August 6, 2023
Three previous articles described the attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018, and how public support grew initially but then waned. This final article, covering the period from mid-July to the present day, shows how the coup was defeated and what happened in the aftermath.
By July 2018, three months of violence – over 200 deaths on both sides, including 22 police officers, kidnappings, torture and destruction of property – had exhausted the Nicaraguan population, and they were desperate for the government to restore order. The calls for the government to clear the tranques (roadblocks) that had strangled the country became deafening. Daniel Ortega’s strategy had worked: had he removed the roadblocks too soon, the resistance might have been much more violent, and it would have left deeply divided communities. He had waited until he had the backing of most of the population.
Continue reading “The Nicaraguan Coup Attempt: How Peace Was Restored and What Has Happened Since”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua crisis, Nicaragua, US intervention
July 15, 2023
Sadrach and Yohaira with a crowd of supporters
Britain and the U.S. impose economic sanctions on dozens of governments they don’t like, write Erik Mar and John Perry. Some people in Nicaragua are being targeted on the basis of little or no evidence.
Continue reading “Inscrutable Sanctions”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, human rights, sanctions |
July 9, 2023
Nicaragua: On the Fifth Anniversary of a Coup Attempt, Conflicting Accounts Persist
On the fifth anniversary of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, conflicting accounts of the violence and killings still persist. The mainstream media has characterized the opposition protests as generally peaceful and cases of opposition violence as counter violence against brutal repression of dissent by the government. John Perry has written a series of articles that call into question this one-sided narrative, and his appeal to empirical evidence and lived experience have broadened the parameters of debate. In this article, Perry revisits the case of the murder of police officer Faber López Vivas, a case that highlights the need for impartial investigation of the events of 2018.
Continue reading “Nicaragua: On the Fifth Anniversary of a Coup Attempt, Conflicting Accounts Persist”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis, human rights
June 27, 2023
Dan Kovalik and John Perry
Two previous articles described the build up to the attempted coup in Nicaragua and how the media were crucial in convincing the public to support it. This article, covering the period from May 30 onwards, shows how the initial support peaked, then collapsed.
After more than a month of conflict, most Nicaraguans hoped that a “national dialogue” set up by the Catholic church would lead to peace, but in fact it led to renewed violence. During the hiatus before the dialogue began, and with the police now confined to their police stations on Daniel Ortega’s orders, roadblocks were set up on all the country’s arterial roads and throughout many key cities (see the map published by one of the coup leaders). Quickly dubbed los tranques de la muerte (“death roadblocks”), they not only strangled the country’s transport system but became the scene of intimidation, robberies, rape, kidnappings and murder.
Continue reading “The attempted 2018 coup in Nicaragua: why its support collapsed”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
June 24, 2023
Matagalpa, a commercial city in the mountainous north of Nicaragua, suffered many destructive attacks during the attempted coup in 2018. One of the worst occurred on June 25, when opposition vandals robbed and later set fire to the municipal depot, or plantel, where the vehicles and equipment are kept that maintain the city. The destruction is shown in the video below.
Continue reading “Matagalpa in flames, June 2018”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
June 17, 2023
Five years after the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua, the country is celebrating its recovery – peace has returned, the economy is growing, the Sandinista government re-elected in 2021 is investing strongly in public services. But it’s important to remember what happened in 2018 and the enormous, deliberate damage that was done to the country. Nicaragua’s opposition, pushing for support in Washington, expects its horrendous acts to be forgotten. This article describes in detail one of the many incidents of extreme violence. It occurred in Masaya, one of Nicaragua’s most important cities, the scene of many horrendous crimes when it was controlled by opposition thugs for several weeks in 2018.
Continue reading “Nicaragua rebuilds – five years after US-funded terror was defeated”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis, human rights |
May 26, 2023
“Peaceful” protesters in Masaya on the first day of the coup attempt, April 18, 2018
An interview with Randall, a “historic fighter” from Nicaragua’s revolution against the Somoza dictatorship, about the attempted coup in 2018 and how the violence affected his neighbourhood.
During the attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018, Masaya was one of the cities most affected by the violence and by the widespread use of roadblocks to control the streets, many manned by armed youths. The violence began on April 18 and lasted until July 17, when police and Sandinista volunteers moved in to clear the roadblocks. Overall, in Masaya some 36 people died during the coup attempt, including three police officers (and two more were trapped and murdered after the coup attempt ended). Randall, the subject of this article, lives in Monimbó, the neighborhood or “barrio” where the violence in the city began.
Continue reading “Masaya in flames – five years afterwards”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
May 15, 2023
John Perry and Dan Kovalik
Five years ago, Nicaragua was subject to a violent insurrection that lasted from April through July, 2018. In the second of four articles, we look at how initial support for the coup relied on widespread use of social media.
The “groundwork for insurrection” in Nicaragua was laid down months and years before the coup attempt began, as our first article explained. But the coup could only succeed if it mobilized sufficient people into demanding that President Daniel Ortega should resign. How was this to be done, with polls showing his government had some 80% support in a country that had enjoyed several years of prosperity and social development?
Continue reading “How “peaceful protests” in Nicaragua became an attempted coup”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, media, Nicaragua crisis
April 29, 2023
Reviewed by John Perry and Jill Clark-Gollub
The latest book by labor and human rights attorney, Daniel Kovalik, Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance (2023, Clarity Press, 292 pages), is a worthy addition to the author’s collection of works on countries targeted by US imperialism, such as Venezuela, Russia, and Iran. While giving readers a thoughtful and much fuller picture than one can glean from the corporate media, this volume tells an engaging tale based on personal experience and extensive research.
Continue reading “Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention & Resistance, by Daniel Kovalik”
Category: Latin America, Book reviews | Tags: Nicaragua crisis, Nicaraguan elections, Nicaragua, US intervention
April 23, 2023
ChatGPT is a powerful AI chatbot that is as easy to use as Google and provides more direct answers to users’ questions. Ask it anything you like, and you will receive an answer that sounds like it was written by a human, based on knowledge and writing skills gained from massive amounts of data from across the internet. Because of its growing popularity, there are already political questions about it, for example assertions that it has a left-wing bias or concerns about privacy issues, which have led to the bot being banned in Italy just this month. It is already banned in China and Russia.
Continue reading “Should we be concerned about what ChatGPT “thinks” about Latin America?”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Cuba, US intervention, media, Venezuela, Guatemala, chile
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on