The Totalitarianism We’re Suffering in Nicaragua
Totalitarianism has penetrated our lives in the form of fear, but we mustn’t ignore the forms of resistance thousands are practicing.
By Silvio Prado (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Totalitarianism is an extreme form of dictatorship that, according to Hannah Arendt, sets out to achieve “the permanent domination of each individual in every sphere of life.”
I propose here a simple exercise: check the social media profiles of each one of the people who’ve been banished from Nicaragua in the past four years, with an eye towards the above definition of totalitarianism. You’ll easily conclude that it’s no exaggeration when I affirm that we’re enduring, suffering and resisting a regime bent on complete totalitarian domination.
Among the latest group of 135 released and banished political prisoners is a university professor who “liked” a photo of Miss Universe; a young woman who printed a photo of an imprisoned priest; Protestant pastors, muralists, a member of a church choir. We could continue delineating a long list of people who merely behaved as anyone might in their daily life. None of them were taken by the police for belonging to an armed organization, or for robbing banks, or killing someone. Nor were they found in possession of weapons or explosives. Each one was simply imprisoned for living in the spheres of their private life.
These are the extremes that totalitarianism reaches – the domination of every person, in every arena of their lives, at every moment. In other words, everything – all of life, all the human activities of everyone. Hence the origin of the name: totalitarianism. To get there, totalitarianism radically and incessantly works to pulverize every expression of human rights.
As Hannah Arendt recalls, the Declaration of the Rights of Man at the end of the 18th century implied centering human beings as the primary source of the law, not the gods nor the historical customs. Since this transformation meant the protection of individuals in the face of “the new sovereignty of the government and the new arbitrariness of society,” the totalitarian hierarchy did away with that protective barrier.
This has been the road the Ortega regime has followed. First, it crushed the right to choose and be elected, with the successive electoral frauds of 2006, 2008, 2011 and the elections that followed. Next, it eliminated the collective right to demonstrate, to protest, and to organize, along with press freedom. Then, since the individual spheres were still intact, it turned its fury against the private arena, passing a set of punitive laws in 2020 and 2021 to criminalize the rights to think and express free opinions.
The final straw of this totalitarian binge has been the recent reform of the Criminal Code, to pursue into the furthest corner the freedom to express thoughts through social media and on mobile devices, both inside and outside Nicaragua. In other words, the extreme form of dictatorship that the Ortega regime represents, not only proposes to dominate (and criminalize) a sphere of human activity that perhaps Arendt never identified – that of quietly voiced thought – but, in addition, aspires to burrow like a computer worm into all the most modern forms of human communication, wherever anyone might be.
Arendt truly never imagined in her voluminous work “The origins of totalitarianism” that a totalitarian dictatorship could aspire to dominate even those who live outside the borders of their kingdom, without any need to utilize armed force or satellite organizations, like those Hitler and Stalin had.
But Ortega doesn’t have need of the one or the other, His strategy for totalitarian domination is fear, a strategy that up until now has been successful, at least with the Nicaraguan community inside and outside the country, including those against and those in favor of his regime.
We must accept it: Ortega and his group have succeeded in frightening Nicaraguans, wherever they are, to incomprehensible degrees – something none of the dictatorships we suffered previously managed to do. The fear has adhered to the skin of many compatriots like a sticky layer that doesn’t let them breathe. It forces them to censor themselves, in order not to express what they think even in the most trustworthy environments, within the family, or in closed circles of the most trusted friends.
The fear that has seeped into Nicaraguans is visible in the tendency to speak in low tones, even when they’re outside the country, thousands of miles from the repressors; fear that feeds distrust of the rest, the paranoia of seeing possible agents even under the rocks and – why not? – the fear that nests in the tight-fisted and sectarian attitudes that hinder the convergence of even the most promising initiatives against the dictatorship.
Before 2018, the dictatorship needed allies on the left and right to forge the foundations of the totalitarianism that we’re suffering today. Today they rely on the fear that paralyzes, the fear that muzzles us; the same fear that rewards us for swallowing what we know, the fear that prefers to pretend not to understand the evidence before us but leave it to others to take the risk of denouncing, protesting and exercising our legitimate right to conspire against such an extreme form of tyranny.
We must recognize the facts: up until now, we’ve allowed totalitarianism to penetrate our lives in the shape of fear. This has been their key to permanently dominating every sphere of our world. However, to accept that it has transformed us into accomplices by obviating our duty to protest, would be to refuse to recognize the various forms of resistance that thousands of people practice every day, rising above fear. The dictatorship knows: for that reason, every day they invent new laws to continue suffocating the spaces that remain free of their domination.
But this closure of spaces also has its inconveniences. Every new law, every new restriction paradoxically implies a broadening of the circle of repression, in which old allies, ex-ministers, former police agents, ex-military and old fans from their bases of support suddenly begin to find themselves drawn in. The lists of released prisoners and of purges continues to reveal that no one is safe. Totalitarianism is against everyone, because it’s only for the few. This is also part of its historic essence: to purge, shut up in concentration camps and gulags, send to firing squads, and banish.
In the face of this totalitarian turn, there’s not the slightest room for doubt, although at times fear may conquer us. The 2018 protests left lessons that mustn’t be forgotten, much less by a people that has spent centuries struggling against satraps. Losing one’s fear is the first step to expelling a permanent domination from every sphere of life of every person. We need to make a correct diagnosis in order to win over evil – in Nicaragua we are suffering a totalitarian regime that doesn’t merit our silence.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.