Save Nicaragua

The President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, in an act with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.Europa Press/Contact/Xin Yuewei

In April 2018, a popular revolt in Nicaragua took the government, the opposition and the international community by surprise.

Ortega was forced to call a dialogue that he himself led.

The divided opponents, without strategy, without direction and dominated by extreme triumphalism ended up getting up from the table believing that Ortega was finished.

They fell into the old “all or nothing always leads to nothing” error.

The opposition was defeated through brutal repression and the government was internationally isolated.

Nicaragua now aims to remain without a solution for many years in such a difficult global context, which may end up making opponents irrelevant.

Without opposition, international condemnations are useless.

Nobody will invade Nicaragua to overthrow Ortega, nor will there be another popular revolt, that opportunity was lost and cannot be repeated at will.

There will be no new "contra" and a coup is impossible and undesirable because it could turn into a civil war.

In short, there is no force to bring about change.

The international community applied individual sanctions that helped Ortega decapitate the opposition.

He responded to each sanction by decorating the sanctioned person and by imprisoning opposition leaders.

Pope Francis, who was trying to be a bridge, made the absurd mistake of comparing Ortega to Hitler;

the reaction was that Nicaragua broke relations with the Vatican.

There are those who propose imposing economic sanctions, including expelling Nicaragua from the FTA with the United States.

This would be like sinking a ship with all the passengers to kill the captain.

Economic sanctions impoverish countries, but they do not bring down dictatorships, rather they tie them more to power.

That is the experience of Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba.

The sanctions against Venezuela contributed to destroying the economy and multiplying the emigration of the rich, middle classes and poor.

This severely weakened the opposition and entrenched Maduro in power.

Nicaragua is one of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in Latin America.

Destroying its economy could make it a failed state.

Nicaraguans have suffered in half a century an insurrection, a counterrevolutionary war,

There are no strategic foundations or solid evidence based on other experiences to show that destroying the Nicaraguan economy would bring about democracy and remove Ortega from power.

The Cubans in Florida have spent 62 years with an irrational strategy against Castroism that has contributed to prolong the life of the dictatorship they hate so much.

They have been so delusional that when the Soviet Union was collapsing they bombed hotels in Havana to sabotage tourism.

In politics, patience is a virtue and impatience is stupidity.

Cuba has more than a thousand political prisoners and Venezuela more than 250 with no hope of their release.

However, Ortega released 222 without asking for anything in return.

He obviously could not release them without an action that justified it against the radical bases that support him, for this reason he took away their nationality.

The international community paid more attention to the form than to the important political gesture.

It is common for political exiles from dictatorships to end up without passports, a Saudi opponent was dismembered in an embassy of his country for attempting consular processing.

There are three essential rules in conflict resolution: there is only a solution if the opponents have an honorable exit, bridges must never be broken and you must learn to reason by putting yourself in the other's shoes.

The United Nations condemned Ortega for crimes against humanity, this statement does not help at all and translated into current political reality it could read like this: "The United Nations condemns Ortega to continue governing Nicaragua until he dies."

Nicaragua is still a country of banana warlord dictators and that is how their actions, reactions and rhetoric must be understood.

However, its capitalist economy continues to function quite well, there is no 20th or 21st century socialism there, and it continues to be a country with low crime.

There are two paths, one is to destroy the country with economic sanctions doing the same as the Cuban and Venezuelan opponents and the other is to dare to break schemes establishing new paradigms.

Dictatorships feed on polarization and poverty.

Perhaps it would not be more logical, then, to demand that economic sanctions not be applied to avoid more poverty and suffering for the people of Nicaragua.

If individual sanctions have not helped;

the best thing would be to ask that they end to facilitate a dialogue between Nicaraguans that helps to reconcile the country.

Nicaragua needs to build conditions for a future solution based on no one leaving and everyone being able to return, no matter who rules.

Democracy, for now, must be a goal resulting from progress in political maturity, not a dogma resulting from impotence.

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