How can Some Progressives get Basic Information about Nicaragua so Wrong?
On November 7, Nicaragua held elections in which current president Daniel Ortega received 75% support and, as a result, begins a new term of office in January. Not surprisingly, the US government described the election as a “sham.” Of more concern is that many on the left seem to agree. William Robinson’s NACLA article, Nicaragua: […]
End of a Narcostate?
Joe Biden has a Central America problem. Countries that turned reliably neoliberal after the ‘small wars’ of the 1980s have become unwieldy again. After sixteen years of neoliberalism, Nicaraguans returned Daniel Ortega to power in 2007 and re-elected him this month in a vote which Biden dismissed as a ‘pantomime’. In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, […]
Nicaragua’s Elections Are a Referendum on Social Investment Policies
This article was written jointly with three young Nicaraguans, Patricia Ruiz, Winnie Narvaez, and Yorlis Luna U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently accused Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega of planning a “sham” election on November 7 and aiming to create an “authoritarian dynasty” after arrests of opposition figures ahead of the vote. Also referring to […]
Facebook does the US government’s censorship work in Nicaraguan elections
A few days before the Nicaraguan presidential elections on November 7, Facebook and other social media companies began closing down many of the pages used by Sandinista supporters in their campaign to re-elect President Daniel Ortega. This blatant censorship move was said to be because they had discovered “troll farms” operated by government agencies. But […]
Are Nicaraguan Migrants Escaping ‘Repression’-or Economic Downturn?
“Record numbers” of migrants are coming into the United States from Nicaragua, according to Newsweek, which blames the increase on “arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses” by the Nicaraguan government. Former Sandinista leader Sergio Ramírez, writing for El Salvador’s El Faro, claims that “repression” by President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government is causing a “dramatic growth” […]
Ordinary Nicaraguans should guide progressive left’s stance
As elections approach in Nicaragua, there has been a spate of left-wing criticism of Daniel Ortega’s government that, to someone living in the country, seems bizarrely out of sync with what most Nicaraguans see as their pressing priorities. A string of opinion polls confirm what my day-to-day conversations tell me: that support for government policies […]
Sanctions May Impoverish Nicaraguans, but Won’t Change their Vote
In 1985, when President Reagan declared Nicaragua “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” his words were followed by a trade blockade, a ban on commercial flights and—most seriously of all—the financing of the “Contra” war, which led to 30,000 deaths. When, 33 years later, Donald […]
Why U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua Isn’t Working
After the U.S.-Russian summit in June, there was no apparent irony in President Biden’s response to a question about electoral interference. “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew […]
Why Nicaragua is acting against people receiving US money to disrupt its coming elections
This short video (in Spanish, with English subtitles) explains part of the legal basis for the actions being taken against people who have accepted $millions from the US to disrupt the coming elections, or are demanding tougher US sanctions against their own country, likely to be most damaging for the poorest sections of Nicaragua’s population.
The US stake in Nicaragua and Honduras’s 2021 elections
Both Honduras and Nicaragua hold presidential elections in November 2021 and the US government has a strong interest in both, although for rather different reasons. Both have incumbent presidents who will either stand again or, in the case of Honduras, more likely be replaced as candidate by a successor seen as reliably committed to the […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on