On the 43rd Anniversary of Nicaragua’s Revolution, We Accuse You
Open letter to the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in the name of the Latin American and Internationalist Left.
By Mariano Rosa / Luciana Echevarria (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – For reasons of heart and conscience, we have a historic and ever-present commitment to the people of Nicaragua. With their extraordinary revolution 43 years ago, they touched and gave hope to an entire continent, at that time suffering under a series of violent dictatorships. A tiny country geographically was made gigantic by the epic struggle of its people. By Sandino. By the rebellious peoples of Monimbo and Masaya, once upon a time…
Then we were moved to admiration by the roadblocks of 2018. By the universities occupied with honor. By Carazo and its valiant people. by the mothers of the April victims. By the prisoners who today suffer medieval tortures. By the rural movement against the proposed canal. By the exile suffered in poverty and defenseless. By the silent rebellion of thousands, who must process their indignation locked in by the police state and can only dream of new uprisings, new July’s and April’s. New windows of opportunity for another Nicaragua: without wealthy elites, nor salaried snitches, nor hatchet men of the people, nor interventionists seeking their own interests – be they Chinese or gringos or from anywhere.
These people seek another Nicaragua for those below, those who have always put up the dead; the prisoners; the hands of labor; the bodies that produce all the wealth that, in the end, is abducted by minority groups. For all this, we accuse you, today, July 19, when surely that over-acted event of regimented mobilization will once again put you center-stage in the Nicaraguan official media, appealing to the memory of a revolution you buried.
We accuse the couple who have usurped the Nicaraguan government of imposing a dictatorship that represses, pursues, kills and spies to defend their own impunity and, above all, their million-dollar business interests.
We accuse Ortega-Murillo of being identity thieves, trafficking in the proud banners now coopted to cover up a criminal regime. You aren’t leftists, or anti-imperialists, or socialists. You’re bourgeoise who’ve become wealthy, you’re a decadent sultanate that are nothing at all without the arms monopoly you possess.
We accuse you of having transformed a beautiful people’s revolution, a revolution of the forgotten, the youth with their dreams, into a nightmare, with more assassinations than there were under Somoza and with the same style of economic profiteering, of appropriating what belongs to everyone. You’re the executioners of your own people. There’s not return from that. There’s only payback.
We accuse you of even wanting to gag poetry, the memory of Ernesto Cardenal, and prohibit festivals, as if you could impede or cancel the verses, the songs and the freedom to create beauty. You, understand nothing.
We accuse you in the name of a Latin American and internationalist left, that won’t serve as your cover, whose tongue doesn’t hesitate to denounce you, to challenge you, to swear with all those exiled resisters, that we’re going to go the last mile to see you gone. To have the full weight of Memory, Truth and Justice fall upon you and your complicit circle.
We accuse you of crimes against humanity, and although a part of the international community remains lukewarm and permissive, we will judge you. Soon. Because you, like all dictatorships, in your confinement far from reality, believe yourselves to be eternal. Nevertheless, you will fall. Because Latin America has already learned how to get genocidal leaders off our backs. It already learned how not to trip twice on the same stone.
The scope of the pain you’re causing will be directly proportional to the justice that the people will impose on you. Not as resentful vengeance, but as the legitimate reprisal of history. The millions who are today crouching and awaiting the moment deserve it.
Neither leftists, nor anti-imperialists, more socialists: may your masks of usurped identity fall away.
You’re a business dictatorship, you’re wealthy bourgeoise, you’re criminals trying to assure impunity for yourselves.
The world will know all the truth of what you want to cover up. We’re part of a proud and prevailing left that has never stood silent. Socialists for a Nicaragua, a Central America and a world without exploitation nor oppressions nor artificial borders, with real and full democracy for the majorities that live by our own efforts, without privileges. Socialists that have no fear of you, nor of imperialisms nor of the bourgeoise from anywhere.
And on this July 19, our active and living desire is for the dictatorial sultans to go, and for the revolutionary people of the Nicaragua that resists to flourish, honorably and upright.
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* The authors are respectively the coordinator and the parliamentary spokesperson for the International Socialist League’s Commission for Life and Liberty of the Nicaraguan Political Prisoners.