Rosario Murillo’s purge terrifies the Sandinista old guard

The purge of Bayardo Arce Castaño, one of the nine commanders of the Sandinista revolution and a figure historically close to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, has sown terror among the old guard of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), still loyal to the leader but long at odds with the all-powerful co-president, Rosario Murillo. A presidential economic advisor, Arce was arrested on the night of July 26 by a contingent of special operations police who raided his home and office in Managua. He was kept under de facto house arrest for a few days, but was transferred to a detention center after the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) issued a statement summoning him to appear before an investigation into “transactions outside the government.”

Following Arce’s “fall from grace” — as this type of purge Murillo has been carrying out first in public institutions and now with these historic revolutionary figures is often called — a series of arrests have been recorded, involving members of a circle of the Sandinista old guard who have always been at odds with the co-president, especially because they disagree with a dynastic succession headed by her.

In addition to an advisor to Arce, retired army colonel Rodolfo Castillo, known as “Payín,” was also arrested. He has been one of Lenín Cerna’s main collaborators for more than three decades. Cerna, a feared figure in the Sandinista repressive apparatus since the 1980s in the General Directorate of State Security (DGSE), was also captured. Castillo was Cerna’s right-hand man in espionage and political intelligence operations during the revolutionary decade in the Army’s Directorate of Defense Information (DID) in the early 1990s, and in the Secretariat of the Sandinista Front between 2004 and 2011.

Other lawyers, assistants, and advisors to that circle of figures were detained for police interrogation but later released. Furthermore, various Sandinista sources claim that an operation was mounted to arrest Cerna, but he managed to escape in time. This information has been published by various Nicaraguan media outlets, but EL PAÍS has not been able to independently corroborate it.

“The message is clear”

The proceedings initiated by the Attorney General’s Office against Arce, and his subsequent arrest, have frightened historical Sandinista figures who are opposed to Murillo, especially Cerna and Francisco Chico López Centeno, the Sandinista treasurer, both figures loyal to Ortega.

The differences between Cerna and Murillo are longstanding. The latter was removed from the ruling circle by the co-president in 2011. That year, she forcibly expelled him from the El Carmen complex, where Cerna had an office at the Sandinista Front Secretariat. The scene was interpreted as a direct humiliation of the Sandinista old guard, a symbol of the displacement of the historical leaders at the hands of the centralized power that Murillo was beginning to consolidate.

It’s no secret that Murillo has been feuding with this old Sandinista circle for years and that they were, in a way, protected by the 79-year-old Ortega. However, the latest arrests demonstrate that they are losing that protection, which analysts attribute to an action by the co-president to clear the dynastic succession board of inconvenient “pieces.”

“Several people like Chico López are terrified by all these arrests. They sleep in different properties every day, because they know Murillo doesn’t flinch. We already saw how Payín was arrested: in a restaurant in the middle of Managua’s patron saint festivities on August 1, while he was watching the horse parade. He was forcibly removed from the premises, and too many people watched. The message is clear,” a source close to the Sandinista circle tells EL PAÍS.

“Clearing the table” for Murillo and her heirs

Two months before this purge, retired General Álvaro Baltodano was also arrested. Like Arce, he was one of Daniel Ortega’s allies, a political and economic operative. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “treason” in a summary trial held by videoconference at La Modelo prison.

“They have been ousted as a preemptive strike, stemming from Rosario Murillo’s fear, insecurity, and paranoia, to exercise power without any internal counterweight, in the event of Daniel Ortega’s absence,” former Sandinista guerrilla Dora María Téllez told journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro.

“They’re clearing the table for Murillo and her heirs,” said the former political prisoner, banished by the presidential couple, because “with Daniel Ortega gone, Murillo is left in a position of maximum weakness, which is what they’re trying to avoid right now.” Téllez warned in the interview that there is much unrest within the ranks of the historic Sandinista movement, who see a “deliberate intention to displace them all by foul means, to bring to power not only Rosario Murillo, but all her children.”

“In the eyes of the historical Sandinistas, who were people who fought not only against the Somoza dictatorship but also throughout the 1980s, they see the children of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as behaving like crown princes,” Téllez stated. “They find it even more offensive when they resort to purging prominent figures of that historical Sandinista movement who somehow represent them. There is considerable unrest within the Sandinistas. The structure of the Sandinista Front no longer exists, there is a base that has been diminishing, but they also don’t want that dynastic model of family heirs.”

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