A decorated platform in Managua

Cao Jianming is one of the 14 vice presidents of the permanent committee of the National People's Congress of China, and has been sent to Nicaragua to be present at the fourth consecutive inauguration of Daniel Ortega.

It is a long journey, from the other side of the world, to a country that has just entered the orbit of the expansive relations of Xi Jinping's new heavenly empire.

Few are the guests who will attend, most of low level, or mediocre level, like Jianming himself.

For this reason, his surprise must have been enormous when, as he got off the plane, he realized that an honor guard was waiting for him, whom he would have to review as if he were a head of state.

In a country with strict hierarchies like yours, such a formal anomaly is impossible.

But in Nicaragua yes.

He represents China and that's enough, even if he was an usher in the Forbidden City.

But far away there is another scene that is also unusual, if not strange.

That same day, January 10, President López Obrador appears in one of his “mañaneras”, the press conferences that he offers early each day at the National Palace in Mexico City.

A journalist asks him if his government will send a representative to Ortega's inauguration.

"He hasn't decided yet," he replies, rather bewildered.

When is… the inauguration?

"Today," the journalist informs him.

"Uh… today?"

He did not know.

The journalist then tells him that the night before the Foreign Ministry announced that it would not send anyone to the ceremony.

"And what time is the inauguration?"

the president asks.

"I don't know the time," the journalist answers.

—Let's see if there's time for someone to arrive… because we have good relations with everyone.

With everyone,” the president repeats.

And we don't want to be reckless.

—Would it be imprudent if no Mexican official attended the inauguration?

The journalist continues.

Then the president replies that Mexico cannot put aside its policy of self-determination of the peoples.

And remember how the past government, to get along with another government, expelled the North Korean ambassador.

Surely he was aware of the impossibility of an envoy arriving on time, since he has arranged that he and his officials can only use commercial flights.

And the charge d'affaires of the Mexican Embassy ended up on the stage of the guests in Managua, since there is no ambassador.

This singular episode has been given the appearance of a rather rude disavowal of his own foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, who would have sought to join the vast majority of Latin American countries that left Ortega alone in his farce.

But it also deserves another read.

If the president of Mexico does not even know when Ortega takes office, and therefore does not know the time of the ceremony, it is not that he is just uninformed.

What it shows is the null importance that Nicaragua has in its foreign policy, a zero to the left.

It may be for this very reason that Foreign Minister Ebrard did not think it necessary to inform him that he would not send anyone to Managua, not even a third-rate official.

And so it becomes clear that it had never occurred to President López Obrador to attend himself, invited as he was;

or send to your chancellor, or someone from your government.

On the contrary, what it does is distance itself and place Nicaragua in a less privileged position: next to North Korea.

Good relations with everyone, he says, emphasizing the word everyone, that is, democrats and dictators.

That is why he reproaches the Peña Nieto government for having expelled the ambassador of the hereditary dictator Kim Jong-un in 2017.

And speaking of imprudence, Argentina, which also did not send any delegate, was represented by its ambassador in Managua, Daniel Capitanich, an enthusiastic Ortega fan, who sat on the same platform of honor as the vice president for economic affairs of Iran, Mohsen Rezai.

The character is accused in the Argentine courts of being responsible, nothing less, for the terrorist attack against the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), which occurred in 1994, in which more than 80 people died and more than 300 were injured, a crime of It hurts humanity.

There is an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol against him.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, there was a family photo in which Ortega appears together with Rezai himself, the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and that of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

It is the photo that must have unpleasantly surprised President Fernández of Argentina, and in which López Obrador would never have wanted to be.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry addressed a diplomatic note to Nicaragua regarding Rezai's presence, which "constitutes an affront to justice and to the victims of the brutal terrorist attack."

A lament, not a protest: “The Argentine Government deeply regrets learning of the presence in the Republic of Nicaragua of Mr. Rezai…”.

And the stage in Managua remains in place, without disarming, until the next inauguration, when Ortega once again transfers power to Ortega.

Sergio Ramírez

is a writer and Cervantes Prize winner. 

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