Nicaragua: Why Do We Change Organizations but Not Practices
And what Is the role of the youth?
Generational turnover in Nicaragua faces a fundamental dilemma: organizations and faces change, but the political practices that have sustained caudillismo for decades remain intact.
By Cristian Mendez (100% Noticias)
HAVANA TIMES – Caudillismo (the strongman) has been a constant in Nicaragua’s political history. It is not an accident or a recent anomaly; it is a way of exercising power that has been reproduced under different names, colors, and ideologies. Today it is expressed brutally in the Ortega–Murillo dictatorship, but to say that the problem lies only with the dictators would be a mistake. Authoritarianism does not survive solely because of who governs, but because of a political system that concentrates power and promotes this kind of behavior. We personalize it and make it almost impossible to control.
A problem that is rarely discussed honestly is that caudillismo is not only present in the regime; it has also seeped into sectors of the opposition. There is still a search for “leaders,” singular figures who embody the hope for change, while fundamental debates about how to prevent power from once again being concentrated in a single person are pushed aside. This pattern is harmful to new generations. Young people are urged to support, to mobilize, to legitimize narratives—but not to question them. And when we propose structural changes, the response is usually the same: “this is not the moment,” “that doesn’t work here,” “first we must remove the dictatorship,” and so on. In this way, the debate about Nicaragua’s political future is always postponed.
From a group of young people who have been reflecting on the country’s political future, we have reached a clear conclusion: if Nicaragua does not change its political system, it will keep repeating the same unhealthy political culture. Even after a possible transition, political actors must commit to opening a serious debate about adopting a different political system.
Parliamentarism is not a magic formula or an immediate solution to all of the country’s problems. However, it offers something Nicaragua has historically needed: distributing power, strengthening institutions, and reducing dependence on personalized leaderships. In a parliamentary system, government depends on political majorities rather than on an “all-powerful” figure. For a society marked by authoritarianism, this type of institutional design can be a safeguard against the concentration of power and a tool to foster a more collective, less authoritarian political culture.
Proposing a change of this magnitude from the youth is not easy. We face the distrust of politicians who, out of self-interest, would not reconsider what we are doing. The stigmatization of youth—because “we were not part of the revolution” or “we know nothing about politics”—works against us, along with the resistance of a political structure that has been in place for decades and feels comfortable with the current model, even when it criticizes it. There is also a contradictory expectation placed on young people: we are expected to be the generational replacement, but we are not allowed to question. And when we do, we are accused of being dreamers or ignorant. Yet insisting on the same formulas that have already failed is not resistance; it is stubbornness.
We do not propose the parliamentary political system as an imposition; we propose it as a starting point for discussing other options and thus preventing Nicaragua from remaining trapped in the same cycles of caudillismo. We are aware that this topic requires serious documentation and study, because democracy does not have a single mold, but rather a set of tools that can help rebuild it. This debate cannot wait until later; it must be part of the political reconstruction process starting now.
Youth have a responsibility in this historic moment: not to repeat the same patterns of the past and not to settle for superficial changes. Changing the image without changing the system is a familiar recipe. Organizations have gone through countless rebranding; it is time to act for real, and Nicaragua has already paid far too high a price.
If we want a different country, we must dare to imagine it differently, outside the box. And that begins by questioning the model that brought us here. This problem could stretch on for a century, but if everyone does their part it can be reduced by half, or even to a quarter if we all cooperate. It all depends on us—not on international cooperation, not on the United States, not on governments that support narco-dictatorships like Venezuela’s, nor on those who avoid or refuse to speak about the Nobel Prize of Maria Corina Machado.
We do not owe ourselves to opposition groups; we owe ourselves to the ordinary Nicaraguan who struggles to survive in Nicaragua.
First published in Spanish by 100% Noticias and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.