It represents a setback and a paradoxical tragedy for the country where a victorious revolution, 42 years ago, raised so much hope throughout Latin America.
Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo has criticized those who point to the Government, and Foreign Minister Denis Moncada has said that the Government will not allow international “interference”.

Daniel Ortega himself, who arrived in Managua on July 19, 1979 in the company of the newly formed Governing Board aboard the Quetzalcóatl plane of the Government of Mexico, is today a fierce autocrat determined to be reelected for the fourth time on November 7. For this, what better strategy than to disable or imprison their possible rivals, and repress their allies?

The privileged instrument for this has been the so-called Law 1055 of “defense of the rights of the people to independence, sovereignty and self-determination for peace.” Said legal aberration designates traitors to the homeland to all those who “incite foreign interference in internal affairs, request military interventions and organize themselves with financing from foreign powers.” Another mechanism has been to accuse opponents of money laundering.

All this happens in a country very different from 2018, when thousands of young people took to the streets to protest for different causes, from a social security reform to the lack of opportunities for university students, and were brutally repressed by state forces and informal or paramilitary. More than 300 protesters died, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. But society was in full swing; today is not the case.

In reality, the only option provided with a minimum of effectiveness to free Cristiana Chamorro, the opposition presidential candidate with the most support in the polls; his nephew Juan Fernando; to another declared candidate, Arturo Cruz, Ortega’s own ambassador to the United States between 2007 and 2009; the revolutionary leader and historian Dora María Tellez; former Vice Chancellor Víctor Hugo Tinoco, and a total of 15 opponents imprisoned, is outside of Nicaragua, in the international community. From a long and bitter experience, we know that external pressure has limits in Latin America, in the case of long-lived dictatorships, as I consider the government of Daniel Ortega to be.

It has not worked in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Chile – under the Pinochet dictatorship – but neither in Myanmar today, nor in China or Russia. It goes without saying that this list is not exhaustive, nor are its components easily comparable to the case of Nicaragua. It is a small, poor country, highly sensitive to international support, lacking the external or internal support that authoritarian regimes enjoyed at different times.

That is why two reactions in the international arena to the Nicaraguan tragedy are so interesting – and contradictory. On the positive and hopeful side we have the bill by two American legislators: a Republican, Conservative and Cuban-American from Florida, and another Democrat and Progressive from New Jersey. The proposal by María Elvira Salazar and Tom Malinowski consists of withdrawing from the Ortega dictatorship the benefits of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States – known as CAFTA, of 2005 – for violating human rights and democratic rules. I believe that this initiative will hardly succeed, since CAFTA is a trade agreement approved by both Houses of Congress and probably the expulsion of one of the signatories would require the approval, again, of both houses. However, the very fact of beginning to link respect for human rights and the collective defense of democracy with trade constitutes a step of great importance. It is something that the US has always refused – the European Union, less – and what can be advanced with this initiative will be essential, even if it is not fully achieved.

The second international element of the Nicaraguan crisis is, on the contrary, discouraging. A few days ago, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution condemning the Ortega government and demanding the release of the imprisoned opponents. Nicaragua, Bolivia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines voted against, which is neither surprising nor important. But much more serious was that Mexico and Argentina abstained, and issued a shameful joint statement, right after the vote.

In this statement, the Governments of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Alberto Fernández limited themselves to expressing their “concern” about the arrests in Nicaragua. But above all, they invoked the supposedly sacrosanct principle of non-intervention and expressed their disagreement with “the pretense of imposing guidelines from outside or of unduly prejudging the development of electoral processes.”

How can the Nicaraguan electoral process be “unduly” prejudiced if all but one of the candidates are in detention? In the case of López Obrador, it must be remembered that Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and actively helped the Sandinista opposition to overthrow him.

Further, several members of the Fernández government, and of his parliamentary bench, had parents or grandparents persecuted, tortured or exiled by the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s; They fervently sought international support against the dictatorship, from Jimmy Carter to the Government of Mexico itself. Now they prefer not to intervene.

Nicaragua was an emblematic case in 1979, despite its size and its poverty. Today, it can be again. In part, of course, as at that time, thanks to the efforts of its inhabitants. But also as a result of the solidarity of its neighbors, close or not, with the victims of a dictatorship as abominable as that of the Somoza dynasty.