This article applies the concept of Necropolitics to the reality of Nicaragua. It does provide novel insights into the situation.
Ten Reasons Why Experts Think That Ortega Practices Necropolitics
By Eduardo Cruz, La Prensa January 24, 2021
The regime shows that it does not have respect for the lives of Nicaraguans through different actions, especially the repression and the management of the pandemic, say sociologists and other academics in Nicaragua.
“Necropolitics” is the new term that sociologists and political analysts use to describe the form of governing that the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have introduced. The way of governing known as necropolitics, or the politics of death, is a concept developed by a Cameroon thinker, Achille Mbembe. In necropolitics what is regulated is death, the power to decide who dies and how.
According to Mbembe in an interview that he granted to the website eldiario.es, necropolitics is related to the way in which economic and political powers deal with the population which is no longer useful to them. It is not just an issue that they kill them, but they expose them to “all types of dangers and risks, at times, mortal ones.” In necropolitics not only are they killed, but the territories where these populations live are destroyed.
“The necropolitics (of Ortega Murillo) is the idea that they have about the rest of the citizenry. They see the citizens not as bearers of rights, but as subjects, as people who are at their service and that owe them obedience and loyalty. Since that has not happened, since the citizenry has not adopted that attitude, what they do is implement a series of decisions, policies, measures in different political, economic, and social fields to in some way punish those who are not loyal,” explained the sociologist Elvira Cuadra.
These are at least 10 of the reasons that lead several Nicaraguan experts to think that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have incorporated necropolitics in their arsenal of governance.
- Accumulating wealth
The Ortega regime would be necropolitics, explain Nicaraguan sociologists, because they practice a capitalism where everything works on the basis of accumulating riches, especially through dispossession, and to ensure their system they need to control the security forces. When protests, demonstrations cannot be subdued, then they resort to an increase in repression.
The sociologist Oscar René Vargas thinks that the logic of Ortega, on applying necropolitics, is assuming the right to impose social or civil death, the right to enslave others and apply other forms of political violence. “It is a form of subjugation of life to government power capable of ordering the death of their adversaries, forcing some to be placed between life and death. I am referring to political prisoners,” says Vargas.
“Necropolitics was installed officially in Nicaragua when president Daniel Ortega defined his opponents as “minors, stooped, puppets, servile.” And when the civic rebellion occurred in April 2018 he described them as “terrorists”, indicated a specialist in communications who asked to remain anonymous.
- Repression
The most evident action of necropolitics of Ortega Murillo has been the repression unleashed since April 2018, when the government attacked the social protests against the reforms to the social security law with paramilitaries and weapons of war, causing the killing of more than 300 Nicaraguans.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) that the OAS brought to Nicaragua, described that repression as “crimes against humanity.”
The sociologist Elvira Cuadra highlights among those crimes the “clean-up operation” that the Ortega government carried out to remove the barricades, as well as the arrest of people who they considered responsible for the protests.
According to Cuadra, there are acts of repression which are individual, and others which are collective. The latter become governmental policy, and therefore, the repression now is a policy of the government of Ortega Murillo. A policy of death.
Continuing within the context of April 2018, a sociologist who asked to remain anonymous indicates that a very serious act was the refusal of medical attention in the public hospitals and other places aligned with the government to those wounded in the protests. “If Álvaro Conrado would have been treated in the hospital, he would have wounds, but he would be alive,” he said.
- COVID-19
Another act of necropolitics which is attributed to Ortega Murillo is the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, which initially they tried to indicate that it did not exist in Nicaragua, that everything was “normal”.
During most of the pandemic the government has promoted public activities that involve crowds, explains Elvira Cuadra, and that promote the spread of the infection, in addition to the fact that the government did not suspend classes either. Cuadra also criticizes the fact that the government has hidden information which would be very valuable in the hands of the population to help prevent infections,
On the other hand, Cuadra points out that the rulers have not implemented economic support measures for the most vulnerable sectors, denying the impact of the pandemic. For example, the sociologist mentions the fact that 70% of the Nicaraguan population depends on the informal economic sector. Jobs have been lost and poverty has grown in Nicaragua.
Independent doctors of Nicaragua have denounced a series of anomalies on the part of the regime, which has not even protected the health care personnel with protective equipment. The deaths of doctors and health care staff show the negligence of the government in terms of the management of the pandemic. According to extraofficial reports, nearly 3,000 people have died in Nicaragua because of COVID 19 and more than 12,000 infections have been confirmed.
- Extractive model
In necropolitics, economic and political power wants to make the population believe that “well- being and social progress go hand in hand with the necessary exploitation of nature in terms of the fight against poverty and the development of society,” explains the Argentinian sociologist Martín Díaz.
In Nicaragua the environmentalist Amaru Ruiz explains that Daniel Ortega has reformed laws in such a way that all exploitation of natural resources is subject to him. Ortega is the one who has the last word in terms of the exploitation of wood, for example.
“What we have seen with Ortega is that decisions in all parts of environmental management have been centralized. The management of the natural resources and assets of the country are subject to what he decides,” explains Ruiz.
According to the sociologist who prefers to remain anonymous, Ortega practices an “extractivist authoritarian economic model”, in other words, that “he prioritizes the generation and accumulation of wealth at the cost of natural resources, and sacrificing the people, their territories without consultation.”
In other words, Ortega decides what natural resources are going to be exploited, how and who will do it, without regard to whether that affects the lives of the people who live in the territory where the desired natural resources are found, explains the sociologist. “That is why Ortega was able to impose the interoceanic canal in the law, even though it was not done in reality. It did not matter to him that it was affecting the lives of thousands of peasants. There was no one who could stop him,” explains the source.
“When there are consultations, they are controlled, flawed processes. They do not do it informing the people, but disrespecting the will of the communities,” says the sociologist.
The source adds that the extraction, like mining or the exploitation of African palm, pine and other forest resources, destroys the possibilities for survival of communities and damages other natural resources, like when water is polluted.
Many times, these activities of extracting natural resources occur in areas that are protected or are on indigenous territories. In addition, they displace the population, dismantle local economics and makes the territories uninhabitable.
In that sense, the sociologist states that Ortega practices necropolitics. “In necropolitics the government not only takes away your life in an immediate, lethal way, but also does it is a structured and progressive way,” he says.
- Messages of hate
Within necropolitics, hate speech builds an image of the enemy. It dehumanizes him and turns him into an object of aggression and violence. Something like Adolf Hitler did with the Jews within the German population, explains the anonymous sociologist.
In Nicaragua that hate speech is in line with even the laws that are being approved, like the description of “hate crimes” that were just incorporated in the penal laws of the country, adds the source.
A communicator who requests anonymity points out that “necropolitics in Nicaragua has developed a discourse that is broadcast every day at noon from the official spokesperson Rosario Murillo, where she discredits the opposition in their entirety and their iconic people. She does not treat them as equals, but as despicable beings, who deserve to be mistreated, persecuted and jailed by her followers.”
In September 2020, during the celebration of independence days, the communicator refers to the fact that Ortega “resumed his necropolitics by saying that his political opponents were traitors, sell outs, puppets, servants of the empire, cowards, murderers. He closed his discharge of insults saying that the opposition “had no soul, no heart, that they are not Nicaraguan, they are sons of demons, sons of the devil and full of hate.”
For Elvira Cuadra, in Murillos´ speeches “there is no type of recognition nor appreciation of the citizenry, not matter how much she might talk about love for Nicaragua.”
“Political speech has lethal consequences, it is no longer necessary for someone to receive an order, but rather they can act on their own initiative,” says the sociologist, who thinks that this could have happened with the citizen from Estelí who shouted “Long live Nicaragua!” on July 19, 2020 and was murdered immediately by an Ortega follower.
- Political prisoners
Political incarceration is a “perverse mechanism”, an extreme measure and a message for other people who intend to oppose the government, sociologists and human rights defenders in Nicaragua agree.
In this situation State institutions are acting, like the Police, the judicial branch, the prosecutor´s office, and others quit functioning, like the Ombudsperson for the Defense of Human Rights.
In Nicaragua since April 2018 not only are political prisoners suffering, but also their families, who suffer abuses when they visit their relatives in the penitentiary system or spend time in their homes thinking about whether they are sick or beaten.
“The constitution indicates that the punishment does not extend beyond the criminal, but the government extends it to the family and the network of contacts of the people defined as enemies of the government,” explains the communicator who requests anonymity.
One of the sociologists who spoke for this article indicates that the case of Justo Rodriguez, the 68 year-old peasant from Ometepe, is an emblem of what political prisoners suffer in Nicaragua. He was in good health when they jailed him, and in prison he had a stroke as a result of torture.
- Marginalized populations.
News stories frequently talk about massacres in indigenous territories in the Caribbean of Nicaragua. Those deaths occur because the government of Ortega has not “regulated” the indigenous territories, and settlers continue invading those lands. The indigenous defend themselves with weapons, but the weapons of the settlers are superior, and more indigenous end up dying.
The environmentalist Amaru Ruiz sums up in this way what is happening with the indigenous populations in the Caribbean, due to the omission of the Ortega regime.
“Ortega acts like he is blind, deaf and mute and does not protect the most vulnerable populations. He would have already done the regulation and would have avoided more death,” indicates Ruiz, who thinks that Ortega prefers “fighting” with the indigenous who are a minority, 8 percent of the total population of Nicaragua, instead of with mestizos.
- Migration
Likewise, Ortega acts in a necropolitical way with another population at risk, migrants, most of whom are victims of organized crime, coyotes and drug traffickers, and to whom countries have been ordered to provide protection in international conventions.
- Disaster relief
The behavior of the regime in the face of hurricanes Eta and Iota left a lot to be desired. The sociologist Elvira Cuadra says that the response was late and unplanned.
News stories revealed that the improvised shelters did not provide the proper conditions: no water, medicines, nor COVID-19 protection measures, no mattresses.
“We saw the governmental capacity and will was reduced to its minimal expression in these situations,” says Cuadra.
In addition, the treatment of the government had a political bias, treating victims of its own party and not those who did not support Ortega´s government.
- Pardons
The femicide of Katring López in Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, caused a lot of indignation in society, and in addition it was criticized that one of her perpetrators had been freed in June 2019, benefitted with family living by Ortega´s regime.
The sociologists criticize the fact that in these liberations the regime should be ensuring that those freed are not going to recidivate once freed, but the legal procedure was not correct nor was the necessary measures taken with the criminal, like ensuring them education and employment.
Within the necropolitical logic of the Ortega regime, these prisoner releases created more insecurity for the population.