Daniel Ortega mocks Nicaragua’s exiled opponents, while imitating Spanish accent

Daniel Ortega had been missing from Nicaragua’s public sphere for 56 days, one of the longest periods he has spent away from the flower and fern-laden platforms on which he presides over his government’s official acts. On February 21, he appeared at an event commemorating the assassination of Augusto C. Sandino, the hero of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and used the occasion to mock the 317 Nicaraguans who he ordered to be stripped of their nationality, dubbing them “traitors to the homeland.”

“Sixteen years ago, Adolfo Díaz and Emiliano Chamorro stopped being Nicaraguans, just like those who have stopped being Nicaraguans now and are currently in the United States where they are Yankees; they must feel very happy to be Yankees,” Ortega said in a derisory tone as he paraphrased the San Albino Manifesto, written by Sandino in 1927.

“Others are in Spain,” he went on. “They feel Spanish, and are very happy to be Spanish. They must even talk like Spaniards,” he added, imitating the southern Spanish accent. The Sandinista leader gave the speech to his usual closed circle, including ministers, heads of police, the military high command and young people from the Sandinista Youth movement, in an event resembling a North Korean rally.

In his speech, Ortega warned that those who “betray the homeland simply cease to belong to the country,” in reference to dissenting journalists, religious figures, feminists, activists, and former presidential candidates who have been banished by his regime. The 317 exiled Nicaraguans have mostly been awarded refuge and nationality in Spain, although other Latin American countries, such as Chile and Colombia, have also offered them nationality, rescuing them from being left stateless.

Accused along with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, of committing crimes against humanity by the United Nations, Ortega used the Sandino Manifesto to justify his actions towards his 317 critics: “Emiliano and Díaz ceased to be Nicaraguans because ambition killed their right to their nationality. That is an elementary principle: he who betrays his homeland ceases to be from that country, ceases to have a homeland, and that is why those who betray their homeland are called stateless; because they tore the flag that covered all Nicaraguans from the flagpole.”

Murillo and Laureano fill the vacuum

Confidencial, the twice outlawed media site directed by journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, one of those made stateless by the regime, keeps a log of Ortega’s public appearances and highlights the fact that the Sandinista leader “is absent for ever longer periods, with an accumulated 56 days absent between his last public event, on December 27, 2023, and his reappearance on February 21, 2024.”

“At 78 and with more than 17 consecutive years in power since his return to the presidency in January 2007, Ortega has increasingly reduced his public appearances, limiting himself to the anniversaries of either the birthdays or deaths of national figures, and anniversaries or graduations of figures from the police and the army — obedient executors and accomplices of the more-than-five-years-long repression of the de facto police state — a few protocol events and fewer and fewer official visits,” writes the Confidencial.

The vacuum is filled by Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo. Murillo is an omnipresent figure, a sort of “big brother” who appears almost daily in the official media giving monologues ranging from a saint celebrated that day to reports on the government’s management to public scoldings of officials.

Laureano Ortega, the son of the presidential couple, has also begun to stand in for his father in public acts. According to Sandinista sources consulted by EL PAÍS, Murillo is preparing a dynastic succession for Laureano, an opera tenor and “presidential advisor for the promotion of investments, trade and international cooperation.”

Laureno has been seen strengthening relations with Xi Jinping’s China, answering a Chinese New Year message and signing a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. There has also been the delivery of buses from Russia and the reception of Eurasian delegations connected to Vladimir Putin in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua.

Confidencial reports that, prior to the event in which Daniel Ortega mocked his 317 critics, he turned up at a private wake that was not broadcast by the official media: “After almost 46 days without being seen in public, Ortega reappeared at a wake on the night of February 11, 2024, according to a publication on social media. [...] Ortega appeared to offer condolences to the Díaz-Lacayo family, for the death of Marianne Antoinette Maymi de Lacayo, wife of Federico Lacayo Álvarez, known as Pitín III, who was his personal assistant for several decades — from the 1980s — and retired a few years ago.”

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