In this editorial this editor of La Prensa now in exile uses the recent arrests of Sandinista followers, Chino Enoc and Humberto Pérez, to break through the official discourse to reveal the true nature of the regime.
The lessons of the cases of Jalapa and Chino Enoc
By Fabian Medina
Sept 22, 2022 in La Prensa
Chino Enoc
Until a few months ago Chino Enoc was saying that the prisoners in El Chipote were properly jailed. That their procedural guarantees had been respected. That the rebellion of 2018 was a plan prepared by the United States and executed by the MRS. He called the people of the MRS “traitors”. And he used himself as an example, the freedom to dissent that exists in Nicaragua. There he was, freely and frontally criticizing the powerful Rosario Murillo. Look at me, he was saying. Until his turn came.
Fiction
Chino Enoc is now in jail eating his own words. And he realized that there is no due process in Nicaragua. It is not true that those who are opposed to the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are part of a US imperial plan that wants to take over Nicaragua. He learned in his own flesh that the police, his police, plant incriminating evidence, frequently unbelievable evidence because of the rushed way in which it is planted. That the official truth is a lie. And right now, many of his own people are condemning him because of the fiction that they mounted against him, just as a few months ago he used to condemn the political prisoners with the fictitious stories that were staged and he would happily repeat.
Case of Jalapa
Another case: Jalapa. The case of Jalapa should make the followers of the regime reflect about the monster that they are sustaining. The former mayor of Jalapa, the long-standing Sandinista Humberto Pérez and another 10 followers were detained and sent to El Chipote for complaining about the official line of their party. The same prescription. In other words, in Nicaragua it is enough to contradict Ortega or Murillo to end up being a “peon of the empire.” And from that position, receive the punishment reserved for traitors. A matter of insanity.
Boomerang
The examples of Chino Enoc and Jalapa, you could mention 20 more cases, should be enough to understand that the narrative that justifies the repression, deaths and prisoners in Nicaragua is empty chatter in order to provide cover for the delusions of grandeur of two elderly people who have lost their temper. That narrative is a boomerang for those who are preaching it. Those who today justify the outrages of the regime because of a war against the US empire or that hackneyed tale about the shower of dollars of the CIA, let them know that tomorrow they will be in El Chipote surprised on seeing themselves accused of those same crimes.
Justice
It gives me a certain amount of sadness when I hear dissidents allege that it is good that people like Chino Enoc or Humberto Pérez are in jail for the paramilitarism or corruption for which they are blamed. That is not the point! The point is that they are not in jail nor processed for being paramilitaries, for murder or corruption, but for contradicting the regime. It is not a matter of saying here that Chino Enoc or Humberto Pérez are innocent. It is a matter of establishing that no Nicaraguan should consider the abuses of Ortega and Murillo as justice.
Common thread
What do José Adán Aguerri and Dora María Téllez have in common? Aguerri lambasted the MRS of Téllez and Téllez lambasted the COSEP of Aguerri. Do you remember? What do Chino Enoc and Lesther Alemán have in common? Chino Enoc recognized in an interview with La Prensa that he was out with a shotgun dismantling what he calls, or called, a “coup” which was the protests in which Alemán participated. And so on, if we sit down to review prisoner by prisoner in El Chipote we will see that the only thing that they all have in common is that they are in prison because of the abuses of the regime. And that should be a big lesson.
Lesson
The lesson is that the dictatorship is a problem for everyone. Even those who put it together. A long time ago this quit being a matter of ideology, if it ever was. The ill-will and fear that exist within the very ranks of the regime should not be underestimated, without a joint effort to get out of the problem meaning renouncing the differences that we have with one another, or not being accountable in a true system of justice.