Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution on the night of Friday, July 19, in a closed and controlled circuit in the Plaza la Fe in Managua, after the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they began to do so in smaller squares and with reduced attendance, due in part to the total collapse of popularity after the violent repression they commanded during the 2018 protests. Attendance this year was a little larger, but without reaching the usual crowds for this culminating celebration of Sandinismo celebrated since 1979, when the guerrillas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. Ortega used the event to raise the “disappearance of the United States” and to brand Washington and Brussels as “the greatest enemies of migrants.”
The “co-president” Murillo made a complete change of scenery and, in a North Korean-style staging, outlined a huge heart with Sandinista supporters in front of a central platform that was not attended by any head of state – not even Nicolás Maduro or Miguel Díaz Canel – which shows the international isolation that the presidential couple cannot overcome. It was a long and soporific event of almost four hours in which Daniel Ortega gave a speech that touched midnight and in which he attacked Europe and the United States for being “the greatest enemies of migrants”, while defending Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and praising China.
“The Yankees and the Europeans have become the greatest enemies of immigrants. And who did those who came from Europe to these countries ask for permission? And they were not immigrants, they came to invade these countries to steal the lands of our ancestors,” said the Sandinista leader.
In the absence of heads of state for the event on July 19, delegates from Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and a delegate from South Africa spoke. With the exception of the Cuban and the Venezuelan, the rest of the officials spoke in languages – mediated by translators – unrecognizable to the Sandinistas in the plaza. Then, after a repertoire of songs from Nicaraguan folklore and the Sandinista revolution, “Commander Ortega” spoke. Despite speaking the same language as the audience, he boasted of a Nicaragua that not even his own supporters recognize: one of “prosperity and victories,” when a few days earlier a public opinion study, for example, revealed that 86.6% of Nicaraguans cannot afford to buy the basic basket of goods. A country on the run: more than a million people have fled since 2018 due to the socio-political and economic crisis. Most of them are desperate young people.
However, the main part of the speech was focused on attacking his old political enemy: the United States. Ortega criticized Israel’s war in Gaza and said that, instead of Palestine, the state that should disappear is the United States.
“If we follow that philosophy, we should ask for the disappearance of the United States State. The first that should disappear is that State, which is the greatest criminal that humanity has, and not only for killing people, occupying countries, as has happened here in Nicaragua,” said the Sandinista leader. And, immediately afterwards, he pleaded for migrants: “I believe that the time will come when the American people will have no other choice but to change, to change towards governments that have respect for the laws, respect for the people, respect for children, respect for schools, respect for migrants. This war that they have against immigrants simply goes against the rights of the human species; the right of the human species to be able to move to any place on earth. And it is a right that they, the powers, have arrogated to themselves.”
However, Ortega ignored the fact that he himself ordered the expulsion and stripped of Nicaraguan nationality 222 former political prisoners in 2023, who were exiled to the United States. To these were added 94 Nicaraguan exiles, who also had their nationality stripped. In addition, the regime has prevented hundreds of citizens from entering the country without any explanation, as part of its repressive policy from the Immigration and Foreign Affairs Office.
The Sandinista leader also did not address the accusations made by the United States against him regarding the use of Managua’s international airport as an illegal springboard for Haitian, Cuban, African and other migrants. Between May 2023 and May 2024, it is estimated that 1,475 charter flights arrived at the Augusto C. Sandino Airport with more than 191,000 passengers, most of them from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries. There were also some 30 to 40 intercontinental charter flights from Libya, Senegal, India, various Asian countries or from European airports in Germany and France.
Putin’s invasion
Another of Ortega’s fronts in his speech was against Europe for supporting Ukraine in the face of Putin’s invasion. After praising the former Soviet Union alongside the delegate of the Moscow State Duma in the square, he said that the Europeans and the United States “are installing fascism again.”
“Most European governments are strengthening fascism and fuelling a war that is aimed at trying to achieve what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve, and now they want to do it with the Nazi they have there as president. [de Ucrania]”Ortega said in reference to Zelensky.
The Sandinista leader then praised China, a country with which he established diplomatic relations in December 2021. Ortega said that NATO should also disappear.
“There is another nation with which we have had historical relations as well, the People’s Republic of China, which has been bringing progress, benefits, development to the peoples who were colonized and then became independent, but who were subjected under the boot of the interests of the powers that had colonized them, and the people in poverty, the people in misery, the people suffering from hunger, the people in illiteracy, infant mortality, in Africa, in Asia,” he said, ignoring the fact that the relationship with Beijing has brought meager economic benefits to Nicaragua.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Daniel #Ortega #anniversary #Sandinista #revolution #call #disappearance #United #States