Ten News Items that Marked 2024 in Nicaragua
Repression, family dictatorship and growing Chinese influence marked Nicaragua in 2024. Below, we present an overview of the 10 principal news events.
HAVANA TIMES – An escalation of repression in a police state marked the year2024 in Nicaragua. Events included the death of Humberto Ortega – former Army head and Daniel Ortega’s brother – as a political prisoner; the consolidation of a dynastic family dictatorship via a new constitution; worsening persecution of the Catholic Church; purges of public officials; more banishment and forced exile; and the growing influence of China.
Here is an overview of the 10 main news items of the year:
Totalitarian dictatorship enshrined in the new Constitution
Chief among events that marked the political year was a hastily-passed total revision of the country’s Constitution, in which Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo prescribed absolute power for themselves. The document made official the totalitarian dictatorship currently existing in Nicaragua.
The new Constitution was approved in a first legislative session by the docile National Assembly, with essentially no discussion and no public comment, and must now be reapproved in a second session before going into effect. It completely changes the country’s political system, in addition to creating an official “co-presidency,” thus resolving any possible dispute over a successor to Daniel Ortega.
The reform affects some 93% of the Constitution’s articles, as well as abolishing the separation of powers and subordinating the judicial and legislative branches to the interests of Ortega and Murillo.
In addition, it enshrines in the Constitution the current repression and police state, annuls the prohibition of torture, legalizes the paramilitary, officializes religious persecution, puts the Army and Police under party control, nullifies municipal and regional autonomy, and decrees the red and black flag of the FSLN a national symbol.
In the view of Constitutional experts, this total reform is illegal and null and void from the start, since such reform can only be enacted by convoking a Constitutional Assembly for its approval.
Death of Humberto Ortega as his brother’s political prisoner
Retired general Humberto Ortega, former head of the Nicaraguan Army, died from a heart attack in Managua’s “Alejandro Davila Bolaños” Military Hospital in the early morning of September 30, 2024. He died while in police custody as the political prisoner of his brother, current dictator Daniel Ortega.
Humberto Ortega, who also founded the Nicaraguan Army, was 77. He had been under house arrest since May 19, 2024, punished for having questioned the dynastic succession in Nicaragua during an interview with the Argentine media outlet Infobae, and assuring there was no one capable of succeeding his brother Daniel Ortega when the latter left power.
Humberto Ortega taped an audio message on June 9, during a call to Confidencial made from a cellphone he kept hidden in his home after the police seized his means of communication during their raid on May 19. The audio message remained under wraps at Confidencial as he had requested, and was released two days after his death.
Neither the Ortega-Murillo regime nor the Nicaraguan Army dared dispute Humberto Ortega’s final proclamation, in which he defined himself as a “political prisoner”.
Rosario Murillo purges Sandinista leaders considered “untouchable”
During 2024, Rosario Murillo ordered a series of political purges in the government, the army, the police and the Sandinista Party, to prepare the way for the dynastic succession of her family in power. Thousands of public servants, mayors and high-level functionaries were fired. Historic figures of the old-guard Sandinistas fell, including many who belonged to the trusted inner circle of the governing couple, and had come to consider themselves “untouchable”.
Among those purged due to Rosario Murillo’s crisis of trust, or for unauthorized corrupt activities, are Ivan Acosta, former Finance Minister; Alberto Acuña, former police commissioner and head of Daniel Ortega’s personal escort; Brigadier General Rigoberto Balladares, head of the Army’s political intelligence unit; Justa Perez, chief Minister of Family Economy; Arlette Marenco, Assistant Foreign Relations Minister; over 20 Sandinista mayors and assistant mayors; and the Sandinista circle around Carlos Fonseca Teran.
In 2024, Murillo also ordered massive cutbacks in the government structures and the freezing of vacant posts, which brought a firing of public employees of all levels in the different public agencies.
As the year came to a close, this purge of public employees in at least eleven ministries and institutions shaved 219.5 million cordobas [US $5.93 million dollars] from the projected budget for salaries, money which has already been reallocated to other areas.
Expulsion to Guatemala of 135 political prisoners
On September 5, the dictatorship secretly released 135 political prisoners from different jails and prisons in the country and banished them to Guatemala.
All had been sentenced in bogus and secret trials in which they were declared guilty of invented crimes they never committed, such as conspiracy, spreading fake news and undermining the national sovereignty.
They had actually been jailed for condemning the religious persecution of the Catholic Church; exercising their rights to press freedom and free expression on social media; for protesting or even criticizing the regime’s confiscation of the private Central American University; or for celebrating the triumph of Nicaraguan Sheyniss Palacios, who was crowned Miss Universe 2023.
At the urging of the United States, Guatemala agreed to take in these released political prisoners, who were also stripped of their nationality by the dictatorship. The Spanish government subsequently offered them Spanish citizenship. Others have relocated to other Central American countries, while the majority entered the United States under the Safe Mobility Initiative.
Increasing repression of the Catholic Church: priests and bishops banished
The year 2024 began with the banishing of former Matagalpa bishop Monsignor Rolando Alvarez to the Vatican, along with 18 other Catholic religious leaders that the regime abducted at Christmas 2023. Among them was Bishop Isidoro Mora, 15 priests, and 2 seminary students.
Monsignor Rolando Alvarez had been held in a maximum-security cell in the Nicaraguan prison known as “El Modelo” for eleven months, after the dictatorship sentenced him to 26 years, 4 months in prison for the fabricated crime of “treason”.
The dictatorship continued abducting and secretly banishing priests from the different dioceses of the country among them the president of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference and Bishop of Jinotega Carlos Enrique Herrera, who was banished to Guatemala in mid-November. In August, as least nine priests, the majority from the Matagalpa dioceses, were also banished to the Vatican.
The repression against the Catholic Church has also included the jailing of lay worshippers, the prohibition of public religious activities, police sieges and harassment of temples, and constant threats against priests.
During the December celebration of the traditional Nicaraguan festivities celebrating the Immaculate Conception, the Central American bishops called for a day of prayer for the Nicaraguan church, while Pope Francis directed a pastoral letter to Nicaragua, in which he prays for the spirit needed to face the difficulties, uncertainties and privations.
Abolition of civil and political rights
The new constitution, approved at the end of November in a first legislative session, formalized the political and civil death of any Nicaraguan citizen the dictatorship deems “a traitor to the homeland.”
The regime modified the wording of around a hundred articles of the constitution and imposed restrictions on the rights of Nicaraguans. The reforms legalize the abductions and forced disappearances of political prisoners and the practice of banishing Nicaraguans that has been ongoing in a de facto manner throughout 2023 and 2024.
The new constitution also establishes that citizens “have the right to circulate and establish their residence in any part of the national territory,” but eliminates Nicaraguans’ freedom to “freely enter and leave the country,” which was established in the prior constitution.
In terms of political rights, these will be suspended for any accusations of harming “sovereignty, national self-determination, peace and security” – concepts the dictatorship has utilized to justify their repression.
Daniel Ortega’s failure in the Central American Integration System
The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega failed in its attempt to install its political operators as General Secretary of the Central American Integration System (SICA).
After the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry announced the anomalous resignation of Nicaraguan Werner Vargas as Secretary in November 2023, the dictatorship then presented before the regional organization a series of three candidates. These maneuvers, however, failed to inspire confidence among the Central American countries, and the successive candidates were then rejected on more than a dozen occasions.
Ortega and Murillo first promoted the candidacy of Valdrak Jaentschke, whom they later appointed as Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, replacing Denis Moncada who left the Foreign Ministry for alleged health reasons. However, at the end of November, the regime nominated former Foreign Minister Moncada to lead SICA.
The governments of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic have rejected the nominations of the Nicaraguan regime, for being accomplices to the Ortega regime’s crimes against humanity, and for promoting Russia’s geopolitical interests in the region.
Nicaraguans in the USA facing an uncertain future
In 2024, some 95,000 Nicaraguans left for other countries – 72,000 of them to the United States. Of that number, 58,000 took advantage of the program known as Humanitarian Parole, which offered legal two-year residency in the country.
According to Manuel Orozco of Inter-American Dialogue, who specializes in migration issues, the emigration of Nicaraguans has tripled since 2018, part of a general increase in migration. While a total of 658,203 Nicaraguans left the country before 2017, by the end of 2024 the number had jumped to 1,519,043.
However, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans who are exiled in the United States or have migrated there are now in fear of being deported under the incoming Republican administration of president-elect Donald Trump.
During his campaign, the tycoon pledged to deport millions of migrants and eliminate immigration programs such as Humanitarian Parole, or Temporary Protective Status (TPS).
According to Manuel Orozco, some 10,000 Nicaraguans could be deported from the US in the first months of the new Trump term, which will begin on January 20, 2025. The estimate of 10,000 represents a percentage of those who already have a deportation order or are currently in immigration detention centers, plus undocumented immigrants who are vulnerable to being picked up in raids.
Tens of thousands of other Nicaraguans are in the country as beneficiaries of Humanitarian Parole, and have no status that would allow them to remain in the country permanently.
Ovidio Reyes becomes the dictatorship’s economic Super-Minister
Following the abrupt dismissal and fall from grace of former Finance Minister Ivan Acosta, Ovidio Reyes, president of the Nicaraguan Central Bank, became the sole and all-powerful economic operator of the two-headed Ortega Murillo dictatorship.
Reyes’ powers go beyond the Central Bank, and include his intervention in the Ministry of Finance, as well as in the Superintendence of Banks and Other Financial Institutions.
At the end of December, the dictatorship approved the Law of Administration of the Monetary and Financial System, which imposes government discretion over banking secrecy and control over private banks. The new law will reform the way in which the Central Bank of Nicaragua and the Superintendence of Banks and Other Financial Institutions operate. Both entities will be under the direction of a common Board of Directors, chaired by Ovidio Reyes.
As president of the Central Bank’s Board of Directors, Reyes is responsible for the country’s monetary and fiscal policy. In 2025, on orders from the dictatorship, Reyes has the mission to “cordobize” the Nicaraguan economy, which has been dollarized in practice.
Sources consulted by CONFIDENCIAL consider that the choice of Reyes’ as the regime’s “economic czar” was based on his technical capacity as an economist, his discipline and subordination, and his loyalty to Ortega and Murillo.
What China leaves Nicaragua in 2024
Nicaragua marked three years since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The results of this first year of a free trade agreement between Nicaragua and the Asian giant in 2024 confirm the disadvantageous playing field the Nicaraguan economy is competing on.
During the first three trimesters of 2024, trade relations with China yielded US $40 million in exports, barely 1.6% of the total exports in that period. In contrast, US $373.6 million dollars were spent on imports from China, according to the Nicaraguan Central Bank.
Daniel Ortega’s promises regarding the Chinese investment in infrastructure projects has generated heavy debt for Nicaragua with at least nine Chinese companies. This has exponentially elevated the external public debt, which now tops nine billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Chinese stores and businesses have opened and extended their influence throughout Managua and in the country’s interior. These are growing due to their enormous fiscal advantages over the small and medium local businesses.
In the public sector, the dictatorship ordered the ministries and government institutions to favor information and communication technology manufacturers of Chinese origin during public bidding processes.
In its speeches, the dictatorship promotes its political alignment with China as a panacea for the national economic crisis. However, their words stand in sharp contrast to the disadvantageous results thus far.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.