It’s Revolution Day here in Nicaragua. July 19th. A big holiday celebrating the fall of the dictator Somoza by the efforts of the Nicaraguan people and its political and military arm, the Sandinistas.
As I write this early morning, the fireworks are already going off and the events, marches, ceremonies, and drinking continue on this 4th day of a very long weekend.
For me, it is a sad day. The hope of the 80s and the Nicaraguan revolution, has given way to a return to the strong man. The Ortega tribe is no different than the Somoza clan. Nepotism. Hoarding wealth. Chipote prison again is bursting at the seams with political prisoners being starved to death and tortured. What goes around comes around.
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history. Albert Camus, The Rebel.
Revolutions in essence aim to make the future radically different from and better than the past. They are romantic. But like romantic love, they burn out quickly. Like a wildfire scorching away the past, what grows back up is much of the same. The roots of greed, power and crazed ideological straight jacking make it so.
Just look at almost any world revolution that has captured the broader imagination of the world. It always ends up back where it started - one family, one group, co-opting the wealth as their own and keeping the rest of the population in check through lies, the myth of the revolutionary past and of course, a strong, loyal police/guard. Meanwhile, the poor are still poor and pick up the slop pail and eke out a living.
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. George Orwell.
I urge readers to pay the money and watch the recent “Las Sadinistas”. It brings to light the failure of the Nicaraguan revolution and especially how women despite the sacrifices they gave to the revolution, how women are still encased in absolute poverty and marginalized in Nicaraguan society. Overall - of course, there are some things you can point to as positive. Land distribution, primary education, some infrastructure but basically it is one hand giving and the other taking away. The problems in Nicaragua are many, poverty, illiteracy, lack of opportunity, social stratification, a defunct legal system, femicide, land grabbing, corporate greed, I could go on and on.
Revolutions eat their own. They all become cannibalistic. Today, the Ortega clan (essentially now having co-opted the FSLN and have made it into an Ortega cult) is busy erasing the importance and history of many, including the actions of the brave, courageous women of the revolution who ultimately were responsible for the major changes coming post-revolution. The jails are filled with those once central to the revolution’s success. Eating their own. When that happens, you know the revolution has rotted from the inside out. For example, FSLN general Hugo Torres.
There has been a huge exodus from the country. A purge. A cleansing. It is not primarily economic but a push to punish those the dictator deems “unreliable”. He’s even taken on the Catholic church, NGOs, universities and almost any sector of society that stands for civility and rights. The revolution is purifying itself - it’s a mini-version of Mao’s cultural revolution. And that never ends well.
You also know a revolution is rotten when there is paranoia by those in power. A fear of everything and all policy becomes enslaved by this fear of knives being taken out - the “Et tu Brute?” ¿También tú, Bruto? Ortega and his crazy wife (I say that without emotional compartment - she is crazy) have even rounded up in a paddywagon and thrown out elderly women, nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa and doing invaluable work for orphans here in Nicaragua. He forced them to walk across the border into Costa Rica. Why? Because he had reports and then dreams of them praying for his overthrow and assassination. You can’t make this stuff up.
Ortega and his political arm have abandoned the revolution. Abandoned any talk or effort to hear and embrace all sectors and elements of society. Abandoned all efforts to make a better future for all citizens of Nicaragua. All the evidence points that way. This multi-millionaire wakes up and decides which of his Mercedes bullet-proof SUVs he’ll take to whatever ceremony of superstitious “triumph” he has to go to that day. The revolution has returned to where it started. Ortega IS Somoza.
Post-script: In no way am I advocating interfering in Nicaraguan politics. It is for the Nicaraguan people to decide their own political future and control what their society will look like. BUT it is for all of us to support any efforts to end the human rights abuses, the deaths, the torture, the injustices that have caused so much fear in Nicaragua. A very real fear, which makes so many Nicas keep their heads down.
Food For Thought
Uncle Jacob
Forty years kneading dough
After the war,
Told me he had found only
Two ways of making bread;
The slow bake of philosophy
the luxury of the rich or high minded,
for the rest, the quick snatch of wonder
between the long steady strokes of the whip.
Then sternly, his strong hand on my shoulder
He said,
“Son, always be on the other end of the whip,
for there they eat not bread but cake.
Living is an affair for those who turn on the ovens.