Dominating recent news has been the lack of unity within the Nicaraguan opposition just months before the November elections. The FSLN dominated Supreme Electoral Council gave the opposition a very short time line to register alliances, and then revoked the legal status of one of the political parties allied with the opposition groups, forcing all opposition groups to support the Citizens for Liberty Party (CxL) if they want to run a candidate in the November elections. Now the Ministry of the Interior has accused the leading opposition candidate in the polls, Cristiana Chamorro, with money laundering.
Yet some people are still confused as to the nature of the FSLN. Are they not the revolutionaries? This article, written by a leading analyst with a long history in the FSLN, “follows the money” to help discern the truth in a context full of a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The Mission of CxL: Save the power of Ortega and “big capital”
By Oscar René Vargas published in Revista Abril, May 19, 2021
We know who the true architects of the project are. It is not Ms. Kitty Monterrey, Not even Eduardo Montealegre. Behind them is Big Captial and the Ortega dictatorship itself: the CxL party is a re-engineering project of the “dialogue and consensus pact” between both of them, through the strategy of “Orteguism with or without Ortega”. Within that strategy, Ms. Monterrey fulfills her role of destroying the possible unity of the opposition. Now it is up to the Supreme Electoral Council CSE (controlled by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship) to play their part.
New rulers, old powers, old values, the repeat of history
The political and business actors of Nicaragua, be they old or new, are trapped in a network of old customs and values that have their origins in the Syndrome of Pedrarias: a backward and intolerant political culture, deceit and falsehoods, lies and fraud, tolerance of social inequity, illicit enrichment – which the elites accept as a legitimate and tolerable practice – and impunity.
The defeat of the Somocista dictatorship did not mean a break with that traditional political culture, which is why it continued reproducing itself, promoting itself, the culture of the State as booty, corruption, nepotism and authoritarianism, which not only shared with Somocism a value system, but even a narrative style of political events.
Somoza García and Ortega Murillo: two versions of fascism/Francoism
But history never repeats itself identically, even though there are different moments of history that, as different as the circumstance surrounding them may be, have a lot of elements in common. An example of historical similarity is between the ancient Somoza dictatorship in the 1930s and the current Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.
In both moments, as separated as they are from one another in time (by almost a century), the dominant classes of the country promoted ideologies that, even though they are different, have a lot in common.
The ideology of the dominant classes in the 1930s was authoritarian fascism/Francoism; a totalitarian ideology which in its Somocista version defended the dictatorship as a political model, because it considered illegitimate the social and political forces based on the peasant movement that threatened to change their control over society, under the thinking that power belonged to them by divine or historical right. At that time the peasant movement, led by Sandino, had become a symbol of anti-imperialist resistance in the face of the US military forces of occupation. Never before had there been a social movement of the magnitude of the “Mad Army.” So, the principal objective of the elites at that time then was maintaining the institutional power that would ensure their political, economic and media control of the country, by all means, including authoritarian and anti-democratic ones.
Currently the ideology of the dominant classes (whose members mostly are inheritors of the dominant classes of that time) is “Orteguism with or without Ortega”. The dominant classes have the traditional political parties as their political instruments (FSLN, CxL and the small “mosquito” parties[1]). The ideology of all these groups has a lot in common with that of Somocism, its predecessor: from its racist, xenophobic, intransigent, fanatic and machista nationalism, to its authoritarianism which they consider legitimate.
In both cases they are highly regressive and reactionary ideologies, in permanent defense of the interests of the dominant classes.
Because the political context is different, there are as well some differences between the ideology of the FSLN and the “mosquito” parties of today, and that of Somocism. They are differences that make them just somewhat different versions of the same phenomenon, but the two are instruments of the dominant classes to eliminate any element challenging its control, and very particularly those who fight for democracy and human rights, in addition to feminists and ecologists.
The hidden history of Franco fascism of the Nicaraguan elites (passed down to the FSLN)
Surely some readers will believe that maybe it is an exaggeration to describe Orteguism (which others reduce to a benign “responsible populism”) as an ideology similar to neofascism or Somocism. But their reading is the result of the ignorance of the history of Nicaragua, as well as of the great similarities that Somocism had with Spanish Francoism, about which there is very limited and distorted knowledge in Nicaragua, as a consequence of the intentional forgetfulness or historical cover up, fruit in turn of the desire of the dominant class to conceal their admiration for the Francoism/fascism of the 1930s.
The lack of historic memory in Nicaragua (product of the intentional distortion of the dominant class) explains the lack of knowledge about what fascism/Somocism was and the consequences that it had for Nicaragua, as well as its later continuation in the State and its influence in the culture and in the culture of the right-wing politicians grouped into traditional parties and their troupes. The insufficiency in analysis and study of history has made it possible that such a distortion of history was imposed on the narrative that society accepts as true.
Hence what Somocism really was remains unknown, what it meant and how it is reproduced in the dominant culture of Orteguism. Without mentioning the influence that it has in contemporary right-wing politicians, who want to keep this lack of knowledge from being corrected, and count on the collaboration of the information media and some intellectuals for that purpose.
The ignorance of our past has allowed Orteguism to present itself as something new, disconnected from the Somocista past. It has had an enormous cost for democratic forces, because erroneously Orteguism is not understood as the successors of fascism/Somocism, because for the majority of the youth the history of the fascist past and its influence since the times of Somoza García is so distorted and is so ignored, that Orteguism even has enjoyed a certain amount of credibility among some sectors of the population in the most depressed and poor neighborhoods of the country.
It is no accident that the economic program of Orteguism, and of the groups that are fighting for “Orteguism with or without Ortega”, like big capital and those it has financed of CxL and the mosquito parties, would include measures of great support for the dominant classes and great hostility to the working class.
In essence, the economic program of the dominant class, which is that of Orteguism, includes:
- Low taxes on patrimony and inheritance taxes on the owners of capital and the wealthiest classes, predominantly benefitting elites:
- Reduction in public spending and public services, hurting vulnerable classes:
- Privatization of the purchase of medicines and quality education;
- Deregulation of labor markets (with a loss in buying power for the working class), annulling protective measures for workers and consumers);
- Policies of support to the business world so that they have full freedom (without limitations nor regulations in their contracts);
- Reduction in the value of pensions, whose costs are considered unaffordable.
- Calculation of the entire working life of the worker in order to calculate their public pension (which reduces their pension);
- Replacement of services offered by the State, facilitating that families be the ones who carry out the functions of service to their members;
- Drop in taxes on foreign investors;
- Exonerations, waivers and exemptions on taxes on capital.
It is difficult to be more favorable to wealthy and dominant elites and more hostile to the popular classes in the country.
And even though there may be differences between these measures and those that Somocismo put into practice, you have to take into account that the economic policies would vary, by necessity, depending on the context in which they are applied, which is very different now to the context existing in the 1930s in the past century. But the objective is identical in both cases, Somocismo and Orteguism: benefit the wealthy classes at the cost of the popular classes.
1990: False transition
The establishment of the democratic government in 1990 did not imply a rupture with the previous dictatorial regime which it replaced. The democratic forces won, but Orteguism was not militarily defeated, which prevented a broad and profound change of the State. The “transition” in Nicaragua was not a big rupture with the previous political regime, just a “modification”, an important one, but without breakage, without discontinuity.
Without the desire to downplay the progress that said “modification” meant for the State, the fact is that the big influence that those defeated in the 1990 elections, perpetuated till today, refutes the central premise of the thesis of the exemplary nature of that “transition”, that stated that the result of the process had been a democracy comparable to that of its surrounding countries.
In reality, most of the political establishment of the previous Sandinista regime and their functionaries, including many militants of Sandinism (now mutated to the political and social right wing), maintained their power within the post 1990 State, particularly within the apparatuses of coercion, like the agencies for internal intelligence, the armed forces, the police and in the judiciary.
Orteguism: the right in power, and the hypocrisy of the “opposition” on the right.
The political right-wing has always seen progressive social groups as subjects to eliminate. This is precisely the heart of the political discourse of the CxL party. Their intense hostility toward the leaders of the social movements is a symptom, among others, of that reactionary toxicity that, compared to the great majority of traditional politicians of the right, have paved the way for the verbal and material violence that the Ortega-Murillo regime have implemented.
But there are many other examples of the enormous insufficiencies and damage that in Nicaragua – still in the “democratic” parentheses between 1990 and 2006 – are the result of authoritarian and anti-democratic power that the groups from the political right exercise – in other words, Orteguism and its allies –on the State. One of those is that fact that Nicaragua is one of the countries with the largest social inequalities in Latin America; being always polarized and divided between the few in number but very powerful wealthy classes, on the one hand, and the popular classes on the other. This chasm has expanded even more between 1990 and now because of the enormous and excessive power of thought of the political right over the State.
That is why it is a sign of incoherence or mere hypocrisy of the political right currently represented by CxL and the FSLN that they denounce progressive sectors for “polarizing” the country due to their proposals and discourse.
Any objective analyst can see that the policies proposed by the popular movements have as a goal reducing the inequalities and the polarization of the country, not increasing them.
Attacking the inequalities and inequities, giving visibility in the media to the central problems that affect the majority of the population is an essential step if one wants to resolve them.
Denouncing the inequalities and inequities is indispensable, even though those who represent the wealthy sector – very powerful in the communications media – might feel themselves implicated.
The fact that the hostility of these groups against progressive sectors is on the increase is due to the fact that, for the first time, there is a social movement that wants to end the excessive influence of the political right, inheritor of the Somocista regime in the State, and now incarnated in Orteguism.
The project of CxL-Ortega-Big Capital: re-pact and sharing of the power edifice of the right.
Defending this political right with Somocista/Franco roots, maintaining the status quo, is the purpose of the CxL. We know who the true architects of the project are. It is not Ms. Kitty Monterrey. Not even Eduardo Montealegre, the majority shareholder of the party.
Behind them is Big Capital, and the Orteguist dictatorship itself; the CxL party is clearly a re-engineering project of the “dialogue and consensus pact” between both, that they seek to implement through the strategy of “Orteguism with or without Ortega.” Within this strategy Ms. Kitty Monterrey fulfills her role of destroying the possible unity of the opposition. Now it is up to the Supreme Electoral Council CSE (controlled by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship) to play its role.
The price of victory, the cost of defeat
A defeat of the progressive and democratic movement (like in the 1930s of the 20th century) would be highly negative for the possibility for democracy in the country, as was also the defeat of the peasant movement by the fascists/military/Somocista forces in the military conflict of the 1930s.
The Ortega Murillo regime is trying to use the weariness of the population in the face of the pandemic, and their desire to return to normalcy as a shield to hide its enormous incompetence and the great damage that it has caused the popular classes and the entire country. The toxic behavior of Orteguism is blocking economic development in democracy and justice. The struggle against this backward regime, the current expression of the phenomenon of the Somocista/Franco authoritarian right is hard, but it has to be done. The cost of not doing it is greater than that of the sacrifices needed for the triumph.
[1] In Nicaraguan politics small parties who survive and attain some political posts by attaching themselves to a larger party in power are known as “zancudo” or mosquito parties.