The Ortega-Murillo Duo Has Made Ridiculous the Norm
In Nicaragua they even confiscate balloons and fashion costumes
Going after balloons and confiscating the blackbird costume Sheyniss Palacios displayed for the Miss Universe pageant – are only samples of the hare-brained behavior of a regime that will do anything to remain in power.
HAVANA TIMES – The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship never ceases to amaze us, but never in a good way. In addition to dedicating their efforts to hunting down any dissident or out-of-line voices, since 2018 they’ve led persecutions that even in the kingdom of the absurd stand out as especially hare-brained and even ludicrous.
Confiscation of rights and property, arbitrary searches, and police abductions are the daily bread of a country dominated by a totalitarian regime determined not to leave power. But the dictatorship’s repression has gone so far as to order the seizure of balloons, punish a runner, lock up and banish a farmer for “cybercrimes,” when he didn’t even know how to use a smartphone. And now, to put the icing on the cake, they’ve confiscated a blackbird costume belonging to Miss Universe.
Some analysts feel that the behavior of the Ortega-Murillo duo responds to a totalitarian vision in which nothing and nobody exists unless they live by and for their Sandinista party. However, there are things that don’t fit in any analysis based on logic.
Sheynnis Palacios’ luggage
What should have been a joyous national occasion on November 18, when Sheynnis Palacios became the first Nicaraguan or Central American ever to win the Miss Universe contest turned into a nightmare for those most closely involved. Instead of celebrating the event, five days later the regime blocked Karen Celebertti, director of the Miss Nicaragua franchise, from entering the country upon returning from El Salvador via Mexico with one of her daughters. With no explanation, they banished them from the country.
Not content with that, police surrounded the home of Celebertti’s in-laws, and on November 27th carried off her husband, Martin Arguello and her son Bernardo, who’s only 16. Amid this family tragedy provoked by the dictatorship, it came to light that on November 19, days before his abduction, they had confiscated five suitcases that Arguello was bringing with him when he entered Nicaragua from El Salvador, where the Miss Universe pageant was held.
According to the Police press release: on November 25, three suitcases, a brown bag, and a black plastic bag with the belongings of the newly crowned Miss Universe were delivered to the home of Sheyniss’ family. It must have been an important assignment, since the delivery was effected personally by Police High Commissioners Thelma Collado and Fernando Borge, accompanied by Griselda Rivas, Managua City Hall’s Cultural Director. They even took photos to document the moment.
So as to leave no further doubts regarding the honesty of the institution directed by Francisco Diaz, related by marriage to Daniel Ortega, the press statement included a detailed list of the belongings that were returned. Dresses, t-shirts, socks, brassieres, gloves, scarves, bathing suits chocolates and little plastic bottles, were some of the goods that were returned to Sheynnis’ family. There was no mention, however, of a magnificent blackbird costume.
Criminal balloons
The mysterious disappearance of the blackbird costume isn’t the first absurd action of the Ortega-Murillo regime. In 2018, balloons became the target of police persecution. Not just any balloons, though, just blue and white ones when they appeared together.
Hundreds of thousands of people had gone out on the streets carrying the national flag, and for that reason its blue and white colors became “non grata” to the dictatorship. The blue and white balloons were also a common element in the massive protests; as the repression intensified, they began to appear clandestinely. Evading the surveillance of police and paramilitary, people scattered balloons as a way of protest. However, even that inoffensive activity was criminalized.
As residents awoke on Friday, September 14, [a holiday marking Nicaragua’s defeat in 1856 of a private US invasion] 2018, they found the streets of several towns covered in blue and white balloons. That motivated arrests in San Marcos, Carazo, and in Nandasmo in the Masaya department.
In San Marcos, two young men who sent balloons out onto the town streets were taken to the police station with the “evidence” – a black bag with several balloons sticking out. In Nandasmo, ten people were detained, after some forty paramilitary and two police arrived at the town plaza with the mission of popping the blue and white balloons that someone had let loose there. When they couldn’t find the guilty parties at the site of the events, they grabbed people they found a block away in a bakery, according to those who witnessed the detentions.
At the time, a number of videos were posted of the police running around to pop the balloons that had been scattered on the streets.
Farmer accused of cybercrimes
Among the most absurdly repressive actions of the dictatorship is the case they pursued against Santos Camilo Bellorin, a small farmer from the community of Guasuyuca, in the municipality of Pueblo Nuevo in Esteli department. In November 2021, the police detained him with no explanation. On February 10, 2022, he was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison for supposed “cybercrimes.”
The D.A. accused him of spreading “alarm, terror, and anxiety” through the social networks. Their “proof” was a Twitter account registered in the name of Santos Bellorin, username @Bellorin51, although they couldn’t prove that he actually administered that account.
In fact, according to his family and friends, Santos kept busy with his cattle and his cornfields, and didn’t even know how to use a smartphone. The only phone he owned was one of the “cheap little flip top ones with a keypad.”
Before his sentencing, Santos declared: “Being a prisoner is sad. Being a prisoner without knowing why. I’m a farmer. If you ask me about plowing, I’ll tell you; but I’m ignorant about political matters. Technology is beyond me. I don’t know even know how to save a telephone number to my phone. I only got as far as the fifth grade, I can barely read and write, and my only intention is working and agriculture.”
In February 2023, Santos was released from prison and banished to the US, together with another 221 of the dictatorship’s political prisoners. In his hotel room in the US, another released prisoner showed him how to use his first smartphone. Far from his land, his life had “become a hell,” he stated that year in an interview with La Prensa. At the time, he was 58.
The persecuted flag
If it seems ludicrous that the Police should spend time running after balloons, the criminalization of the national flag itself is surely equally absurd. It’s a phenomenon that’s never before been reported in any country. Although in some nations insults to the flag are penalized, carrying one is never a crime.
In 2018, the regime jailed citizens who waved the blue-and-white national flag and went after store owners who sold them. Two teachers suffered harassment, and one of them was even taken to prison for waving the blue and white flag in the streets of their respective towns. In December 2020, the police detained a youth, Sergio Beteta, along Managua’s University Avenue for protesting with the blue and white flag and burning the red and black flag of the governing Sandinista party. Later, they accused him of “drug possession.”
The dictatorship has criminalized the use of the national flag to the point that no one dares to wave one in public. Doing so entails an immediate risk of going to prison. For that reason, many were moved to see the blue and white flags once more spontaneously waving in the streets to celebrate the recent triumph of Sheynnis Palacios as Miss Universe. The joy was short-lived though; not long afterwards, the regime’s reprisals against Karen Celebertti, director of the Nicaraguan franchise of the beauty pageant, and other people, dampened the celebrations.
Forbidden to run
In the days of the 2018 citizen protests, Alex Vanegas, then a man of 62, became well-known in Nicaragua for the solitary marathons he ran in protest against the regime. The police detained him on at least five occasions; the last time, he spent nearly four months in jail before being freed with a group of 100 political prisoners in February 2019.
Witnesses to his last arrest on November 2, 2018, reported that a police contingent estimated at some 50 officials, took him away for singing the National Anthem in a Managua cemetery. After being accused of “public scandal,” the marathon runner ended up in La Modelo men’s penitentiary, where he was forbidden to trot and jump in his cell.
The day after he was released, Alex put on his athletic shoes and went out to run through his neighborhood. The police stopped him twice and warned him that he shouldn’t leave his house.
Alex has been in exile outside Nicaragua for several years now, where he can run as much as he likes.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” Lavrentiy Beria