This is an interview done this week of Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, Rosario Murillo´s daughter, and Daniel Ortega´s step daughter. (She is mentioned by Pinita in the previous post). Here she compares her experience of being an abuse victim of her stepfather and the complicity of her mother, with the current experience the country is undergoing.
Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo
“No one would like to have a murderer as the woman who gave you life”
“Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo no longer have a way out”, stated Zoilamérica, daugher of Murillo in exile in Costa Rica.
By Yamlek Mojica Loásiga, August 21, 2018 in Seminario Universidad
“We are facing a fundamentalist sect”, Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo.
The name of Zoilamérica has been in the collective memory of Nicaraguans now for decades. Daughter of Rosario Murillo, and step-daughter of Daniel Ortega, who in 1998 she denounced for having raped her for more than 20 years, and Murillo for being an accomplice of those crimes. Since then she has been the victim of harassment and intimidation on the part of the presidential couple. Five years ago, due to that same persecution, she went into exile in Costa Rica.
Zoilamérica is a sociologist and currently works as a university professor. She states that what is happening in Nicaragua is a case of a fundamentalist sect similar to the Nazis.
In this interview she analyses her mother´s way of governing, and the persecution of the Nicaraguan state against opposition actors of Ortega even on Costa Rican soil.
Do you think there are similarities between the crisis of Nicaragua and your history of abuse?
There is a sensation that life trained me to experience the first symptoms of the cruelty, manifested in the abuse, as well as in the terrible vengance that my mother undertook in order to get from me a retraction of my denouncement of Daniel Ortega for sex abuse. And to silence and isolate me.
I feel that the most difficult part is not that the brutal and ever more unscrupulous forms of repression against the people be repeated in the scenario, but rather the way in which the exercise of power has been internalized.
I have compared it exactly to the dynamics between sexual abuse and the abuser, in the sense of this first stage that the cycles of abuse have, of manipulation, of the creation of conditions to get one to consider the right of possessing. I feel that unfortunately the revolution has become a great tool for manipulation.
In my case there were the family connections between the abuser and myself: in this case it was the manipulation of the symbols of the revolution, the discourse, the sentiments, all the history. That manipulation worked, I believe, in the same way that it works in sexual abuse. On that basis we give over quotas of our will to that person. In the case of sexual abuse, out of fear, because of the co-dependency, a point arrives where the abuser annihilates all your will. Likewise in Nicaragua we were giving over quotas of power that ended up building this abysmal concentration, that annihilation of will.
Then, I had no other option than remaining isolated for a long time, remaining for a long time under the effects of what the violence then was. But the hardest thing is seeing how this process of manipulation in the violence in Nicaragua, the concentration of power, was also similar in terms of the silence that surrounded me for many years.
In what sense?
I remember that after I made the denouncement, the question most asked of me was whether anyone knew. Now we can ask ourselves: Did no one know that there had been so much electoral fraud? Did no one know about a political pact that was done to distribute among themselves the branches of government? Yes they did know. Why did no one say anything? It is confirmed that complicity does work, and that sexual aggressors clearly choose those they want to convert. We were vulnerable coming from a context of dictatorship, and we thought that we were going to get out of it, fully believing in someone.
It is the same thing that happened with a ten year old girl who came from a world of deprivation and that suddenly the revolution comes, added to that power, and invents for her a world of protection that then turns into a world of abuse. I believe that the most complicated part for me has been that it is being repeated today. The complicity of my mother becomes present again. A complicity with two actors who have as their only purpose in life keeping and sustaining political power. Exactly in the same way in which they stated their alliance around denying the facts about which I accused them, that capacity continues functioning in the same way that they try to disguise and give another version of the facts.
Why do the ranks of the Sandinista Front of National Liberation keep quiet about Ortega?
I think that part of this manipulation has to do with turning loyalty into complicity. On the other hand, if we take that path, denouncing is a synonym of betrayal, thinking differently is also a synonym of betrayal. In this fundamentalist culture that the Sandinista Front has, enough mechanisms have been found to also subdue willpower. This subjugation also is marked by opportunism, because there are also those who have been paid to quit thinking. Nevertheless, I believe that we should not assign the same responsibilities to the leaders, as to people who so far continue expressing to being close to feeling that the FSLN is their option. They are people who, in spite of everything they see, want to try to rewrite history. There are people who will continue saying that they are sandinista, and that they are going to continue supporting a sandinista government, even though they are not allowed to say that Daniel Ortega is not the one. I think that it is important to understand the quota of pain, of sacrifice of many people. Still in Costa Rica there are people who say they have contradictory emotions, of course, because it hurts them to say that they gave everything in exchange for nothing.
You talk about loyalty. Is the FSLN loyal to Rosario Murillo?
I would not call that loyalty, but submission, She has a capacity to exercise leadership in a ruthless manner. Being ruthless implies that everything that is in front of you should be useful to your purposes. Without being able to say no. Loyalty assumes your willingness, but none of these people are asked if they want to be loyal to her, but rather today are trapped in a power dynamic that they cannot get out of. Even this mechanism of turning everyone into murderers so that in the end all are accused is part of the same dynamic. That is not loyalty. It has to do with methods of profound subjugation. This that I am telling you has to do with that Machiavellian capacity for subjugation. She is an expert in creating forms of submission. I do not know if there is another person with the same capaity for impregnating fear. It is very interesting because suddenly in the Nicaraguan imagination, even up to a very short time ago, Daniel was the good one and Rosario was the evil one. This precisely has to do with the fact that his gift is manipulation, and her gift is creating terror.
Why the insistence of Murillo on minimizing people? Why does she need to describe the oppositon as “residue” and “scraps”?
Something that for me was always difficult was the indifference. In other words, with that indifference the message is: “you do not exist”. I did not exist as her daughter for ten years, ten years of not knowing absolutely anything until I withdrew the lawsuit, because I couldn´t do it any longer, because that was being translated into revenge. Where I am getting at, on the one hand, is that profound conviction that “no one is as great as them.” On the other hand, is the mystery of the verbalization in order to be small. I do believe that people have compared the Nazi context and the superiority of the races to them. Here also we are facing a fundamentalist sect, only that it was created tailor-made to the need itself for alienation. It is an act of absolute arrogance and superiority that turns into something very dangerous, because no one is like them. This means that everything that surrounds them should be eliminated, and even more so the smaller they are. In this search for answers they think that they have some type of insanity, and in that way we excuse them because “they do not know what they are doing”, and that is not true. Or we give them the proper title of dictators and we think then this justifies their political logic, but what we have in Nicaragua is worse than that; it is a case of political alienation. They are alienating everything that would justify them as the omnipotent and only ones with the power to lead the country.
What do you feel when you see the name of your mother accused of so many crimes?
In one of the vigils for Nicaragua I had a very intense experience, because seeing a sign of Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega with a big sign of murderers still touches my conscience. I think that no one would want to have a murderer as the woman who gave you life. It is profoundly contradictory. It still is a blow to my humanity. Nevertheless, it is the reality that I have had to live with and about which I continue to learn, above all, trying to understand what this is going to mean for me in the future. This is the most difficult thing. There are people who do not know the difference between them and me; there will be a time at the end of their days that I will have to articulate where their story ended and where mine ended.
You fled from Nicaragua in 2013. Do you identify with this exodus of Nicaraguans who are fleeing out of fear of your family?
There is a principle of refuges status that is interesting, and it is called fleeing out of a well founded fear. I would say that for Nicaraguans you will have to open a chapter that would be called “well founded terror.” If I could express the level of terror that I experienced on knowing that my own mother could be capable of hurting me and hurting my children, I can understand that the situation of fleeing is because they are sowing terror. They want left in Nicaragua those who accept being subjugated, they do not care how many of us leave, as long as those who stay accept being in jail, kidnapped, and that they are not going to accomplish. Definitely those who come from Nicaragua are people who cannot live with that fear that they are sowing. It will have to be seen what it means to have a wave of terrorized immigrants with the conditions that implies. They are designing a country tailor-made for the reign that they need.
Persecution from paramilitaries has been denounced within Costa Rica. Do you believe it?
I think it is very difficult for the government of Costa Rica to admit it, but the geographic closeness would allow one to think that this risk exists. It is a serious situation. Above all because of the possibility that they might have deserters within their own ranks fleeing to Costa Rica, and they can be the people who supply information that can implicate them. It has to be understood that Daniel Ortega above all is going to avoid a trial for crimes against humanity; the family, better said. We have to be careful in not placing in doubt the capacity of the Costa Rican state to protect us; rather, it is recognizing that they can turn any circumstances into circumstances of risk.
What other things have you experienced here? Have you been the victim of xenaphobia?
Costa Rica is a country with highly advanced legislation on all these issues; nevertheless, in the case of xenaphobia, historically it has had to share the country with immigrants. This can generate contradictory feelings. On the one hand, admiting the ethnic diversity of this country, the labor participation that we have. Nevertheless, the level of acceptance of us foreigners can be increased. I think that at times we have very marked cultural differences and this can generate reactions of exclusion and very big distances.
The people mention a lot “the New Nicaragua”. What does this mean for you?
The New Nicaragua for me means an educational process that tries to deal with this legacy. If my family sowed anti-values and perverse practices, I would like to contribute with something, deconstructing that or giving testimony about what I had to do to be less Ortega Murillo and more Zoilamérica. That which is coming also is an unresolved stage. No more leading roles, no more the need to be highlighted as the best option. Every time a person uses the social networks, they are using a mechanism of power that is outside of him. First let us reconnect with our own power.
How do you see the future of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo?
I feel like there is no way out. In the pursuit to build a trap and a jail for all of Nicaragua, they built their own; they are trapped. The problem is that they still have with them all the victims of that spiderweb of power that they wove. Gradually that will be freed up. The stage that we will still have to see will be when their own people turn on them and say: “this is as far as we go.” Surely that moment for them will be the most difficult one. So far, they continue accustomed to the fact that no one objects to their will. The international community is going to have to test out ways, like they did with the peace accords. I am sure that this also is going to imply moving from this type of mechanism to something that might be truly effective, and, if not, it will be up to us Nicaraguans to do it.