Many well known progressive academics and activists throughout Latin America and beyond issued the following declaration on July 17, 2018. This date is significant, because July 17 was the date that Somoza fled Nicaragua in back in 1979. The signatures below just represent those collected by July 17th.
URGENT DECLARATION FOR NICARAGUA
July 17, 2018
With this letter as intellectuals, social activists and academics, we want to express our profound rejection in the face of the very serious situation of state political violence and violation of Human Rights that Nicaragua is undergoing, responsibility of the current Ortega-Murillo regime, which has translated into some three hundred deaths in the last three months.
The indignation, pain, and sense of historical frustration is doubled when such a political aberration is the product of leaders and governments that call themselves leftists. What can hurt more than the irony of a leader who calls himself revolutionary, emulating the criminal practices of that dictator against whom he had rebelled! And that indignation is made even more intense when this panorama of state violence is complemented by the knowing silence of (self) proclaimed leftist political leaders and intellectual models. The collusion of a certain intellectual establishment – an official left that tends to arrogate to itself the claim to the exclusive representation of the “left” – has muted the heat of the governmental control in an apology for the most rampant cynicism.
Denouncing this so painful situation as unacceptable, raising a voice against the abuses of the most elemental freedoms and rights that the current Nicaraguan government is doing, it not just an obligation of humanitarian solidarity. It is also an act and a collective call to defend the revolutionary Memory; to try to avoid the enactment of this political degeneration in progress.
There is no worse larceny than the political disappointment of the hope of people.
There is no worse plundering than that which preys on the rebellious energies for a just world.
There is no worse imperialism than the internal colonialism that turns into oppressive violence clothed in anti-imperial rhetoric.
All this is happening in Nicaragua. The Land that was the fertile symbol of emancipatory hope at the end of the 1970s has become another field of authoritarianism.
The tarnished memory of one of the most noble and hopeful revolutions of Our America, as Sandino was and continues to be; the memory of anti-capitalist struggles of a suffering but brave people, now trampled on to (try to) hide the ordinary typical violence of another dictatorial regime, like those that abound and are repeated in our history. The former revolutionary leader, honored by the trust of the people, today converted into a dictator, blinded by power and with his hands stained with young blood. Such is the violently bitter scenario of our beloved Nicaragua.
We raise our voice to publicly condemn the dictatorship that the Ortega-Murillo government has become. We express our solidarity with the people and the youth today, once again, risen up in resistance. To support and accompany their demands for dialogue and peace, to put an end to an illegitimate and criminal government that today usurps the Sandinista memory. We do it with the conviction that what is involved is not just “saving the honor” of the past, but above all, rescuing and taking care of the emancipatory seeds of the future, that today have been put at risk.
First Signatures
Alberto Acosta (economist, Ecuador), Maristella Svampa (sociologist and writer, Argentina), Raúl Zibechi (essayist and writer, Uruguay), Horacio Machado Araoz (political scientist, Argentina), Hugo Blanco (activist, director of “Lucha indígena”, Perú), Joan Martinez Alier (Political Ecology Magazine, Spain); Pierre Salama (economist, France), Raphael Hoetmer (historian, Perú), Manfred Max-Neef (Universidad Austral of Chile), Yaku Pérez Guartambel (president of the Federation of Kichwas Peoples of – ECUARUNARI and Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations – CAOI), Decio Machado (Sociologist, Spanish journalist based in Ecuador), Pablo Solon (Fund. Solon, Bolivia) Roberto Gargarella (lawyer, constitutional expert, Argentina), Massimo Modonesi (Unam, México), Edgardo Lander (sociologist, Venezuela), Arturo Escobar (anthropologist, environmentalist, Colombia/USA), Enrique Leff (philosopher, environmentalist, México), Pierre Beaudet (Professor of social sciences, Quebec, Canada), Gina Vargas Valente (sociologist, feminist, Perú), Horacio Tarcus (Historian, Argentina), Juanca Giles Macedo (Popular educator, Perú), Beatriz Sarlo (essayist, Argentina); Paulina Garzón (activist, Ecuador), Carlos Antonio Martín Soria Dall’Orso (Lawyer, teacher and environmental activist, Perú), Reinhold Sohns, Economist, Germany, Mateo Martínez Abarca (philosopher, Secretary for Citizen Participation and Social Control, Ecuador), Manuela Lavinas Picq, (Professor, Universidad San Francisco of Quito, Ecuador), Ramiro Avila Santamaría (Lawyer, Ecuador), Pedro Machado Orellana (Ecuador); Juan Cuvi (Donun Foundation, University Professor, Ecuador), Víctor M. Toledo (UNAM, México), Enrique Viale (Lawyer Environmentalist, Argentina), Boris Marañon (UNAM-México), Elizabeth Peredo (social psychologist, Bolivia), Carlos de la Torre (sociologist, Ecuador), Carlos Zorrilla (Intag, Ecuador), Carolina Ortiz Fernández (UMSM-Perú), Carlos Castro Riera, President of Bar of Lawyers of Azuay,- Ecuador, Santiago Arconada Rodríguez (Water activist, Venezuela), Santiago Cahuasquí Cevallos (Anthropologist, Lawyer, Ecuador), María Fernanda López (Geographer, Ecuador), Pablo Ospina (Historian, Ecuador), Gerhard Dilger (journalist, Brazil), Danilo Quijano (Perú), Ezequiel Adamovsky (Historian, Argentina), Hernán Rivadeneira J., (President of the Ecuadorian Branch of the American Association of Jurists), Pablo Alabarces (Professor and researcher, Argentina), Martín Bergel (Historian-Argentina), Piedad Vásquez (Ex-Volunteer Technical Trainer in the Augusto Cesar Sandino Literacy Campaign-Ex-Director and Founder of the Human Rights Class of the Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador), Alberto Chirif (anthropologist, Perú), Andrés Cabanas, (journalist and writer, Guatemala), Jurgen Schuldt (Economist, Perú); Ricardo Napurí (socialist activist, Argentina), Nora Ciapponi, (socialist activist, Argentina), Arturo Villanueva Imaña (Sociologist, Bolivia), Antonio Elizalde Hevia (sociologist, founding director of “Polis, Revista Latinoamericana, Chile), Elsie Monge (Human Rights Defender, Ecuador) , Carmen Diana Deere (Universidad of Florida, United States). Fernando Muñoz-Miño (Historian, member of El Colectivo, Ecuador) Nancy Esoasandin (teacher and political scientist, Uruguay ), Francisco Javier Velasco (anthropologist and ecologist, Venezuela), Jaime Coronado del Valle (Sociologist, Perú), Roberto Espinoza, Sociologist, Perú), Fernando Hugo Azcurra (Economist, Argentina), Sergio Nicanoff (Historian and teacher UBA, Argentina), Aldo Casas (activist, revista Herramienta, Argentina, Juan Manuel Crespo (Social Scientist and Activist – Ecuador), Cecilia Chérrez (ecologist, Ecuador), Carlos arcos Cabrera (writer, Ecuador), José Luis Coraggio (Economist, Argentina), Rubén Lo Vuolo, Economist, argentina (Ciepp), Walter Actis (Sociologist, ecological activist, Spain), Guillermo Almeyra, journalist and writer (Argentina-México), Juan Pablo Casiello –( Teacher- union Secretaryof Amsafe Rosario, Congresal de Ctera, Argentina), Gabriela Wyczykier, (UNGS-CONICET, Argentina ), Alberto Wiñazky (Economist-Argentina), Hermann Klosius (President of Solidarity with Guatemala of Austria), Catherine Walsh (intelectual activist Ecuador), Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves (Geographer. Brazil), Jaime Pastor (editor of the magazine Viento Sur, Spain), Koldo Unceta (Universidad País Vasco, Spain), Maxime Combes (Economist, France), Olmedo Beluche,( Professor of Sociology of the University of Panama), Juan Wahren (Sociologist, UBA/CONICET, Argentina), Gustavo Soto Santiesteban (writer and activist, Bolivia), Pedro Morazán,(Economist, Alemania), Danilo Assis Clímaco (Latin Americanist, Brasil)