Nicaragua

When the wind blows strong in Leon, Nicaragua the sky changes color. Doors and windows slam shut. Darkness swallows the daylight and dust falls like ashes over the houses, buildings, churches and offices.

The right to independent observation for the Nicaraguan elections remains unheeded. Although there are no signs of free elections, the opposition is preparing itself and has proposed Fabio Gadea as a candidate.

The campesino movement demanding the repeal of the law for an inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua – a project that the government has awarded to Chinese businessman Wang Jing – is autonomous, affirms Francisca Ramírez. It acts in defense of the earth and national sovereignty and isn’t motivated by any political interests.

Daniel Ortega called him “The Somocista chaplain” after Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo’s “parable of the snake” homily, pronounced in the Metropolitan Cathedral on October 17, 1996. Just three days later, Ortega would lose the presidential election to Arnoldo Alemán.

The siege and the barriers blocking access to public information that Comandante Daniel Ortega’s regime has imposed on independent journalism aims to silence all voices in discordance with the official discourse.

Last Thursday night, the 26th anniversary of the elections of February 25, 1990, Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren (1947-2015), one of the key figures behind the democratic transition that former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro led in Nicaragua, was paid tribute to by ex-ministers of Chamorro’s government, who remembered him as an “atypical politician”.

Gaby Garcia and Carlos Bonilla, two opposition activists who for several months have maintained a crusade to demand free elections in the country, were stabbed and beaten by five men armed with knives and pipes outside their home in the June 10 neighborhood of Managua on Friday.