The author of this article analyzing the recent elections and their impact is one of the leading Latin American scholars on social movements, a well recognized voice from the left. He notes the importance of big capital in Ortega´s ability to remain in power, something also pointed out by William Robinson, another key progressive scholar on Nicaragua, in his analysis of the Nicaraguan elections recently published in NACLA.
Nicaragua, the electoral coup anticipates the decomposition of Orteguism
By Raúl Zibechi in Chiapas Paralelo, November 8, 2021
On Sunday November 7th the cities were deserted. The population stayed in their homes, as a form of protest in the face of an oppressive regime incapable of accepting the rejection that it created. The citizen observatory Urnas Abiertas states that there were 81% abstentions, even though the regime says the opposite (https://bit.ly/3H4GZ9e)
What is unquestioned is that the opposition were not able to be present. Seven opposition presidential candidates, who are the principal rivals of Ortega, were jailed. Two additional aspirants had to go into exile to not be arrested. “All are part of the 39 opposition leaders arrested by the regime since the end of last May, most of them accused of “betrayal of the fatherland”, based on Law 1055 or “The Sovereignty Law” (https://bit.ly/3BUsjpI)
The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), controlled by the Ortega-Murillo clan, canceled the legal status of the Democratic Restoration Party, the Citizens for Freedom Party and also the legal status of the Conservative Party.
But the key to the continuity of Ortega and Murillo is private enterprise.
More than one hundred thousand Nicaraguans had to go into exile in Costa Rica, more than a thousand are in the jails, while outstanding figures from Sandinism are detained or were pushed into exile under an old and wretched argument: they are playing into the hands of imperialism and the right wing.
Very profound reasons led the current government of Nicaragua to become an anti-popular dictatorship which last Sunday imposed their third re-election on the population.
Oscar René Vargas, veteran fighter against Somocism and former member of the Sandinista government, maintains that the continuation of Ortega in power, more than three years after the popular uprising of April 2018, “is not explained without the collaboration of big capital” (Sin Permiso, November 7, 2021).
The formation of a new bourgeoise
Like all dominant classes, the emerging bourgeoises always take the path of repression on peoples while they usurp their discourse. To hold fast to power they need to fight, in a simultaneous way, the powerful classes that they are dethroning and support themselves in the popular sectors to have additional strength in that fight.
Something like this happened during the wars of independence. In their fight against the Spanish Goths, the native-born appealed to the original peoples and blacks, poor peasants and popular urban sectors, because on their own they had neither the force nor enough courage to win in the battlefield. They promised “liberty”, but as soon as they established themselves in power, they took on wars against those very people, practiced genocide in each and every one of the nations that they built with the support of the British empire.
If we look to the recent history of Nicaragua, the Ortega-Murillo gang is doing something very similar. They proclaim themselves to be Sandinista but they are repressing the people who gave their lives to overthrow the tyrant Anastasio Somoza in 1979. They invoke the memory of Sandino and the mystique of Sandinism to end up embracing the Nica bourgeoise and imperialism itself.
Years back Comandante Monica Baltodano explained the alliance of Orteguism with the richest of Nicaragua as “ a fusion of interests that has pretensions to be long lasting.” The affinity went way beyond arrangements with some large capitalists, because it concerned a “symbiosis of interests”, that culminated in the creation of “a red and black bourgeoise.” The group of Ortega and Murillo is composed of some 200 faithful who have become a capitalist group that forms part of the “new Sandinista oligarchy” that shares power with “the traditional oligarchy and big transnational capital” (Envío, January 2014).
Journalistic investigations highlight that the Ortega family manages funds worth more than $2.5 billion dollars, benefitted by the oil trade with Venezuela. Those deals have been camouflaged in two businesses: Alba of Nicaragua Inc (Albanisa) and its subsidiary Banco Corporativo (Bancorp). The denouncement states that through them the family in power has directly appropriated millions of dollars of funds that involve the privatization of the money from the oil aid, as Confidencial stated in May 2016.
The way that the Ortega clan have channeled these resources Is very simple. The Venezuelan PDVSA participates in Albanisa con 51% of the shares, and Petróleos of Nicaragua has 49%. “The total amount of the loans channeled by Albanisa as of June 2018 was close to $4 billion dollars. In the boom times they averaged $500 million dollars annually, free of any other charges. A liquid capital that Ortega manages as he wished, as private capital”, calculated the authors of the investigations based on data from the Central Bank of Nicaragua (Confidencial, Feb 13, 2019).
They are not the only denouncements about the interests of the Ortega-Murillo family, and of eight of their nine children who have the rank of advisers, control the distribution of oil and direct most of the television channels and publicity businesses, which are benefitted with state contracts, according to an investigation of El País (April 18, 2021). The only one who does not participate in the profitable deals of the family is Zoilamérica Narváez, the daughter of Murillo who had to go into exile in Costa Rica after denouncing sexual abuse from her step-father, Daniel Ortega.
The continental left in distress
Even though the Ortega regime has drifted into a vulgar dictatorship, part of the left of the Latin American region continues supporting it, from the San Pablo Forum (which limits itself to general declarations and refuses to directly condemn it) to progressive governments that have chosen so for geopolitical reasons over classist, democratic and feminist ones.
Particularly painful is the complicity of Cuba with Ortega, because of the appreciation that we continue having for the revolution, and because of the respect that it has earned among Latin American peoples. It is sad because giving priority to geopolitics above oppressed classes, gender and skin colors implies an option for those above which leaves behind those below.
Vargas maintains that, in spite of everything, the regime feels strong and is not going to give up power, “Influenced by the Cuban-Venezuelan analysis, Ortega thinks that he is facing a period of profound historic change, coinciding with the decline of the unipolar hegemony of the United States and its capacity to project itself globally. An analysis that gives Ortega confidence, that the new tripolar world order gives him room to maneuver and that neither the sanctions of the European Union nor those of the United States can overthrow him.”