The Complex Road to Reconciliation in Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, achieving a reconciliation will be the job of the opposition to implement the processes of transitional justice.
By Victor Obando Valverde (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – “You asked for a list of our dead, and here it is: Moroni Lopez Garcia, Managua, National Engineering University / Franco Valdivia Machado, Estelí / Darwin Manuel Urbina, Managua / Hilton Rafael Manzanares, Managua / Richard Pavon Bermudez, Tipitapa / Alvaro Manuel Conrado Davila, fifteen years old. We declare them all presente.”
Thus began the reading of the names of those assassinated at that first Nicaraguan national dialogue in 2018. At that time, those of us hearing that list felt our hair stand on end and a huge lump rise in our throats.
“Justice, Justice!” was part of the slogans people shouted in the streets during the sit ins, demonstrations, and marches. But – what exactly is justice? According to the Royal Spanish Academy, it’s the moral principle that leads us to determine that all of us should live honestly – similar to rectitude, impartiality, equity, neutrality, equanimity, objectivity, honor, honesty probity, and reason.
According to the documentation of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, 355 people were murdered in Nicaragua between April 2018 and July 2019. Since then, the topic of justice has become one of the country’s largest banners. Those weren’t common crimes or random killings but crimes against humanity carried out by the government.
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as ”acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.” Article 7, Item (k) also includes: “Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” That’s precisely what happened in Nicaragua, a brutality committed by the Ortega-Murillo regime.
Some of the opposition leaders or organizations have found ourselves immersed in the topic of justice, with a view towards fertilizing the road that will lead us to there. Seen through the lens of crimes against humanity, justice is understood as transitional justice – the set of legal and non-legal measures implemented by societies to confront the legacies of massive human rights violations and seek reconciliation. This focus is utilized in contexts of transitioning from situations of armed conflict, dictatorships or authoritarian regimes to peace and democracy. The principal objective is to establish truth, implement justice, offer some form of recompense to the victims, and assure that said violations won’t be repeated.
Unfortunately, nothing like the justice defined in this article has been put into practice in the major Nicaraguan opposition groups: the Civic Alliance, the National Unity, Monteverde, Dialogue Space, Concertation Table, Nicaragua Struggles Coalition, Great Blue and White Confederation, among others. These groups, like the Ortega-Murillo dictators, are accruing a tremendous debt to the Nicaraguan population, especially to relatives of the mortal victims, as their disunity distances us further every day from our yearning for justice.
We thank God and all those involved in the [September 5th] release of 135 people who suffered arbitrary imprisonment for political reasons. At the same time, we implore the regime to stop their revolving door and not continue elevating the number of political prisoners. We’re headed towards the commemoration of a seventh year since the social explosion of 2018, an explosion marked by rebellion, courage and vigor, now seen as full of disappointments and frustrations.
Relatives of the mortal victims have left this world without seeing or cherishing the famed justice for their loved ones and for themselves. The opposition in Nicaragua seems to act in ways contrary to promoting the construction of feasible mechanisms that lead to processes of unity, and with that the strengthening of a good plan and strategies for obtaining justice. We continue waiting for unity – each group working on their own agenda, each one believing that they have reason to consider themselves the best planners of a new agenda for the country, each one pulling for themselves and engaging in political lobbying for their own benefit, prompting their own horse at their own whim and will, while justice sleeps the sleep of the just.
There are interminable discussions over terms like reconciliation – a word that’s been manipulated and worn thin by the “empress of banners.” Some refuse to employ the term. But reconciliation is nothing more or less than a process that implies profound changes in the attitudes, emotions, beliefs and expectations of the people involved.
It’s a voluntary, progressive and non-linear process that seeks to restore trust and transform conflicts in a peaceful manner. Recognizing and confronting the past; constructing positive relationships; facilitating cultural and attitude changes; making way for social, economic, and political changes; interchanging views on what happened and constructing truth; recognizing the damages and needs; making pacts to guarantee the non-repetition of the offense; opening the possibility of once again believing in the others.
Reconciliation is a complex process that has no exclusive or absolute formulas, and in conflicts as extensive as what has happened in Nicaragua, reconciliation should be implemented from the opposition groups to the processes of transitional justice, for the sake of constructing a new peaceful social tissue in brother and sisterhood.
The challenge of unity, not to mention justice, continues to be enormous. The debt grows ever larger, while the Ortega-Murillo regime keeps doing whatever it wants. We look expectantly towards the work of the political spaces, while we lick our wounds, continue demanding freedom for those who are still political prisoners, and weep for our dead.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.