The “spied upon” headline from El Pais is unequivocal. The story, in the newspaper’s English-language edition, says that Nicaraguans live in “a climate of permanent surveillance” in which they distrust even their neighbors. Further, apparently harmless community meetings are really “a mechanism of social control” where they “feel watched.” El Pais sources a survey carried out “independently” by an organization called Hagamos Democracia (“Let’s Make Democracy”), based in Costa Rica. Its president, Jesús Tefel, says that people can’t “express opinions openly for fear of being betrayed.” El Pais’s conclusion is that Nicaraguans live under “constant surveillance and repression.”

Is this true or is it fake news? To probe this question, let’s first take a look at the author of the article and the main sources used.

Wilfredo Miranda, the journalist, is a Nicaraguan based in Costa Rica. He’s written 23 articles for El Pais in the past twelve months, all but two of them negative stories about Nicaragua’s government. This is hardly surprising since his career has been entirely in opposition news outlets, such as Divergentes, which he founded, and Confidencial. The latter is owned by the wealthy Nicaraguan family of the Chamorros, who received at least $7 million from USAID to promote opposition media in the run up to the attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018. Miranda has also written for the UK Guardian and for the Washington Post.

Hagamos Democracia is a non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1995 in Nicaragua, closed by the government in December 2018 and now based in Costa Rica. Its funding sources prior to its closure included USAID (US$801,390) and the National Endowment for Democracy (US$525,000). In Costa Rica it received US $1,114,000 from Washington to work with exiled political activists. Its sparse website claims the NGO is independent. It says nothing about its funding sources or how it’s run.

Jesús Tefel, a Nicaraguan exiled in Costa Rica, became the organization’s president in 2024. Tefel is a founder of one of Nicaragua’s main opposition political parties and part of an initiative called “Monteverde,” which is attempting to unite these diverse groups.

Behind Hagamos Democracia is Luciano “Chano” García, alleged to have bought its presidency in 2017 until he stood down in Tefel’s favor last year. Chano is a long-time opponent of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and a relative of former dictator Anastasio Somoza. An organizer of the coup attempt in 2018, he recruited known violent, criminals, called for the overthrow of the government and campaigned for police officers to desert their posts. When the coup attempt failed, he fled to Costa Rica, allegedly with the help of a CIA agent. Chano is accused by Nicaragua’s attorney general of organized crime, terrorism, and conspiracy against the constitutional order.

Second, let’s look at the survey itself. How was it carried out when the population is supposedly “under constant surveillance”? How can Hagamos Democracia conduct a survey in a different country? We do not know because the survey has not been published, but previous surveys have been. Here’s how they work:

• Typically they have 400 respondents out of Nicaragua’s 7 million population, the bare minimum to ensure reasonable confidence in the results, provided that the sample is truly random.
• But it isn’t: surveys are done using Whatsapp or Signal, limiting their coverage to people with smartphones who use those apps, excluding huge numbers of the government’s working-class supporters.
• Respondents then have to fill in a Google questionnaire with around 45 questions – a further barrier, limiting the survey to those with the necessary skills and familiarity with such forms.
• Worse still, assuming that those carrying out the survey say who they work for, many Sandinista sympathizers would simply hang up on hearing the words “Hagamos Democracia.”

Third, let’s look at the timing: the survey was carried out July 18 to 23 this year, precisely the weekend when millions of Nicaraguans were celebrating the 46^th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. There could hardly be a worse moment to carry out a balanced survey that required detailed attention to a survey form.

Faced with all these facts, an objective observer would surely conclude that the survey is political propaganda and that a responsible newspaper would have ignored it.

In any case, a thoughtful reader might ask, if these neighborhood meetings are “a mechanism of social control”, why do people go to them? The reality is that, while naturally their effectiveness varies, many are excellent examples of grassroots democracy, designed to hold public services to account. For example, in the city of Masaya one barrio committee has been pushing for better garbage-collecting services and assists the local health center in ensuring that local people with chronic illnesses get treatment. A typical meeting in this barrio sees 100-200 neighbors listening to and questioning officials in a friendly atmosphere, far from the “repression” portrayed by El Pais. Such levels of participation should be the envy of western “democracies”, rather than being scorned.

El Pais also fails to set the context for the issues covered in the article. If readers knew that Nicaragua had suffered a violent, US-funded coup attempt in 2018, in which over 200 ordinary people and 22 police officers were killed in opposition violence that continued for three months, they might appreciate why a degree of vigilance is required.

This omission is not surprising. El Pais’s demonization of Nicaragua goes back a long way. It unashamedly supported the 2018 “rebellion” and glorified the US-funded violence. Many of its articles about Nicaragua, like this one, appear to ignore its own ethical code about balanced reporting.

El Pais ridicules President Ortega’s warning in July of growing threats from Washington, against a country whose defense budget is one of the smallest in the Americas. Yet the warning resonates with many Nicaraguans who want no repetition of 2018’s violence. Most regard Nicaragua’s standing as one of Latin America’s safest countries to be worth protecting and view with alarm the growing lawlessness in next-door Costa Rica (over 500 homicides in 2025 so far).

Readers might also wonder why El Pais singles out Nicaragua, when its readers in the West really are under “permanent surveillance.” According to some studies, those in the USA are caught on surveillance cameras 34 times a day, while for people in the UK the number doubles. Spain uses Israeli “Pegasus” spyware against those pushing for an independent Catalonia. And, of course, secret surveillance of our phone calls and emails has been revealed as widespread by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.

The irony of El Pais’s article is that, unconsciously, it pays a backhanded compliment to a country where – according to this fake news survey – only “90%” of Nicaraguans feel spied upon.

Francisco Dominguez is national secretary of the UK-based Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.

Published in Antiwar.com, Popular Resistance, Counter Currents, Resumen Latinoamericano, Internationalist 360, Dissident Voice, Tortilla con Sal, Pressenza. In the UK it is published in the Morning Star (y en español en Tortilla con Sal).