This is the translation of the full interview of Humberto Ortega, Daniel’s brother and former founder and head of the Sandinista Army, which led to his house arrest on May 19th. He admits the role of the Army in the repression of 2018, the dominance of a “radical group” over the FSLN, the lack of democratic spaces, and given the unstable international scenario, warns of the possibility of a “surgical strike” by the US to remove a “rotten tooth.” He also says that upon Daniel´s death, no one would be able to take his place, that the Army and Police would have to step in to provide stability for a democratic process to resolve the situation.
By Fabián Medina Sánchez in INFOBAE, May 19, 2024
Humberto Ortega, 77 years old, is the brother of the Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega, 78 years of age. Both as adolescents joined the guerrilla fight against Somoza and then became Sandinista commandantes. Both led the regime that governed Nicaragua during the 1980s, Humberto as head of the Army and Daniel as president.
This power pairing began to fracture in 1990, when Humberto Ortega remained at the head of the Army in the government of Doña Violeta, and Daniel Ortega led a violent and radical opposition.
After his departure from the Army in 1995, Humberto Ortega, who it is presumed manages businesses worth millions, devoted himself to writing history books and promoting what he calls “humanistic centrism”, a current of thinking which he defines as bringing positions closer together to “reach agreements for the benefit of everyone.”
His opinions, occasionally published in the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, stir up the waters of Nicaraguan politics for being controversial or because his proposed solutions to the crisis end up being at least “suspicious”, seeing who they come from.
Humberto Ortega has demonstrated his disagreement with many of the actions of his brother, more to advise him in strategies to survive in power than with the intention to confront him. The Ortega brothers are not adversarial, but they have different visions about how to administer power. He says he is not an enemy of the Nicaraguan regime nor of the opposition, “even though I have points of view in conflict with theirs.”
In spite of the public clashes between them (Daniel Ortega has called him a “traitor” and “instrument of the United States”), the Nicaraguan dictator has gone to visit him a couple of times in his residence, where he is convalescing from heart complications.
In this extensive interview with INFOBAE, Humberto Ortega talks about the particular relationship which he has with his brother and dictator of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, expresses his criteria about what would happen in Nicaragua in the face of his death and the solutions he sees to the crisis which the country is experiencing.
How is your health? Could you explain for us your medical condition?
I have had serious cardiovascular events within the context of the tense and polarized political and social conflict, COVID, of 2018. I was rushed to the Vivian Pellas Hospital in Managua. Later, since December of last year, I have suffered new events.
Open heart surgery?
No. The open heart surgery was in 2000 in Costa Rica. Now it was not a heart attack nor the threat of one. It was what medically is called “cardiac insufficiency”, which likewise can kill you because it does not allow you to breathe. I am now out of the hospital and in my home here in Managua. I feel pretty recovered and animated in terms of personal and political dynamics.
The last time that an encounter between you and your brother Daniel was known about was precisely because of a serious medical event. Have you met again?
Since my sickness president Daniel, my brother, reestablished his encounters with me, and now the communication is more natural, fluid. Which has been constructive, opportune, for exchanges about the complex and difficult developing world crisis. We exchange points of view, excited to contribute to overcoming the crisis, the serious problems which affect all of Nicaragua, particularly since the year 2018.
Nevertheless, Daniel Ortega appears to be following a direction contrary to your advice.
The important thing is that we are talking, even though we don´t agree about everything. Because previously we did not talk. Now we are talking, each one with their point of view and without any tension.
The animosity or tension that there was between you has now disappeared?
There has been that tension in different stages of the struggle and it has been in the heat of the struggle. My relationship, as a person, as brother, family or politician, has been in general respectful which does not mean that it has not been tense because of opposing points of view.
It strikes me that in our previous conversation you said, “I do not want to die before…” Are you afraid of dying?
An accident in the conflict for hegemony can unleash a catastrophe, mutual destruction, cataclysm of nature and our human species. So dying in this situation keeps us from contributing to its solution, at the moment of the debacle or in the interregna which would require agreement among the powers to ensure peace with a shared hegemony between the superpowers.
Do you expect that your opinion would be taken into account by the superpowers in conflict? Doesn´t that seem very pretentious?
I do not expect the superpowers to listen to the concerns of someone like myself or like you. Because they do not even listen to their own allies and governments. But, we have the duty of making an effort to add to the pleas like the Pope is making, trying first of all to resolve the issues that afflict us. I do not pretend that they would listen to me, or call me. No. What I pretend to do is issue a distress call, a public reflection because I am known internationally.
You have proposed that the world is undergoing a new division. How do you think this new division is affecting Nicaragua?
It directly affects us if we align ourselves with any one of the world blocks of power, bereft of the national dignity which in our history patriotic struggles like what Augusto César Sandino forged. Pragmatism crudely imposes itself and it s inevitable, necessary, that our small country join one of the blocks in dispute, and maintain justifiable reservations with the United States, the power which historically has mistreated us, by reducing us in the past to a country with people, territory and government, but without “supremacy nor independence” which are constitutive elements of sovereignty. The same thing happens with other peoples of the world who have been humiliated even in the present by imperial China, Russia.
How beneficial or harmful is the alignment of the regime of your brother with Russia or China, and confrontation with the United States?
We must maintain mutually beneficial relationships with any of those superpowers. And the decision of having a more profound integration with Russia or China should not lead to clashing with the United States, a superpower with which we have great advantages and benefits within the framework of the economic and commercial treaties in effect. Not falling into the trap of the extremists who promote an ongoing and frontal attack on the United States to provoke an imperial reaction within a tense world conflict which could be a pretext for surgical strikes, in order to replace the ALBA governments, particularly Nicaragua. For that reason I have warned about this possibility. And interestingly some in power in Washington are seeking a pragmatic solution with the government of Daniel Ortega, in the uncertain day to day dynamics or in light of the Nicaraguan electoral process in 2026.
Surgical strikes? Are you referring to operations like what the United States carried out with Noriega in Panama in 1989?
Exactly. But more than that, they would be strikes to replace the established power, and not to begin with this an anarchical process or a war of resistance like what we had in the past. The United States does not want problems here in the region of an anarchical nature and much less a prolonged war. It simply would be like pulling a tooth which is bothering them, keeping the rest of the teeth intact. Taking out the most rotten piece.
You talked about elections in Nicaragua in 2026. How can elections be expected with a dictatorship which does not even allow religious manifestations in the streets?
In my consideration there is only one way to resolve the stagnation of the conflict, which deepened with the crisis of 2018. That path is seeking to get the highly polarized parties, full of distrust because of the mutual actions, who are suspicious of and question one another, to sit down. All governments bear greater responsibility. That there would be a profound awareness in the current group in power about the deviation from the democratic process.
And how do you expect that Daniel Ortega would promote a democratic opening which surely is going to remove him from power and can take him before tribunals for the crimes which he has committed?
Right. The model which is most helpful to Nicaragua is the republic…
I insist: How do you expect that Daniel Ortega would take a step forward toward a republic if he is in survival mode and the republic would mean, let´s say in metaphorical terms, the noose which would hang him?
A lot of wounds were left open here, but even so we got to year 2018, where for better or worse, a certain amount of peace, tolerance, development functioned. Some have opted for a totalitarian path to impose a model, a system which has no place in Nicaragua. Which is not viable for us, they try it and fail and end up erased from history.
Do you think that the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega is a successful case or a failure?
After more than 100 years of terrible war, the biggest success has been that in some way we have felt the benefit of peace. And we have felt that with peace the economy moves better and the fight against poverty does better.
What has happened here is that there are tendencies in the current Sandinista grouping which left at the helm the most radical, dogmatic ones, on the side of Daniel with Tomás Borge in particular, who believe that the best model for conquering poverty is a benevolent State, without taking into account that you cannot give what is not produced, and which becomes then a corrupt and parasitical State in which the people take what is given, but are not in agreement with that way.
What there is here is an ideological struggle. That is what makes the problem with this group difficult. The spinal column of the group in power is dogmatic. It was the most dogmatic people. Heroic combatants in their time, but who were formed dogmatically throughout the struggle. They were not able to impose their dogmatism because there were people, like myself, who did not share that model, and on the contrary, I pushed for a democratic model of political pluralism, mixed economy and non-alignment. But later the most dogmatic power group imposed themselves, and that group, along with a series of opportunistic people, who were even anti-Sandinistas and Somocistas, now are allies of these people and tolerate them, not because they believe in them, but simply because they are useful to them.
I am not the enemy of any of them, but I have points of view very opposed to how things are being done. The break between us has to be political, not ideological. Being pragmatic, as a politician should be, a chance should be given to a political opening which might lead to a real solution, as it was having gotten Daniel Ortega to move up the elections in 1990.
Like it or not, that group in power has to seek a negotiation with what they constantly say is the worst enemy of humanity, the United States, and they attack it in a visceral manner. They will have to sit down with them, and will have to negotiate with them, and with all those who oppose them and who they hate, particularly those who have remained belligerent after the crisis of 2018. Only with these components: the United States, that radical power group, and the leaders of the disperse opposition, likewise radical and without direction, a solution be sought only with these groups.
What guarantees would Daniel Ortega need to get involved in a negotiation? Once he said that a serious dialogue would be like giving them the noose with which they are going to hang him.
There is a time in which one uses these metaphorical figures to encourage your bases who are weak. I myself, when the Revolution triumphed, in a plaza full of people in the center of Managua said that in Nicaragua power is not at risk, that there were not going to be elections. I myself said that and they attacked me. Nevertheless, I was the one who most promoted peace and most promoted elections.
We are headed to a disaster, even though it might appear that things are fine. Since the crisis of 2018 communication has been closed, democratic exercise is not permitted through the imposition of a police regime, which results in the authoritarian, anti-democratic tendency of the current government. The first thing is that there be awareness about the gravity of continuing marching in this direction, and even more, taking into account the risks which are run within the framework of the great (superpowers). To be playing with these things in moments of great tension, that is where I say there could be surprise strikes which would do a lot of damage to this power group.
What do you think the regime of your brother did poorly before, during and after the rebellion of 2018?
Prior to the rebellion, the regime underestimated the profound unrest of the people over the more and more authoritarian ways of the regime and their previously anti-Sandinista and corrupt allies. Little by little it quashed social and political protests, and weakened the necessary social pact represented in the tripartite grouping of workers, private enterprise and government. At the same time police harassment against dissidents was heightened in general. In a parallel fashion, dissident extremists were preparing protests outside the law, encouraged by extremists in the United States. During the protests the regime showed surprise and initially acted with blunders which resulted in repugnant, criminal excesses from both sides. The regime bought time, taking advantage of the evident division and ambitions of the opposition, extending the dialogue, which failed, and then after several months of illegal and bloody rebel roadblocks, the government with the police, paramilitaries, and the Army, dismantled them. It would have been better if the Army had acted fair and legitimately, avoiding everything which later happened.
You do recognize the participation of the Army in the repression of 2018 and what would have been that fair and legitimate action of the army?
The biggest sin of the Army, unjust, which damages its image and professionalism, was the tolerance with armed civilians, particularly with the paramilitaries, which their security and intelligence apparatuses had registered, knew where they were, knew where they were going and even tolerated the fact that they armed themselves. I cannot say that the Army armed them. No. I do not have proof of that. But I can say that the capacity that it always has had, since the time of Somoza which was one of the best security offices, for them to realize where some civilians got weapons, organized, fired and killed. So, for me, the Army in fact was an accomplice to a confusing situation which led to an enormous responsibility of grief and death.
For me that was a serious error of the Army, which added to the tendency of the entire State, with a government at the head, of not assuming the responsibility which as a State it has before society, and [for the government ]to say that the blame, first of all, belongs to the society which rebels or is inflamed or protests over problems.
What for you would be the way out of the current crisis which Nicaragua is experiencing?
A “re-encounter” among all the forces of society, particularly the political ones who are full of hate and polarized. For that purpose, the regime should take the initiative, and president Daniel Ortega in particular. The current world conflict makes more urgent the process for the search for an agreement for now and for the electoral year of 2026. The United States can contribute pragmatically to this direction.
At one moment Daniel Ortega accused you of being a peon of the US Empire and of having unleashed the army against the Sandinista bases in the government of Doña Violeta.
That attack was unjustifiable. Without myself at the head of the Army of Nicaragua in the titanic transition from war to peace of the new government of Doña Violeta and Antonio Lacayo, basic governance would have been impossible in the face of the radical efforts of Sandinista and opposition extremists to the government of Doña Violeta based on her own forces. Even officials of the US government demanded the disappearance of the Army and myself. Our military institution, with the Military Code, we swore loyalty to the country and not to any civil, partisan force, in government or not, and therefore I ensured every five years the succession of the military hierarchy for its professionalism, needing to be nonpartisan. This Army led to the democratic, political space, and when unfortunately some retired forces of the Army, and the now disarmed counterrevolution, rearmed and came together in “recompas”, “recontras” and “revueltos”, attacking towns like in Estelí, we saw ourselves forced nostalgically to fight them, with dozens of them dying and fatal victims among the population and our forces of the National Police and the Army of Nicaragua. It was not until 2000 that that phenomenon ended, and it reappears briefly in the crisis of 2018.
Would you say that you are an opponent of the government of your brother?
I am neither in favor nor against the government of president Daniel Ortega, nor against nor in favor of the opposing forces, I am in the effort for my ideals for a democratic Nicaragua in peace, my ethics and morality of an old fighter for noble utopias obliges me in the effort to help my country get out of the profound political crisis which overwhelms us and that delays the most powerful development of the country. For that reason, since the fight against Somoza I promoted political pluralism, mixed economy and international non-alignment. I prepared the insurrectional strategy which the radical tendencies of the FSLN saw themselves forced to accept, and assured the triumph of the revolution, and its most precious fruit: the new democracy, today in a serious impasse. I strive to preach humanistic political Centrism, which resolves conflict generating just national agreements.
Daniel Ortega is 78 years old. Could his death create a power vacuum in Nicaragua, or do you see the dynastic succession being activated?
When there is an authoritarian type of power, dictatorial like the current one, which very much depends on the figure of a leader who exercises the Presidency, in the face of its absence, it is very difficult for there to be continuity of the group immediately in power. Why? Because the authoritarian, personalistic, vertical tendency itself of governing, has castrated the transmission belts of the party. The party currently does not have a response. They are there, not out of mystique, but to be there as functionaries, many wanting to do good, but more than anything, benefitting from that governmental and political participation. If Daniel is not there, for me, Humberto Ortega, there is no possibility that anyone from that group of power can exercise influence in the face of a process…
Not Rosario Murillo?
No one. No one. I do not want to mention anyone in particular. Without Daniel there is no one, because all in all, Daniel is the only historical leader who still preserves the credits from that struggle. Without Daniel, I see it very difficult for some two or three who would come together. Much less one in particular, and more difficult [someone] in the family. Sons who have not had the accumulation of a political struggle. Not even Somoza was able to set up his son. With the absence of Daniel, it would be very fragile to sustain everything which up to now has been able to be sustained with great effort and enormous complexities. Not just on an internal level, but also with the allied forces of the left and governments of the region. The only one they know is Daniel.
And the rest of the Sandinista leaders?
There are some there who had relevance, who are in the government, some who were members of the historical National Directorate, who are there supporting Daniel. These people have lost leadership because they have not known how to fight for it. They have castrated themselves. Sandinistas who were in the Directorate and who in this situation are not even capable of publishing an article like those that I write, and I have exposed myself to radical people who would like to kill me. I have never showed them fear and have never said that I am going to leave Nicaragua. I have never said that I am going to go into exile. And if they want to do that to me, I am not going to tolerate it and I prefer to die defending these principles than give them the chance of humiliating me. There are some four members of the Directorate (National Sandinista) who are left there, they do not speak. They are afraid of communicating with others. They are no longer those people. As Seneca used to say: your power resides in fear, and if I am not afraid of you, your power over me is worthless, even if you impose yourself on me, even disappear me.
But it would be easy to conclude that being the blood brother of Daniel Ortega protects you so that they do not take reprisals with you as they would with others.
No. Being a brother does not protect me. For me that it not what is fundamental. That we might be blood brothers does not mean that this grouping which Daniel leads has not had and might have enormous complaints with a man like myself. There have been some who have gotten to thinking about eliminating me. I have never known it from Daniel, but yes from people who are with him. I know about it. That they can poison you, have a truck hit you on the highway…These things can happen. Did they happen to me? Well, it doesn´t matter, so far I am here. As a brother it gives me confidence that I know Daniel from childhood and I know that he, as an individual, is incapable of personally acting as a murderer, and much less against a brother of his. But in an altered situation, this same group, with he leading it, they would put me at the end of a noose. That has already happened. Hasn´t he said that I am a traitor, several times? And you know what means to say to a man like me that I am a traitor, with those radical people who accompany him? In the street they can say that I am a traitor, drunk or however, and shoot me. I do not travel with police since I left the Army. I do not have bodyguards from the Army. They were never given to me. The protection that I have is organized and financed by my own effort. Simple people. Some retired military. And they are few. In other words, if they want to kill me it is easy.
But to not increase the tension that exists, in my personal case, the fact that I know Daniel from childhood, I have never seen him do anything to one of his own, do a dirty trick to someone. Daniel is not a murderer. As a political leader, which has a radical movement, their behaviors speak for themselves. I have been publicly accused of being a traitor of the country, that I sold myself to imperialism and there are many who currently say to Daniel that I am playing the game for the United States.
You say that Daniel Ortega is not a murderer, contrary to what many people think. Do you absolve him for the murders and crimes which they accuse him of?
No, no. Look, I am not a judge. I am not a moral or religious authority to absolve or condemn anyone. Daniel Ortega at the head of a public function has State responsibility and as president responds for the worst, the bad, the good and what is well-done of his government. I do not absolve Daniel Ortega for his behavior at different moments. As I do not absolve anyone on the right, the opponents, of all the excesses that were committed when, wanting to take advantage of the discontent of the people, tried to mount an insurrection without direction and that resulted, likewise, in horrendous crimes. I simply am not a judge, I am not God to be absolving or condemning anyone, but I do have the right to express my protest of the people who are in public positions or in political activity in the opposition. I have the right and the obligation.
What do you think then would happen in Nicaragua in the face of the death of Daniel Ortega?
In the face of a sudden absence of Daniel Ortega there would first be an enormous confusion and impossibility, for me, that the civil part of the government and the party would be able to assume solid power. The Sandinista institutions in the government or the party would not have, in my way of seeing it, the capacity to fill that void. The only thing that can resolve that void, and that would prevent anarchy and chaos in the country, is the Army. First of all, the Army. Coordinated with the National Police. And looking for a solution in the short term, maybe a year or less, to call for an electoral process, whether it be the one scheduled for 2026…That would be it. Generating the conditions for that process. I do not see the capacity in the civil power, the government and the party to fill that void, neither immediately nor in the medium term, but simply functioning within the framework of a transition which the government is going to lead with the security forces, the Police, and a process then of negotiations and alliances, providing a margin for civil society to reach an agreement in a solution in the elections for 2026. The United States and the countries of ALBA would look favorably upon that.
Many opponents believe that you and other historic leaders of Sandinism are responsible for crimes and the current situation of crisis which the country is experiencing. Would you be willing to submit yourself to justice if you had the guarantees for an impartial trial?
Opening wounds already healed in the different amnesties throughout history would be disastrous for the stability of the country. In the present a Truth Commission could be created to clarify the crimes happened since the war of the decade of the 1980s. And the first one condemned by the high Tribunal of the Hague in the Netherlands is the government of the United States for its war against Nicaragua, the international tribunal which the United States does not recognize, refusing to indemnify Nicaragua for more than 18 billion dollars. Likewise, we would be processed Sandinistas and the opponents of the government, the counterrevolutionaries in arms or the civilians in the work of political destabilization, like the newspaper La Prensa, Churches, the Vatican with the reactionary Pope John Paul II, and those who encouraged the crimes against literacy workers, mining of ports, economic blockages, the crisis of 2018, all crimes against humanity. So let us proceed right now to do it, and Nicaragua would explode into a thousand pieces before the universal cataclysm might be unleashed.
