Nicaragua’s gold new target in US move against Ortega
MIAMI — The Biden administration is ratcheting up pressure on President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian rule in Nicaragua, threatening a ban on Americans from doing business in the nation’s gold industry, raising the possibility of trade restrictions and stripping the U.S. visas of some 500 government insiders.
The actions, stemming from an executive order signed by President Joe Biden this week, are the latest and perhaps most aggressive attempt by the U.S. to hold the former Sandinista guerrilla leader accountable for his continued attacks on human rights and democracy in the Central American country as well his continued security cooperation with Russia.
Previous rounds of sanctions have focused on Ortega, his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, and members of their family and inner circle. But none of those moves have managed to loosen Ortega’s grip on power The latest target of Ortega’s government is the Roman Catholic Church. In August, security raided the residence of a bishop, detaining him and several other members of the clergy.
The new executive order greatly expands a Trump-era decree declaring Ortega’s hijacking of democratic norms, undermining of the rule of law and use of political violence against opponents a threat to U.S. national security.
Together with the Treasury Department’s simultaneous sanctioning of Nicaragua’s General Directorate of Mines, the order all but makes it illegal for Americans to do business with Nicaragua’s gold industry. It’s the first time the U.S. has identified a specific sector of the economy as potentially off limits and can be expanded in the future to include other industries believed to fill the government’s coffers.
The executive order also paves the way for the U.S. to restrict investment and trade with Nicaragua — a move recalling the punishing embargo imposed by the U.S. in the 1980s during Ortega’s first stint as president following the country’s bloody civil war.
In her daily comments Monday to official media, Murillo did not directly mention the expanded U.S. sanctions, but said that Nicaraguans are “defenders of the national sovereignty.”
Monday’s action could signal the start of a new offensive taking aim at the broader economy — something the Biden administration has been reluctant to pursue for fear of adding to the country’s hardships and unleashing more migration. For the fiscal year that ended in September, U.S. border agents encountered Nicaraguans nearly 164,000 times at the southwest border — more than triple the level for the previous year.
The Biden administration’s targeting of the gold industry could sap Ortega’s government of one of its biggest sources of revenue. Gold was the country’s largest export in 2020 and the country, already the largest producer of the precious metal in Central America, is looking to double output in the next five years.