Today in this newsletter we talk about homeland.
The word is an empty signifier since long before the Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau coined that notion.
Since forever, actually, and the attempt to fill that void has given rise to a large repertoire of historical absurdities.
The last one is embodied by two rulers who have spent years torturing the concept of homeland, as well as that of the people.
In short, that of democracy.
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered yesterday to strip 94 citizens, writers, intellectuals, political activists and journalists of their Nicaraguan nationality.
The vileness, which includes the confiscation of their assets, is self-explanatory.
But at the same time this revenge gives an idea of the perversion of the underlying message.
Ortega and Murillo determine who deserves to be Nicaraguan and who does not.
In any case, these days the least important thing is what the leaders of Sandinismo claim to be.
Knowing that they do not represent any homeland, that their electoral farces discredit them and that they trampled on the revolution that overthrew Somoza is nothing more than a confirmation.
What matters is that more than 300 people have lost their nationality for opposing the regime.
Last week the Ortega and Murillo apparatus took 222 political prisoners out of jail, put them on a charter flight and sent them to Washington.
Good news, without a doubt, which was followed by a reckoning.
An express reform of the Constitution was enough to declare them “stateless”.
The Government of Spain offered nationality to this group, which included Dora María Téllez, Commander Two of the Sandinista revolution, the brothers Cristiana and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and the student leader Lesther Alemán.
A gesture of greatness in the face of the hatred shown by the regime.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez refused to board the plane and was sentenced to 26 years in prison.
But yesterday Ortega and Murillo relapsed.
Among the 94 Nicaraguans stripped of their nationality are the writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, Bishop Silvio Báez, the feminist Sofía Montenegro, the human rights defender Vilma Núñez and the journalists Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Wilfredo Miranda, a contributor to EL PAÍS.
All of them are today more Nicaraguan than ever and their voices,
Subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS America newsletter and receive all the key information on regional news.