The private sector will not negotiate unilaterally with the government of Daniel Ortega, said Jose Adan Aguerri, President of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP). He maintains that it would be useless if any businessman, large or small, seeks such an agreement, because all credibility in Nicaragua was lost.

“The Constitution is not working; the laws are not worth the paper they are printed on,” said Ramirez, a former Vice President of Nicaragua (1985-1990) and recent winner of the Cervantes Award, the highest Spanish language literary standard. “Confiscation is an unconstitutional measure.” he noted.

Yerling Aguilera and Jessica Cisneros are two of the spokespersons of the Nicaraguan International Solidarity Caravan in Spain. They arrived with a small suitcase and round-trip tickets. The approval of an antiterrorist law and the detention of two prominent activists —merchant leader Irlanda Jerez and the peasant leader Merardo Mairena—, brought them to Madrid so they could apply for political asylum.

“I have always talked about a complicit silence. However, from the perspective of military ethics, the Army has an obligation to speak out. At least say: ‘Stop the massacre, the illegal arrests, the tortures,’ and tell that to the regime, says defense and national security expert Roberto Cajina.

“If you could imagine how the life of a migrant is, who has to hide from immigration to not be expelled, or be taken prisoner, that is how I have to hide so they don’t kidnap me here in Nicaragua,” says “Veneno”. He is 24, and remains in hiding. For him this has been the price to pay for protesting against the regime of Daniel Ortega.

The bilateral and multilateral sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and the US Senate against Ortega’s regime, which include a sanction against the First Lady and VP Rosario Murillo, represent—in the opinion of the seasoned Latin American expert Richard Feinberg, “a strong, exceptional message,” so that Ortega “enters into negotiations with the people of Nicaragua.”