Nicaragua’s Reality Gained Global Awareness in 2021

By Haydee Castillo (La Prensa)

HAVANA TIMES – It has taken an abundance of voices, forces and energies to demonstrate to the world the existence of a dictatorial system in Nicaragua; a system that markets death and oppression as life, Christianity and prosperity. This effort has also been gradually contributing to Nicaraguan citizens becoming aware that this system that feeds on various sources is not the only way to survive. 

Nicaragua ended 2021 with a cancer forged over hundreds of years, but finally detected as having metastasized throughout society. It is a metastasis that permeates the vital organs with the idea that to accumulate wealth and power, anything goes, even murder. It rewards and promotes blackmail, abuse of power, corruption, waste, destruction of livelihoods, water, land, even women’s bodies, all in order to sustain power. 

This cancer introduces, practically intravenously, the culture of hatred, contempt and disparaging among Nicaraguans as an effective means of sustaining itself. It normalizes and even rewards accusations and incriminations without basis.

It is a cancer that cultivates mistrust as an effective means that interferes with the community social fabric. It foments suspicion and mistrust that destroys the vital energy that society has to face the consequences of an evil that corrodes its very existence.

It is a dictatorial system that dehumanizes the human, whose complexity is explained in that throughout history it has relied on the perpetuation and complicity of so many sectors of society: political, economic, social, religious, labor, etc. To deconstruct it, it is vital to end the Ortega regime, and even then it will not be enough.

As a society we have many challenges for 2022 and the years to come. The main one is to recover the value of life, dignity, and the sense of self-worth of being Nicaraguan. Other challenges are the need to meet among differences, to remain rebellious without detracting from the value of order and organization. Likewise, give strength to the ethical foundations and fundamental values that, converted into a new framework of socially institutionalized and consensual coexistence, beyond ideologies, strongmen, and personal and sectoral interests. 

The greatest challenge is to continue to have the certainty that another way of doing politics, the economy and coexistence among Nicaraguans is possible. To be sure that the current existing political system is not an invincible path from which we cannot deviate. However, to do this we need to overcome mistrust and isolation and get involved to face together what it will cost us.

The rebellion of April 2018 opened a door to leave behind the resigned pragmatism that has always sought to accommodate the times and coexist with the many forces that take our breath and dignity away. 

We now have a great opportunity to build together, with our differences, with multiculturalism, without exclusions, by listening and with transparent reconciliation between us, an undefeatable base so that duty to the homeland, honesty, the value of the word, and above all, truth and justice prevail, and with them a Nicaragua rich in rights that this brave people deserve. And so, we will rise, but this time not for some, for all. 

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*The author is a human rights defender currently in political exile. She is a social scientist with a Masters in Central American Integration and Development. 

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