The political secretary of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of his institution told Leonardo, a security guard from the Ministry of Health (Minsa), that this order had to be strictly followed. That no denial was allowed: he had to go for a week to an undetermined place to a camp to receive military training. To learn war techniques to “be ready to defend the revolution” led by the Sandinistas Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. They told him not to take his cell phone and not to ask too many questions.
Leonardo’s name is not Leonardo. It is a pseudonym with which we protect his identity to avoid reprisals for telling EL PAÍS that since mid-2023 the Ortega and Murillo regime has begun military training sessions for civilians in Nicaragua in various locations in the country, which are handled with strict secrecy. The “recruits” are mostly public employees who work as security guards in institutions such as the Ministry of Education (Mined), in state hospitals and in various municipalities, all governed by the ruling party.
“They came to take me to my workplace and warned me not to bring a cell phone. Cell phones were completely forbidden, as was communicating with anyone, not even our family, while the training course lasted,” Leonardo says. He doesn’t know for sure where he was held for a week, but he believes, based on his sense of location, that the camp was in the El Chaparral area, in the department of León, in western Nicaragua. “The first days were about assembling and disassembling weapons. They taught me how to assemble and disassemble an AK-47. Then they taught me how to ambush, move around the terrain, target shooting, and finally a lot of exercises, like digging trenches.”
EL PAÍS has managed to document more than eight cases of public employees who were taken to these paramilitary camps that operate outside the law. A worker from the mayor’s office of Rivas, a city located in the south of Nicaragua, said that he was taken to train in a police district in Managua. The exercises begin at eight in the morning and end at five in the afternoon. Before starting the day, either the political secretary in charge of them or the head of the police station, addresses the “recruits.” They are told that “they will remain in reserve” from now on to be called up in case of “any coup attempt.”
The term “coup attempt” refers to the official argument that the presidential couple has been using since 2018, the year in which massive social protests shook the regime. To repel the civic uprising, the government used lethal violence first by police and then by Sandinista paramilitaries.
Between April and May 2018, massive social protests overwhelmed the National Police, even though the first part of the massacre that left 355 citizens extrajudicially murdered had already begun, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and a group of United Nations Experts. Beginning in June of that year, the regime began the so-called Operation Clean-up, led by Sandinista paramilitaries that caused the bloodiest days of repression: They shot and killed almost 200 of the 355 fatalities.
The government defended the paramilitary massacre by claiming that the hooded men who sowed horror in the streets of Nicaragua in 2018 “were volunteer police officers” who “defended peace and the revolution.” However, the voluntary nature of the paramilitaries was refuted by reports from the IACHR and the United Nations, which document the coordination of these repressive forces with the national police, public institutions and the Sandinista Executive.
Since the dismantling of the protests – which was followed by a massive criminalization of opponents, exile, arrests that do not cease and a de facto police state to this day – the “co-president” Rosario Murillo remains threatening against anyone considered critical. In her addresses and televised speeches she repeatedly warns “that peace is not to be played with”.
Another security guard at a public school in Managua told EL PAÍS that his “training” was at a shooting range and he was called back for a second round, since it is “continuous training.” “After they warn you that we are in isolation during training and we cannot say anything, they tell you that we have to defend peace and the good project of Commander Daniel and his comrade Rosario,” he says.
Recruitment extends to teachers
The newspaper The Press (whose editorial staff was confiscated by the regime) already reported last March that military training also reached to primary and secondary school teachers in the public education system. Teachers cannot refuse to participate, much less to report what happens in the military course, because instructors constantly remind them of “the crime of treason against the homeland,” the same one that the regime has used against dozens of critics and opponents, and which includes prison, loss of nationality and confiscation of property.
![Nicaraguan army soldiers in Russian tanks take part in a military parade commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the founding of the National Army on Bolívar Chávez Avenue in Managua, Nicaragua.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/IGDKPXAW4NBMVAIT22KAUJWAPM.jpg?auth=89546d4e8b4955343ff743deee5ac4eb245e598277ac240422e976bf252b3db7&width=414)
“They can only tell you that the Law of Treason against the Fatherland applies to those who go around talking to those they shouldn’t; that what is done in the course stays in the course, because the one who pays us is Daniel Ortega, who is the State… and whoever doesn’t support it should not work for the State,” said a teacher to the newspaper. The Press. According to the same publication, in the case of teachers, the course is not called training, but rather they use the euphemism “volunteer police course.”
The Nicaragua Más Human Rights Collective has documented more military training camps in the northern part of the country, specifically in the departments of Matagalpa, Jinotega and Estelí.
“We have learned of several cases, through family members, of loved ones being forced to undergo military training, especially in the interior of the country,” Braulio Abarca, a lawyer and human rights defender, told EL PAÍS. “The objective of this training is probably to nourish the dictatorship’s paramilitary forces. This creates a commitment for public employees to carry out acts of violence, as happened in 2018. It is a serious situation, because it is mandatory military training for public officials. The police and the Nicaraguan Army are involved in this. And this is reminiscent of the Compulsory Military Service that caused so much pain to Nicaraguans in the 1980s.”
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