Dictador

1988, Matagalpa. He has my Lake Woebegone hat;
I, his Sandinista fatigue cap in return. 

AP 19 September, 2022, San Diego

US migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua Soars in August

The number of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans taken into custody at the US border with Mexico soared in August as migrants from Mexico and traditional sending countries were stopped less frequently, authorities said Monday. 

Those are people voting with their feet. As I said last month in writing about failed states (September, '22: For Whom Tolls That Bell?) 

I watch Nicaragua with a special interest

In the spring of 1988, I was single and footloose, awaiting final divorce papers to come through. Plymouth Congrergational, of which I was a member, announced a mission trip to deliver medicines and school supplies to one of our sister-churches, Iglesia Morava, in Managua. The Brother/Sister Church Committee welcomed my inquiry about joining the delegation. I sought the opportunity not out of any particular churchiness but my need to leave behind the tension of the prior year's wrestle with  questions of divorce, the need to burn some vacation time, and my curiosity about who was telling the bigger lies, the Reagan Administration or Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas.

For the first in a long time, I was travelling not as a VIP mucky-muck officer of Genral Mills, Marriott or Westin. We were traveling budget-class, hopefully well under the radar of Contras and US embargoes, and staying in third-rate hotels, sometimes sharing rooms, . But my six fellow-delegates quickly classified me as one of the "they" as in 'they' don't dare have Marxists succeed in the Americas; 'they' want to restore United Fruit's and other corporations' grip on Latin America; 'they' can't tolerate Liberation Theology's challenge to the church establishment and business elites; 'they' just want to sell arms to dictators; and so on.

It was a heady experience. My eyes were opened in more ways than one. Later, that autumn, I gave a talk to a skeptical Downtown Rotary audience, an illustrated speech I titled "Go and See for Yourself", the point being that neither the Reaganites nor the Sandinistas were worthy of trust and one should trust your eyes. 

Earlier this year, Ann and I digitized all, i.e., hundreds and hundreds, of her and my old 35mm slides, and there among them my 34yr-old Nicaragua shots. And recently, after posting about failed states, I pulled out and re-read my journal of that fascinating trip. And thus, this post. 

The question today is how did Daniel Ortega evolve from the idealistic poet, convicted bank robber, exiled Cuban-trained revolutionary of the '70s, and disciple of the liberal populism of Sandino, into the absolute, self-serving dictator of 2022? Could it have been avoided? It's too late in the case of Ortega and Erdogan and Orban, but can we help others and ourselves avoid eruptions of autocracy? Must democratic processes carry within them the seeds of their self-destruction? Does democratic republicanism mean the dictate of the majority or the protection of the minority, or both? Were the doubts of Washington and Jefferson, of Madison and Hamilton and Franklin right after all? Or can we make this work?

The Trip

Yes, the trip was about extending a hand to a struggling congregation of fellow Christians and delivering embargoed medicines and school supplies to families in need. But it was also, thanks to our hosts, a marvelous education of us delegates, an opportunity to see, hear, smell, and feel the birth of a society that had thrown off shackles and were exploring how to become just, what equality means in practice, and how to peacefully resolve opposing voices in the public square. Still important questions today, especially here in these dis-United States. 

92 pages for a ten day trip

No day-by-day account but let the pictures and captions tell the tale. Italicized captions are quotes from the trip journal. 

(Re the photos: click on them to open a film strip. Click on a photo to enlarge and further enlarge by swiping apart with two fingers.)

(I can't believe anyone would want a copy of the 92-page, contemporaneous, handwritten journal, but I'd be happy to send them one.)

You had to go in through Canada, Scandinavia, or Mexico. We went and returned through Mexico. Most of the delegation had not traveled internationally; it was clown car time: lost passports; wrong terminals; no interlining, i.e., nine crates of medicines lugged from one airline to another; left backpacks; an overbooked Mexicana flight with four seats for the seven of us. The next day, we reconvened and via Aeronica, arrived in Managua -- immigration, full inspections of all cargo, declarations and finally into the welcoming arms of our Iglesia Morava hosts plus, from Turnica, the national tourist bureau, a "translator" whose secret dream was to get to the U.S.

The Museum of the Revolution is really devoted 
to anti-American intervention. Characterized the
occupations by US Marines from 1914 - '25
and again 1926 - '33 as "genocides." Sandino led
the revolt that drove out the Marines. The US
set up the National Guard and put a guy named
Somoza in charge.

Managua Cathedral, 1988.
It since has been replaced by a modernistic
cathedral, but that, in turn, has been 
firebombed by radicals and besieged by
Ortega's security forces for giving 
sanctuary to hunger strikers. 

An earthquake victim.
In '88: there is no city. Just a sprawl of one story homes
ranging from nice brick and cinderblock with tile roofs
to squalid plank huts with corrugated tin roofs. All
are latticed, gated, grilled, barred with ornamental 
wrought iron. Only the lowliest of shanties, mainly 
for war refugees from the north, are without
ornamental iron. 

In '88, there was no there there in Managua. The Spanish conquerors had never thought to ask the natives why they did not settle on that beautiful lakefront land. They found out: earthquake-alley. The Christmas Earthquake of '72 flattened 6,000 homes and buildings, 75% of Managua; destroyed the Cathedral; and spelled the beginning of revolution as Samoza and his pals pocketed millions in international relief funds and left a pile of rubble which wasn't cleared and replanted as pasture until the '80s.

Needs no commentary

Subsistence rations in the Atlantico
region.

We met with legislators, gov't spokesmen, 
publishers, opposition leaders (above),
churchmen, labor leaders, teachers. We 
couldn't meet Contras. Everyone tells conflicting
versions.

Homemade shrines to martyrs
abound; this one to a 20-year old 
"Fallen Hero." Killed in the battle of 
el Naranjo "por la liberacion de su
patria."

Grave of Seattleite Ben Linder, 26, captured 
by Contras near Matagalpa while 
surveying for a village-scale hydro-electric
turbine installation to power irrigation
pumps. Summarily shot in back of head.   

In '88, the median age was 17. Today it's 26.
The giggles are for the photographer -- one of 
their classmates using my camera.

This 13 year-old street entrepreneur would take 
your picture, develop under the hood, and
hand you a 2" x 2" wallet print. I wonder what
he owns today.

A Liberation Theology Catholic 
Church, strongly opposed by the 
Archbishop, thronged for a Friday 
night Mass. Here, the last communion
I ever took.

Sandino is everywhere, especially in the villages.

Dr. Fernando Silva, Director of 
"La Mascota" Pediatric Hospital 
who, when asked what he needed,
shocked us with his answer:
sutures. Twice escaped attempted
assassination by Somoza's National 
Guard and forced to flee the country. 

Sister Mary Hartmann, Order of St. Agnes, 
Dir. of the National Commission for 
Protection of Human Rights. She documented
CIA-trained Contra terrorizing rural areas.

Infrastructure: the road to Matagalpa. Up to our 
hubs in sand. A guy on a tractor pulled us out.

 

The daily meeting at the US Embassy of the US
Residents' Committee against intervention, duly
filmed and recorded by the guards at the gate.
Today, a guest delegation from Mexico whose
leader shouted a rouser of a speech to the
Embassy about not screwing around with
Latin America as you have been doing
these last 140 years. 

We got into the National Assembly and watched
debate and voting on reforms to bring self-gov't
to municipalities. At least seven parties, with 
Sandinistas holding a plurality but no majority.
Lobbyists and deal making -- just like the Calif 
legislature; Reagan would have recognized it
in a minute and felt right at home. 

Trip Findings

Both Ortega and Reagan were telling whoppers, but Reagan's the bigger ones. This benighted, victimized country of 5 million was no threat to us nor even to its neighbors, democratic Costa Rica or to rightist thugs of El Salvador and Guatamala. The Nicaraguans had earned the sympathy and tolerance of the Brits, the Danes, the Swedes, the Belgians in addition to the as-one-would-expect Cubans, Venezuelans, Roumanians, Bulgarians and other Eastern-bloc tag-alongs (though not so much the Soviets who by the late '80s had grown weary and wary of idealistic, rervolutionary poets who rob banks for the cause.) Reagan's Contras were murderous terrorists, our then version of today's ISIS; his diplomats hukered down inside their gated stockade, ears plugged with ideological wax, determined not to hear and see, much less meet and talk.

I had to be careful with the Seattle's upright and proper Rotarians, of course, so I just showed them what I had seen and suggested that they go to trouble-spots and see for themselves rather than drink either the right or left lemonade on offer. 

2022: Ortega is Dictador

How did we get here? How did Commandante Daniel get here, 35 years on, today's autocratic master of Nicaragua? First of all, persistence.  In 1990, Ortega was defeated in his first re-election bid by Violeta Chamorro, widow of slain opposition La Prensa publisher, Pedro Juaquin Chamorro. Violeta was once a supporter of Sandinistas but later turned off by Ortega's radicalization. Daniel ran again in '96, losing to a church and business candidate representing a coalition of conservative, nationalist, and socialist parties including even the Nicaraguan Communist Party. Defeated a third time in 2002, he retired from politics. In 2005, he married Rosario Murillo, a once-exiled revolutionary and Sandinista activist.

By 2005, the ineptitude and impotence of coalition governments was evident. Coalitions could win the Presidency but couldn't govern. Sandinista leadership, bolstered by rural popularity, called on him to return. He forsook Marxism and radicalism, ran on a platform of "Christianity, Socialism and Solidarity," and claimed that "Jesus Christ is my hero now."  He supported the conservative legislature's new law banning all abortions. (The law still stands.) His hypocritical run was successful. Elected President in 2007 and given a Sandinista majority in the National Legislature, he now had all the tools he needed for a text-book majoritarian autocracy.

First focus : reform of the judiciary, done through a 1998 Sandinista agreement with the leading opposition party to share Supreme Court appointments from lower-court incumbents, then through flooding lower court candidates with Sandinista members. By 2007, Sandinista judges made up the majority of the Supreme Court. 

In 2009, his politicized Supreme Court changed the Constitution to allow Presidents to run for consecutive second terms; 2011 and 2016, amended again to allow unlimited, five-year terms. Ortega re-elected in 2011, 2016, and 2021. His wife, Rosario Murillo, has served as his Vice President since 2016. 

Concurrently, he began to purge independent media through administrative censorship and licensing moves, then to take control of or assure broadcast and print media were in hands of loyal Sandinistas. Since 2007, 54 news outlets have been closed down, eleven media managers jailed, and 140 journalists forced into exile.

He legislatively turned the army into a national police force under his command. Student protests in 2018 resulted in the deaths of 300 protesters at the hands of the army. Subsequent trials of survivors were blatantly and harshly pro-government. Murillo declared the 2018 protests "an invasion of evil spirits . . . who want evil to reign in Nicaragua." 

He has jailed opposition leaders, disenfranchised opposition parties, had priests and bishops arrested and most recently passed a law making criticism of the government a criminal offense. He now has effective control of the police, the judiciary, and the legislature -- all dressed in laws and court endorsements. A majoritarian autocracy; a government by dictate.

The ultimate hypocrisy: two days ago, he called the Roman Catholic Church a "dictatorship." 

What drives a person to become a dictator?

It takes, my view, four dominant character traits and beliefs to make a dictator out of any stripe of politician:

1. Empowerment: they agree with me, they like me.
2. Enlightenment: I know what is best for my people, my nation.
3. Indispensability: it all depends on me, "I alone can fix it."
4. Belief that ends do justify means: ruthless measures are necessary to achieve my goals.      

And all this results in a fifth characteristic,
      5. Entitlement: I deserve whatever I want for all I have done for my people.