A now-old story. A local, who often gets a higher education courtesy of the country who occupies his/hers, so that the occupying country can delegate some tasks of occupation to the locals, turns against the occupier and fights for his/her country's liberation. Said local is a charismatic leader who eventually succeeds in throwing out the occupiers and is installed as head of state. All goes well for a while. Then problems appear. Some are caused by resentful former occupiers, some by future would-be occupiers, some by jealous and power-hungry internal rivals, and some by the new leader him/herself, as he/she makes some mistakes, as any leader eventually does.
Said leader, rather than being replaced, sees him/herself as essential for the country's development. Said leader relies on long-standing comrades in the liberation to back him/her and gradually institutes increasingly autocratic measures, cracking down on the press and on the opposition, and rewarding various army officers or thugs for removing any opposition.
A few of many:
Africa: Idi Amin of Uganda, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Moammar Khadafy of Libya, Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt.
Central America: Fidel Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.
Asia: A succession of leaders in Pakistan, including several in the Bhutto family. Reza Pahlevi, then Khomeini and his successors in Iran.
Those who ignore or are unaware of history are condemned to repeat it.
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Just a matter of time till Ortega gets massive loans from China. Which gets another couple of ports.
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Where are the caravans of Nicaraguan refugees heading north?
I'm not being snarky: I don't understand how things work in Central American countries and would like somebody to try to explain the differences between Nicaragua and Honduras. The former has a leftist government but few refugees to America, while the latter has a rightist government but many claiming they need to go to America.
I don't get it.
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The late Jean Kirkpatrick was right after all
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Reportedly, George III was astonished when he learned that Washington decided to cede power to his duly elected successor. US Presidents mostly followed Washington's lead of serving no more than two terms, with the notable exception of FDR. After his death the US decided to enshrine the two term limit into our Constitution, a decision which appears forever wiser when one reads of dictators who cling perpetually to power through fear and repression.
But those leaving comments here who view Ortega's story as a parable and a confirmation of what they view as the evils of leftism are being disengenuous. Dictators, despots, and autocrats come in all shades of the ideological spectrum.
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I recommend reading Gionconda Belli, a leading Sandinista writer and poet who never liked Daniel Ortega, has a moving memoir of the revolution (The Country Under my Skin) and a recent article in Foreign Affairs. The consolidation of power and repression in Nicaragua, a wonderful country when we last visited, is truly tragic.
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They say that the difference between Socialists and Communists is that the Communists only have to get elected once.
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Ortega = Nicaraguan trump.
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Another socialist paradise
I guess these are the diversity values that democrats want to bring to America.
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Wasn't NYC m ayor De Blasio a supporter of Ortega and his socialist/communist?
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From persecuted to the persecutor. How Shakespearean or Biblical.
For revolutionary movements, the means often justify the ends. Killings, abductions and torture justify whatever society the revolutionaries and/or political/military/religious are trying to build.
For those who say they are tired of oppression and who vow that it requires armed resistance, I suggest they re-examine their reasoning, for it is faulty. Violence begets violence.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. showed us that in America.
How many times throughout the world must situations like Nicaragua repeat themselves before humanity learns?
In this regard, an ancient prophecy remains prophetic for me and I believe in it. The only question is: How much more carnage, especially regional and local, will result in spilled blood, torture, disappearances, prison, death, mayhem, destruction, broken families, broken and corrupted societies?
I wait for the day for Isaiah's vision to take hold. I'll probably be long gone before it happens, but my belief is not susceptible to skepticism. I'm a true-believer.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
~ Isaiah 2:4
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Same old Animal Farm.
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The party on the left is now the party on the right.....
Meet the new boss—same as the old boss.....
Won’t Get Fooled Again
The Who 1970
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There is no evidence that Central Americans can govern themselves.
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@Goshawk They do a darn good job in Costa Rica and have been for many, many decades.
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Once they get in power, they are just as bad as the dictator they disposed. As least the right has stuff to show for, the left often have no idea how to govern. Bunch of incompetents.
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There sure are a lot of 30+ year-old grudges people are looking to settle in the comments.
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Revolutionary becomes dictator. No surprise there. Thank God that the revolutionaries who founded our country were honorable Englishmen with a higher sense of duty.
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There is no question that the actual Nicaraguan situation is the result of the clashing of TWO antagonistic factions. One trying to impose on the other its view in its own terms, BOTH by using tactics that are self destructive and whose final consequence can only result in the utmost calamity. This in a country already poor and that was until recently showing signs of political stability and economical recovery.
It goes without saying that this NYT article is nothing but a one sided view, with a scope limited to blaming the Ortega government.
It is not too far fetched to assume whose hand was behind the initial anti government protests. Protests and riots whose "peaceful" strategies consisted of blocking all country routes and road access, as well as erecting city blocks barricades, virtually bringing to a halt the country's commerce and wounding a labile financial system.
Then, Ortega on his part, rather than using an organized approach to disband and neutralize his dissenters, fell into the trap of his provokers, launching an all fronts repression, thus escalating the confrontation, perpetuating intimidation and fear and sowing economical chaos.
Unfortunately for the people of Nicaragua, there have always been outside interest groups bent on inciting, sponsoring and promoting internal dissent, not inspired by idealism but rather by selfish traditional feuds and personal political gains, for their own benefit and at the expense of sacrificing others.
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I supported the Nicaraguan revolution as a high school student and I have no regrets about that . Somoza was throwing people out of helicopters and the United States was backing murderers later in El Salvador while doing next to nothing to reign in death squads. Reagan did not care a wit about the horrors, blithely pronouncing such governments as complying with humans rights concerns. I do regret that the revolution has become that which it overthrew after all these years. I support the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to again restore their freedom. The American right has no credibility in this matter since they would happily inflict another Pinochet on the Nicaraguan people given their affection for caudillismo. Sadly all this trouble stems from long breaks in the tradition of Democracy, an idea our Republicans and their leader are flirting with currently
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"Eight months after a spontaneous popular uprising left 322.."
This newspaper has a fanciful definition of "spontaneous".
Now of course the yellow vests in France are popular and not organized by some malign outside group.
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If you are suggesting that some outside group started these protests, you are incorrect. Having been to Nicaragua many times it's pretty obvious it's been coming for a long time.
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I wentto Boarding School with the last one of the Somoza’s in the sixties they were sent there starting in the early 1930‘s. The Somoza‘s they were a interesting lot deeply Catholic yet entitled and aristocratic. But they believed in God, the communist Ortega is like Castro a Dictator running a corrupt government benefiting family and cronies unafraid of murdering to stay in power.
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The Somoza regime was horrible! Ortega was one of my most admired heroes. Now, he has become paranoid.
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@James mcCowan I'm not sure if you're implying that by being deeply catholic and believing in God it is justified to kill with impunity, as Somoza did. As far as I know, Ortega is a Catholic and believes in God. He and his wife proclaim themselves to be Christians and to be running a "Christian Revolution." Their main spiritual sponsor was the Catholic Cardinal Obando y Bravo, who passed away recently.
I'm not sure that by having a deeply religious faith and a belief in God, it justifies any wrongdoing by anyone, whether it be Somoza or Ortega!
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Ortega reminds me of Castro just missing the fatigues. Somoza era long gone most moved to Florida but what happens now?
Ben Linder died for this? And countless others? The Ortega family control all government branches and manly businesses? Power corrupts and absolute power, well you know the rest.
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@Rose Evers
I knew Ben Linders. Thank you for remembering him. I worked for the Sandinista government of the 80’s and they did a lot of good. I didn’t think Ortega was that smart then, and i still don’t. Having given up power once in the election of 1989, he wasn’t about to step aside ever again, once he regained the Presidency in 2007. Ortega has shown that he has no interest in either socialism or democracy. He is a corrupt caudillo.
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Trump has been following Ortega's playbook...he too wants loyalists, not patriots.
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I was filming a documentary in Managua in March 1986. I was detained by the Sandinistas for a short time. I met Daniel Ortega that day just before he gave a press conference which was covered by every country in the world.
Ortega was a thug at that time and is still a thug. He never cared about people, only his power and wealth.
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@Liz watkins, I would appreciate learning more about your experience there. Thank you.
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Ortega was the darling of the American and particularly the elitist NYC left. They loved him as a modern day Che Guevara who, they proudly posted his figure on their dorm rooms. But reality has reared it's ugly head and has shown absolute power has corrupted everything. The half baked American leftist influenced version of the sandanistas was never going to work.
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Today, if an edifice that houses a church, for example, can be referred to as an Ecclesiastical village, for the very reason that it is where a significantly large number of men and women, regardless of their social status, from a neighborhood or town, often convene to particularly speak of praising the Lord, the Nicaraguan national palace can rather officially be said to be a family village for reasons that are attributed to its current occupants. Overall, like before the Sandinista regime is still in power. The president, in perpetual, is husband Daniel Ortega. If a mathematician were to be asked for an opinion about Mr. Ortega’s presidential trajectory, the answer would probably be one that read as such: “Mr. Ortega’s presidential journey, for certain, is one that can be compared to an object that moves in a straight line indefinitely without turning from a starting point to a destination to then return to its initial position and repeat its path indefinitely.”
2
There are some important and fundamental facts missing here.
First, there is the sad fact that Nicaragua has never, ever had an authentically democratic government.
Washington for decades essentially stage managed Nicaragua's government, most notoriously supporting the Somoza dictatorial dynasty. The long Somoza rule, in fact, set the stage for the Sandinista revolution and the rise of one Daniel Ortega.
With the Sandinistas in power, the Reagan Administration did not seek to work with the leftist government. It unlawfully sought to violently overthrow it.
This is where the CIA-backed, thuggish contra mercenaries entered the picture. They committed all manner of human rights violations, yet Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers."
Iran-Contra was a major offshoot of this immoral policy.
With the Sandinistas back in power, Washington and an array of subversive NGO's have worked overtime to undermine the government.
None of this is meant as a defense of the Sandinistas nor Ortega. Hunting down opponents is horrendous and repugnant.
However, the story offered is riddled with holes in a cherry picked narrative.
As in the rest of Central America, Washington cared only about a stable climate for American multinationals. Now we see the consequences of that short sighted approach.
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@Ricardo Chavira
I appreciate this addition of some facts. I, like many, was one of the US activists who went to Nicaragua in the 1980s to defend that nation, and its effort at independence, against the US attack. I believed in the Sandinista mission then. It changed, or at least Ortega changed. This recent set of changes makes me very sad. But it does not wipe out the history, part of which you have shared.
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We Americans neither never learned this or choose to see Reagan as a saint.
Thanks for your honest appraisal.
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@Nancy Becker Compared to Ortega the butcher, he was definitely a saint.
When you see students from a private university occupying not their own university but a public one you know that something fishy is happening. When you see protesters blocking all trucking in the country in order to destroy the economy - a tactic last used to overthrow Allende in Chile - you know that you see the noble handwork of American secret planners.
Yes, Ortega is using harsh methods that can't all be justified. But the forces he faces are much more evil than the article describes.
Maybe the journalist should have taken some more time to find out how those students he visited could allow to stay seven months in hiding. Many people in Nicaragua can't afford that.
12
sad and disappointing as to what has happened in Nicaragua. It shows how fragile democracy is, how nominally leftist movements can disappoint once in power, and the long lasting negative effects of US intervention in the region. Maybe the Times should do a story on Costa Rica, apparently doing the best in Central America, and why that is, maybe because the US did not interfere or invade??
45
@Barry Schiller What is sad and disappointing is the NYT commitment to American hegemony in Latin America. This article is part of the drumbeat of the antidemocratic effort to destroy the only progressive government in Central America. Daniel Ortega was elected by a substantial majority in a legitimate election witnessed by international observers. The Nicaraguan constitution provides for his removal for wrongdoing, but the NYT and the US Govt are not interested in a legal path when well-financed insurrection can do the trick (viz. the newest US dependency, Ukraine). Frances Robles seems not to have interviewed any Nicaraguan government officials or supporters, even though the Ortega administration survived this rightwing-fomented coup attempt entirely because of its strong and widespread public support. The US Govt has always been implacably hostile to anything that looks like socialism in the Americas, and Reagan paid the Contras to try to destroy it in Nicaragua. The vast majority of the current casualties have been inflicted by the armed thugs, the new Contras, who have also been paid to create chaos. This is the same formula the US perpetrated in '50s Iran, Chile in '73 and Ukraine a few years ago. Modern society is easy to upend, and the US, via the CIA and USAID, is not shy about doing just that. Nicaraguan workers support the government and the middle class (and its lackeys) want the good old days they enjoyed under Somoza back again. Which side are you on?
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@DukeSenior
Nice try. I totally agree with your analysis that the US will stop at nothing to oppose what appears to be socialism, and with your references to Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973. But having worked for the Sandinista cabinet in the 80’s, and stayed closely in touch with dear friends there throughout the last 30 years—many of whom still consider themselves Sandinistas, many members of mass organizations and trade unions—I know how far of you are on support for Ortega. Even his own brother—a Sandinista Commandente and former Minister of Defense—has denounced Daniel. Those of us who have known Daniel for most of his life know that he is a dim-witted monster who has enriched his family and cronies, is only interested in power, and abuses the support of well-meaning Sandinista supporters. Ortega has become Somoza, and you are blinding yourself to that fact by confusing lessons learned from other historical moments and places. You should hear what Sandinista militants will say about Daniel and Rosario when they are talking with an old friend. You should also study Ortegas wealth and that of his children.
9
The darling of the Left just a few decades ago. Lord Acton smiles.
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@Teller
I was saying the same thing! How they loved him and the Sandinistas. Where are his backers now?
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@Teller
I was have pro-Ortega, buyout I was seriously anti-Contra, especially after I carefully researched the details of that illegal attack on a foreign country.
Being against aggression against foreign governments is not the same as support for those governments.
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@McGloin
Too bad how hard it is to get the point of your final sentence across. Being against the Contra war was a no brainer. The US had installed and backed the Somoza dictatorship for 46 years. The Somozas accumulated “ownership” of 26% of the arable land of the nation and 40% of its industrial capacity. I just figured the young Sandinista revolutionaries deserved a chance. No matter that they got their arms, funds and some training from Cuba and the Soviet Union.
4
every group of people have the government they deserve.
3
Looks like a typically one=sided NY Times Central American report that entirely fails to provide even a crude picture of the sociological strata. A decrease in Social Security payments set off the protests - what else had been going on, where had the government failed or been sabotage??
14
Ortega and his thugs have turned into the worst aspects of Somoza that they fought against all those years ago. Absolute power certainly corrupts absolutely. I can remember the generally positive reputation of the Sandinistas in most progressive parts of the world over the past 30 or so years and the cataclysmic recent decisions by Ortega and his wife to destroy his revolution and the Nicaraguan people. It is too bad that we don't have a leader with any credibility because if any country presently could benefit from an 'intervention' it is Nicaragua. And it does not appear that the rest of Latin America is ready to act assertively in their own backyard. Socialist revolutions simply do not work in the long term; they implode under the weight of their leaders' egos and lack of accountability.
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@boji3
A society imploding "under the weight of their leaders' egos and lack of accountability" is not a feature of the economic tilt of its origin. Any economic system is dysfunctional under the weight of unaccountability and ego. We are less surprised when the far right reveal their authoritarianism because they are just delivering on their promises, not violating the premises of their installation into power.
2
@Someguyinpants I was comparing socialist states with more democratic institutions, not necessarily right wing states. They are just as bad. But your points are well taken.
1
I did not expect that the Times report would include evidence that the various CIA related groups, USAID, NED, etc., have been spending large sums of taxpayer money for years to create democracy in Nicaragua, i.e. to overthrow Ortega and replace him with a compliant client. Is it now not obvious? I did not expect to see a reference to the democracy-loving Nicaraguan student protesters who were flown to the US to get President Trump's help in overthrowing Ortega. I did not expect to read of any successes by the Ortega government in reducing poverty. I did not expect to see the Times make any connection between the Atlantic to Pacific canal that the Chinese may build in Nicaragua that the U.S. sees as a threat to its hegemony, another reason to overthrow Ortega. I was not disappointed. U.S. imperial policy, a constant in Latin America, is not fit to print on the pages of the New York Times.
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@Henry if Ortega was so beloved by the Nicaraguan people for his philanthropic and benevolent rule in their interests, why has he declared war on them?
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@Henry No, one would not expect to see that in the Times or any other news source that reports facts rather than the funhouse mirror pipe dreams of undergrad poli sci majors. No one in the reality-based community is suprised that the Ortega regime is now showing all the worst qualities of the Somoza regime and finding new variations on the theme.
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@Henry the truth in my view is probably somewhere in between. I appreciate you pointing out the other side. I lived in Managua in the summer of 1988
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