Nicaragua undergoing biggest war since 1990
MASAYA, Nicaragua — The revolutionary, many Nicaraguans say, is suddenly facing a revolution of his own.
The insurrection that led to the rise of President Daniel Ortega and his Cold War struggles with the United States began here in Masaya 40 years ago. Ortega’s brother died fighting in this town, and an old national guard post still stands as a landmark to the uprising that brought their leftist guerrilla movement to power.
But in recent days, the guard post has been turned into a charred, vandalized mess. Protesters have even taken a famous war slogan and spray-painted it on the walls in a mocking warning to Ortega.
“Let your momma surrender,” it says.
Nicaragua is undergoing its biggest uprising since the civil war ended in 1990.
Faced with a presidential couple that controls virtually every branch of government and the news media, young people across the nation are carrying out their own version of an Arab Spring.
Armed with cellphones and social media skills, they are challenging the government in a way that has astonished residents who lived through Ortega’s revolution in the 1970s, the civil war in the ’80s and the 30 years since then.
Demonstrators — many of them members of Ortega’s own Sandinista Party — have burned vehicles and barricaded intersections. Thousands have swarmed streets around the country, condemning government censorship and the killing of protesters. After fighting two wars, winning multiple elections and exerting very tight control over the country for years, Ortega has lost his grip on the masses and suddenly seems on the ropes.
“I have only ever voted for Daniel Ortega,” said Reynaldo Gaitán, 32, a baker who took to the streets in this town’s historic Monimbó neighborhood to denounce his former hero. “Daniel is over. His term ends here.”
In surprising fashion, Ortega — whose sway over judges and lawmakers has enabled him to stay in power by reinterpreting the constitution and scrapping term limits — gave in to demand after demand from the protesters this week. Still, students who had taken over a university were refusing to back down.
“Nicaragua changed,” said José Adán Aguerri, president of COSEP, the country’s influential business organization, which is pushing for dialogue with the government. “The Nicaragua of a week ago no longer exists.”
The protests started with a relatively narrow issue — changes to the social security system — but they quickly rose to a national boil when students began to die. Human rights organizations say that dozens have been killed, including at the hands of the police. A journalist and two police officers are also among the dead.
The sweeping protests have started to have international ripples as well. Just weeks after Travel and Leisure magazine called Nicaragua’s Corn Island “an underrated Caribbean paradise,” the State Department pulled the families of its embassy personnel from the country, and cruise ships were changing course to avoid docking here.
“They’re destroying the image of Nicaragua, with all that it cost us to construct that image,” Ortega said in a televised speech. “The image of Nicaragua was an image of war. War. Death. How much tourism and investment and jobs will this cost us?”