Nicaragua: The New Contras

By Miguel Necoechea on June 27, 2021

Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga Blandon and Juan Sebastián Chamorro

Luis Carrión Cruz, former commander of the Revolution and member of Unamos, the new organization that emerged from the dissolution of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, a small dissident group led by the Nicaraguan petty bourgeoisie that won only 6. 4 percent of the votes in the 2006 presidential elections (since than it has no longer participated) is wrong when he affirms that the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, intends to negotiate with the US President Joe Biden for the liberation of the ” 13 hostages kidnapped by the regime. ” This comes from in an interview published in Confidencial, the digital newspaper of the self-exiled Carlos Fernando Chamorro, that claims Ortega’s motivation for the release of the 13 law breakers and transgressors of the constitution would be an exchange for the lifting of the economic sanctions against Nicaragua.

Carrión deliberately omits the real reason why the National Assembly of Nicaragua approved by majority on December 21, 2020 and put into effect, the Law for the Defense of the People’s Rights to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, known as Law 1055, whose legal application led and will lead to jail those who violate it, as happens in any country in the world.

Law 1055 is the response to the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act, (NICA, for its acronym in English), enacted in April 2017, which Ileana Ross-Lehtinen, representative from Florida in the US Congress, and main promoter of this aggressive and interventionist law, assured it would be a powerful tool that will put an end to the atrocities occurring in Nicaragua and reverse its current trajectory.

This “tool” is being used by Washington to block loans that the Nicaraguan government requests from multilateral financial institutions. This law, designed by the champion of U.S. style democracy, has been translated into economic sanctions, sanctions for violation of human rights according to her imperialist vision (Guantanamo, among other aberrations, don’t count) and acts of corruption, according to the ethical canons of U.S. politicians who are the personification of rottenness. Only two years after the law was put into effect, and with millions of dollars delivered to the new Nicaraguan contra, mainly by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an attempt was made on April 18, 2018, expel the president of the republic who was democratically elected at the polls in 2016.

Today, the self-victimized presidential pre-candidates are jumping into the limelight even with six months to go before the elections. Since the agents of the U.S. embassy in Managua did not manage to invest in a candidate of unity of the new contra, those who want to be, launched themselves into the mix to try to gain political advantage. But in their haste these politicians without a party became criminals by violating Law 1055, which is very clear: “Nicaraguans who lead or finance a coup d’état (…) who incite foreign interference (…) who call for military interventions, who organize themselves with financing from foreign powers to carry out acts of terrorism and destabilization, who propose and manage economic, commercial and financial operations blockades against the country and its institutions (…. ) shall be ‘traitors to the homeland’, for which reason they shall not be eligible for elected office, without prejudice to the corresponding criminal actions established in the Penal Code of the Republic of Nicaragua”.

If all of these pre-candidates, former Sandinista leaders and NGO managers do not agree with said law, the National Assembly is there to fight the political battle for its repeal. But since they have no political strength inside (or outside) the Assembly, these delinquents claim to be victims of the “Ortega’s dictatorial regime”.

The elders of these new contras have a very short memory; they do not remember the multiple Yankee invasions, including those of the 1980s. They clamor for the Yankees to return and “remove Ortega” knowing that when the Marines (now Navy Seals) invade, they no longer leave (Iraq, Afghanistan) and stay there to impose a government, army and police in charge of perpetrating the savage capitalism of this era.

Source: La Pupila Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English