Nicaragua: News & Updates

Nicaragua has good reason to take American meddling seriously. During the Banana Wars, U.S. Marines occupied the country for much of 1912–33 in what historian Greg Grandin called the United States’ “first Third World quagmire,” until resistance leader Augusto Sandino won a war of attrition, sending occupation forces packing. During his July 19th address commemorating the Sandinista Revolution, Ortega declared that the era of parties “installed by the Yankees” returning to government was over: “There will be no more elections, there will be no more [elections] through which they can try to seize the government, seize power.”

In both Nicaragua and the U.S. commercial advertisements and surging diesel fumes fill up majority of the roads. However, in the article, unlike the U.S., it is argued that the Nicaraguan government has made changes to push for a more socialist economy. The Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative which is a women-led, coffee-producing community in Santa Julia is a significant example of these social transformations. The community has its own leadership structure, separate from the municipal government. The women who oversee the cooperative, also have legal rights to the large tract of land. One of the biggest social changes made in the community was the banning of alcohol, causing 90% of domestic violence within the community to have been eliminated. The article compares Nicaragua’s political will, which was manifested through an organized state power, reversed decades of neglect and compares it to the U.S. and the declining effects privatization is having on both the infrastructural and economic aspects back home.

Support a historic shift in U.S. foreign policy. House Resolution 1056 calls for ending the Monroe Doctrine and building a “New Good Neighbor” relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean. Urge your US representative to co-sponsor this landmark resolution acknowledging two centuries of intervention and injustice. 

While Trump's imperial endeavours in Venezuela and aspirations to extract gain from  other countries within the Western Hemisphere such as Mexico, Colombia and Panama, Nicaragua seems to be broadly ignored by the White House. This article by Politico explains how the co-presidents of Nicaragua (labeled by many critics as dictators) manage to evade US interference and why the administration hasn't focused on Nicaragua yet.

Leaders like Daniel Ortega and Nayib Bukele turn people’s bodies—whether prisoners, supporters, or critics—into tools of control, using public shows of loyalty and punishment to prove their power. These choreographed images of marches, prisons, and masked forces update old colonial methods of repression, turning fear and spectacle into a new style of “strongman”. 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ vote and new national campaign to support migrants are the group’s first responses to the Trump administration’s crackdown.

In a rare group statement, America’s Catholic bishops voted nearly unanimously Wednesday to condemn the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants as an attack on “God-given human dignity,” and advocated for “meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws.”

“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement,” read the message from the U.S.

Conference of Catholic Bishops. After the vote (216-5, with three abstentions), the bishops stood and applauded. The last such “Special Message” was delivered 12 years ago.

The new message listed the types of suffering the church leaders say many undocumented migrants experience, including “arbitrarily” losing their legal status, being subject to poor detention conditions, and being afraid to take children to school or go to church. “We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity,” the bishops wrote.