Monica Baltodano is a guerrilla comandante who led the urban struggle in the north against Somoza. She also published four volumes of radio interviews of people who participated in the fight against Somoza called Memorias de la Lucha Sandinista. She has opposed Ortega since his pact with Arnoldo Alemán.
Monica Baltodano: “I have fought more against this dictatorship than against Somoza”
By Abixael Mogollón in La Prensa, Dec 6, 2020
She tells here what the campaigns for Christmas without political prisoners were like in the 1960s and 1970s. She analyzes the present situation of the opposition and the possible scenario of an electoral fraud.
This is the third year in which there is a campaign in Nicaragua called “Christmas without political prisoners”. It was something that had not been experienced since the time of the Somoza dictatorship.
Monica Baltodano was a political prisoner in the time of Somoza, and in these first days of December she has been working with issues related to the historical campaigns that were done in favor of them. Here she talks about what they were like, how different the repression before was compared to the repression today, the present situation of the opposition, and the possible scenario of an electoral fraud.
She also remembers the years in which she was a prisoner in the jails of Somoza, and demonstrations back then that enabled her release.
What was it like to be a political prisoner in the time of Somoza?
Jail for women was much more difficult than for men, because the men were in La Modelo. They had some things like sun, they spoke with one another, while we women were in the central office of the police where our cells were two by three and they kept us isolated. In 1978 a long letter was written on the part of the women prisoners to denounce those conditions. But we, like the prisoners today, did our resistance from within and we were accompanied by people from the outside.
Do you think that that accompaniment on the part of the citizens has dropped in the current situation?
The big drama that exists now is the control over the universities and that is why they expelled all the students who were leading it. Because they know that the student movement is a belligerent force that always is more generous in this struggle. For example, in 1971 all the religious high schools were taken over by students, churches were taken over, cathedrals were taken, demanding the freedom of the political prisoners. Since the end of the 1960s and above all in the 1970s we took over churches, schools. The truth is that there was repression, but we had the option to mobilize and we did protest walks from Managua to León in groups of students.
Many Sandinistas participated in those actions and were jailed. Why do you think that the regime does not allow that type of protest?
Daniel Ortega acts that way because together with his wife he has built a barrier. He has no banner and is not inspired by any principle, nor any project, all that they say about the defense of the people is pure hot air. It is a barrier that focuses on the defense of power at all costs. There was a time when Somoza saw himself as immovable, but the people knew how to find the ways [to do so].
Is there some demonstration that you remember in particular?
In 1973 there was a campaign for the freedom of just two political prisoners. Francisco Ramírez, who was a guardsman who was sentenced to six years in jail, for having given his rifle to the guerrillas and they discovered that. When that campaign was done, he already had spent eight years in jail and had completed his sentence. The other one was a university professor named Efraín, who they had captured and since he was a socialist they arrested him without any type of trial. It was a two-month campaign between December and January. They were released at the end of January. Just to mention that Mons. Miguel Obando, along with Carlos Tunnermann and other academics, were the ones who formed the first Committee for Freedom and a Christmas without political prisoners in 1969.
Even the mother of Daniel Ortega participated in those campaigns.
In 1968 the mothers of political prisoners sent a letter to Robert Kennedy, where they told him about the situation and requested that he intercede for them. He received the letter and said that the senators were informed. Among those mothers was the mother of Daniel Ortega, Lidia Saavedra. Since that year, the fight for political prisoners lasted an entire year, it was not just for Christmas. There were campaigns that were carried out throughout the year, there were strikes of the political prisoners themselves that they linked to the strike of the mothers who went to the Red Cross.
Why do you think that those campaigns had so much success?
During the Somoza regime, which I have studied a lot, there were certain spaces between the institutions, and in some cases you found yourself before judge who were completely free to issue verdicts. Now the person who is watching you, the one harassing you and the one who represses you, captures you, tries you, sentences you and mistreats you is the very apparatus that depends on just one voice which is in El Carmen. This is a different nuance from other dictatorships. This explains a lot about the difficulties that are currently being experienced. No one thought in the 1960s that when, for example, two enormous campaigns were done asking for the release of political prisoners, and Germán Pomares, Catalino Flores, Santos Medina and a series of political prisoners were released which no one thought that the dictatorship was going to do. I myself left jail through one of those campaigns.
Did you ever imagine that 40 years later we would have other campaigns for Christmas without political prisoners?
I never imagined that a regime or government that considered itself Sandinista could carry out the acts and crimes against humanity that were done in 2018. Ending up capturing 800 people among them journalists. Never, I could never imagine that this was going to happened under a supposedly leftist, progressive or revolutionary flag. That is why I maintain that it is a regime that truly cannot be confronted as if it were from the left. It is not from the left, but it is a regime that has to be confronted with the unity of the entire people without ideological or political distinctions, because only with the unity of all forces are we going to be able to keep it from continuing. Its intention is to continue beyond the coming year.
Talking about unity, it is said that part of the oxygen that the dictatorship still has is due to this opposition that is seen to be divided.
Always in the face of dictatorial and criminal regimes there are sectors that become very pragmatic. The business sector is criticized because they had already been warned that what Daniel Ortega was doing was building a dictatorship. The business people turned to look the other way and said that the democratic agenda was not their principal interest. But only social mobilization is what can break through many things.
An example.
This popular mobilization can prevent certain sectors of the known political manuevering, self-serving opportunism or cold business person from going back to the scheme of living as if nothing is happening here. That is why the regime puts so much emphasis on preventing mobilization. That is why the first task of those who want to knock down this dictatorship must be popular organization, and has to take into account the real, daily problems of the people, if not, the people will not understand the political language and that is not how it is.
What role do you currently play in this struggle to get out of the dictatorship?
Look, we think that because of all the series of factors that are moving the principal protagonist must be new generations, new leaders, and that our role should be accompaniment, providing elements of research, of experience, but without being first-line leaders. Given that there is already a rejection of our generation by people. You have to give visibility to the new generations, but without eluding our responsibility.
Why do you think this rejection has awoken?
Partly it a rejection that has to do with works of intelligence directed by the regime itself. The dictatorship has a very clear line of the principle that divide and conquer, so, it tries to create conflicts, fissures and rejections, through its agents and social networks over which they have control where they organize this type of campaigns. But it is also true that this regime sails under Sandinista, revolutionary and leftist flags, and there is a response by a sector of society that I would call a bit immature and limited political analysis that opts for general rejection. Without realizing that the possibilities for stopping this dictatorship can only be under the broadest unity. This does not mean that we are going to quit thinking differently. You have to leave behind sectarian attitudes.
You mentioned the part about responsibility. Do you have responsibility for all this that is happening?
Since 1998, when the pact began to be cooked up, we began to denounce it. We saw the danger for the fragile institutionality that we still had before the arrangements of Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega. For 22 years I have had an absolutely crystal-clear behavior to challenge the policies of Daniel Ortega and the corruption. We have suffered repression and I remember some 10 years ago that the Police picked us up because we were trying to break a cordon that was preventing us from holding a demonstration. I say that I have fought more against this dictatorship than against Somoza. I feel like I am an active and belligerent part of the anti-dictatorial struggle for a long time and I do not in any way feel myself responsible for this dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.
Why were you not able to keep Ortega from taking control of the party from within?
It is a very complex process, and very difficult to explain briefly. Since Ortega ceased being president, he managed the reins of the Sandinista Front and the reins of popular organizations. He became like the interlocutor. Through those means he began excluding and expelling everyone who opposed him. That is what strong men, dictators and fascists do. Ortega used fascist methods to exclude us. This that we see being applied to society was first applied against the internal dissidence. The harassment, threats, blackmail, all this happened, and in this way, he gained power over the party apparatus.
You who experienced the Somoza dictatorship, how do you think we get out of this dictatorship?
The only way that humanity has known is through overcoming fear. If we let ourselves be conquered by fear, we are doing to have the dictatorship for a long time. Without unnecessarily exposing ourselves, because it is not about that, but the opposition in its entirety is going to have to learn that the only way is overcoming fear. This paralyses us, demobilizes us, and means tasks do not get done because of thinking that “x” thing could happen.
Has Ortega surpassed Somoza?
Both are equally dictators and cruel. But in addition, Ortega is a coward. He is a cowardly dictator. He is a cowardly dictator because now he is confronting a disarmed people. It is not like before when we were able to develop an armed movement capable of obtaining victory with popular support. What really determined the victory here was the uprising of an entire people through the insurrections. It was not just the Sandinista Front, and this is my historical approach about that campaign. It was the people, when they decided and rose up in arms. It was not the small organization of the Sandinista Front that obtained the victory. Somoza massacred four students in 1959, while in two months that man (Ortega) murdered more than 300 people. I have always said that the Somoza in the beginning was not the Somoza at the end, and Ortega in just his first years of dictatorship killed more people than Somoza.
In one of her outbursts in 2018, Rosario Murillo called all those protesting against their dictatorship Somocistas.
They are the mechanism for the construction of her narrative. They are trying to maintain the hard nucleus of support from the paramilitaries, and they keep it with the narrative that they continue being Sandinistas, that what they are defending is the power of the people, that they are defending the second stage of the revolution, and all of that is completely false.
Do you think that there are Somocistas still in Nicaragua?
Some still remain who assert themselves and you see them in the social networks. Some say that with Somoza there was no massacre, that they never dropped 500 lb bombs and they say it in the most brazenly way. Arnoldo Alemán came from Somocism and claimed that liberalism.
Beyond people like Juan Carlos Ortega and other children of the circle of power of Ortega, do you think there is a new generation of Sandinistas who remain, calling themselves a type of inheritors of the revolution?
If one looks at history, these ideas do not go away from one day to the next. There is [a new generation], but I do not see that as negative because we are asserting the possibility that the plurality of ideas should continue existing. If there are people who call themselves communist, that they claim they are socialist or ultraright, that is not the problem. The problem is how we mediate among these differences, and whether some want to eliminate others physically. For me the problem is not in the existence of different ideas, but in the weakness of the democracy that makes it so a strong man can show up who takes over all the branches of the State and represses with an iron hand those who think differently or who leave behind a trail of cadavers.
A sort of apathy of the population is noticed toward a big part of the opposition.
This is because they feel a disconnection between the leaders and the action of the April uprising. We cannot forget that many of the architects of that uprising continue in exile, in jail or others who continue harassed to such an extent that they cannot even move. There is a certain disconnect that has to be resolved. And I am not going to tell you how it is resolved, but it has to happen, and that is the only way to get out of this dictatorship, and I think that it is through a relaunching of the popular struggle.
There are people who have all their hopes placed on the 2021 elections and the scenario always exists of a new electoral fraud.
This is the most dramatic scenario, that in the midst of a great demobilization, in the midst of a great incapacity to build unity, Ortega gets away with this, does cosmetic reforms that can deceive international mechanisms and carry out a new electoral fraud. This is a scenario and those who for petty interests and power struggles are not making their best efforts for form a union should think about.
Personal plane
She began her political activism in the student movements and marginalized neighborhood organizations. In 1974 she joined the ranks of the Sandinista Front. She was a guerrilla comandante and was the political military supervisor of the urban area in the north of the country. She was jailed and tortured in 1977. She was Vice Minister of the Presidency and Minister of Regional Affairs between 1982 and 1990. She has a licentiate in Social Sciences from the UNAN-Managua and has a Masters in municipal law from the University of Barcelona.