Nicaragua is officially a dictatorship — and US – Latest News
At a rally final week marking the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution’s victory over the Somoza dictatorship, Daniel Ortega — who first got here to energy as chief of the 1979 Sandinista revolution and ruled till he misplaced an election in 1990 — introduced that Nicaragua won’t ever maintain elections again.
Nicaragua’s elections have been meaningless since 2021, when the regime jailed each viable opposition candidate forward of that yr’s presidential elections.
But the announcement deserves consideration, as a result of during the last 20 years, Ortega and his spouse and co-president Rosario Murillo have extinguished political freedom in Nicaragua more totally than any nation within the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba and Venezuela are brutal regimes of their own proper. But in some respects, the Ortega-Murillo regime has gone additional than both of them.
Since 2018, it has shuttered 1000’s of NGOs, universities and charities — roughly 80% of all civil-society organizations within the nation.
It has gutted the Catholic Church, exiling over 200 clergy and nuns and banning ordinations in 4 dioceses.
Nicaragua has aggressively deployed a software no different regime within the hemisphere has used: manufactured statelessness.
At least 452 Nicaraguans have been arbitrarily stripped of their nationality by courtroom order, their property seized, their legal identities erased.
Exiled critics face surveillance and harassment overseas, and not less than one — a former Sandinista navy officer turned regime critic — was killed at his home in Costa Rica final yr.
Ortega didn’t seize this energy in a single dramatic coup. He constructed it the boring means — patiently and systematically taking on state establishments and altering the principles.
It began in 1999, when Ortega — then out of energy — cut a deal along with his right-wing rival to divide control of the Supreme Court and different key establishments between their two events, freezing out different political events.
After Ortega returned to energy in 2006, successful an election thanks partly to a divided democratic opposition, the institutional seize accelerated: reelection was allowed in 2011, time period limits abolished in 2014 and lastly a new structure in 2025 handed the Ortega-Murillo household absolute, hereditary energy.
Outside enablers additionally assisted on this course of. For years, Venezuela offered low-cost oil, giving the regime off-budget income.
And since restoring ties with Beijing in 2021, Nicaragua has grow to be China’s model consumer within the hemisphere — Chinese companies run the gold mines, construct the digital spine and develop bodily infrastructure, together with the port of Corinto, a potential dual-use asset.
But China isn’t propping up this regime almost as a lot as we’re via commerce and remittance flows.
Remittances to Nicaragua reached a document $6.2 billion final yr, with 80% coming from the United States.
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The US stays Nicaragua’s largest trading companion by a mile, shopping for nearly 40% of its exports.
Through the CAFTA-DR commerce settlement, in impact since across the time Ortega returned to energy, Nicaraguan attire and textiles enter the US duty-free.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on Nicaraguan items not lined by CAFTA-DR, however intentionally left the commerce settlement itself, and the duty-free entry that issues most, untouched.
Access to the US market and remittances is particularly crucial to the regime’s survival on condition that Nicaragua is the second-poorest nation within the hemisphere, with per capita annual income round $2,600.
Remittances are equal to 29% of GDP, making Nicaragua one of the more remittance-dependent economies in Latin America.
Growing US purchases below CAFTA-DR are one of the few vivid spots within the Nicaraguan financial system.
The commerce and remittance flows insulate the Ortega-Murillo household from the results of their misrule, offering simply enough macroeconomic stability to keep away from the sort of disaster that may really drive change.
Washington has sanctioned dozens of regime officers, restricted visas and sanctioned Nicaraguan firms — measures which can be warranted however have completed nothing to change the regime’s habits.
Meanwhile, the financial lifelines that truly maintain the Ortega-Murillo regime stay intact.
The Trump administration’s mild contact with Nicaragua is particularly puzzling when thought of subsequent to its stress marketing campaign on Cuba, the place it has choked off tourism income and blocked oil imports, paralyzing massive sectors of the financial system within the hopes of forcing the regime to negotiations.
If the administration believes overwhelming financial stress will convey a regime to its knees, why use it so inconsistently, particularly when it has a lot leverage with Nicaragua?
Ortega’s election announcement confirmed he has no concern of any significant consequence from the United States.
For now, not less than, he is justified in his audacity.
Daniel Batlle, an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, served on the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development during the George W. Bush administration.
