Busting Myths That Aid U.S. Aggression on Nicaragua

Julie Varughese November 24, 2021 Julie Varughese Admin, Americas, Archives
Celebrations in the northern Nicaraguan city of Estelí on November 8, the day after the elections. President Daniel Ortega won by more than 75 percent / credit: twitter/maria_arauz https://twitter.com/noelia_arauz/status/1457848611056803850?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1457848611056803850%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftowardfreedom.org%2Fstory%2Farchives%2Famericas%2Fbusting-myths-that-aid-u-s-aggression-on-nicaragua%2F
Celebrations in the northern Nicaraguan city of Estelí on November 8, the day after the elections. President Daniel Ortega won re-election by more than 75 percent / credit: twitter/maria_arauz

This is the second in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The first article can be found here.

The Republic of Nicaragua announced on November 19 its intention to pull out of the Organization of American States (OAS), in the latest in a series of events that have transpired in the small country’s struggle with the United States and its allies.

Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation that prevents certain Nicaraguan officials—including President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo—from entering the United States because they allegedly prevented a “free and fair” election.

The suspension of travel comes amid an escalation of aggression against the Central American country that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short) has governed for the past 15 years.

Aside from the travel ban, the United States slapped sanctions November 15 on Nicaraguan officials. The Organization of American States (OAS) also voted on November 12 to approve a resolution that condemned Nicaragua’s elections as not “free and fair” and called for “further action.”

“We are not concerned about the illegal measures the U.S. imposes against government officials or against Sandinistas,” said Nicaraguan Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs Michael Campbell after Nicaragua’s National Assembly denounced the travel ban.

However, many myths continue to circulate in the corporate media about Nicaragua’s elections. This reporter was in Nicaragua to cover the elections and reported in a November 14 article on ordinary people’s opinions of the government. Toward Freedom believes it is necessary to report answers to commonly misreported beliefs.

Did the Ortega Government Ban Opposition Parties?

The following parties were registered to run in the November 7 elections:

  1. Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party or PLC)
  2. Alianza FSLN (Alliance of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or Sandinista National Liberation Front Alliance, which is made up of nine parties)
  3. Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Christian Way or CCN)
  4. Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance or ALN)
  5. Alianza por la República (Alliance for the Republic or APRE)
  6. Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party or PLI)

The Caribbean Coast has two autonomous regions. Indigenous peoples run the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region while Afro-descended people control the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. Unlike voters in the rest of the country, people in these regions could choose a seventh party when voting for regional candidates. That party was called the Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA).

Parties were allowed to campaign from August 21 to November 3, but rallies were prohibited because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Why Is Daniel Ortega So Popular?

This year’s election can only be viewed in the context of the 2018 coup attempt that has the United States’ fingerprints all over it because of heavy U.S. funding to groups that carried out violence that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, many of whom were Sandinistas. Nicaraguans say they continue to feel emotionally impacted by the events of that year. Nicaraguan farmers were devastated by the “tranques” or barricades coupmongers built on roads that blocked trade, as reported in a November 14 article. Below is a video of one college student, who recounted her experience and decried the United States’ role.

Government officials explained the economic impact of the 2018 coup attempt at a summit for international election companions and accredited press held the day before the elections. Nicaragua’s Central Bank President Ovidio Reyes said the country has experienced negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth since 2018. “Just as we were getting out of that cycle, the pandemic struck,” he said, adding two recent hurricanes on the Caribbean coast also impacted trade. However, this year, the country started to see the economy turn around. Much of that officials credit to the country’s policy of increased public health initiatives in lieu of a nationwide lockdown, which they say would have hurt the small country. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said Laureano Ortega, who promotes Nicaragua to foreign investors, repeating the words of his father, President Daniel Ortega. And so came door-to-door visits to provide information, as well as a campaign involving mask wearing, handwashing and social distancing. As a result, Nicaragua has what appears to be the lowest amount of COVID-19-related deaths in the Western Hemisphere.

Why Are Nicaraguan Opposition Leaders in Jail?

In 2020, Nicaragua’s National Assembly passed Law 1055 or the “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace”. Under this law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs, request military intervention, organize acts of terrorism and destabilization, promote coercive economic, commercial and financial measures against the country and its institutions, or request and welcome sanctions against Nicaragua’s state apparatus and its citizens.

Nicaragua also has a law called article 90, chapter IV, that governs the financing of electoral campaigns, according to government documents.

“The financing system for parties or alliances of parties establishes that they may not receive donations from state or mixed institutions, whether national or foreign, or from private institutions, when they are foreigners or nationals while abroad. They may not receive donations from any type of foreign entity for any purpose.”

Article 91 also prohibits foreign donations to elections.

Article 92 lays out the punishment for breaking electoral finance laws. Consequences can include candidates paying a fine, being eliminated from running for elected or party positions, and being barred from serving in a public office from two to six years.

The Ortega government had offered amnesty in 2019 to opposition members who had helped organize the 2018 coup attempt. However, opposition leaders this year have faced arrest and jail time because they violated the above laws. The corporate media has used the terms “pre-candidates” and “presidential hopefuls” to describe these people.

Many countries around the world, including the United States, prohibit accepting money from foreign governments, foreign private institutions or individuals who are based abroad.

Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) governs elections and is considered the fourth branch of the country’s government. The same cannot be said in the United States, for example. The CSE is comprised of members from each of the 19 political parties that can register to run a candidate in the elections.

Weren’t Opposition Parties Barred from Participating?

After 100 percent of votes were counted, the FSLN prevailed with more than 75 percent. The second-place party, Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC), received 14 percent, while other parties picked up only single-digit percentages. All opposition parties are anti-Sandinista.

In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” In doing so, he reinforced the foundation for increased U.S. aggression on the small country, about the size of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.

However, this reporter and close to 70 other journalists reporting on the elections found a calm and organized voting process at stations we visited across the country. Some of the protocols involved included:

  • Voters must display special identification created just for voting purposes to voting station workers
  • Voters names can be found in a computer database and on paper
  • One voter per station (which was usually the size of a classroom)
  • Handwashing, hand sanitizer and masks were provided
  • Ballots indicate parties along with the photos of each of the presidential candidates
  • Ballots are inserted into a box after voting
  • All ballots are counted at voting centers, not transported to another site as has been seen in the United States, which has resulted in missing ballots being found on streets and claims of fraud
  • Members of each political party participating in the elections were in the voting centers to monitor vote counting

How Do the Opposition Relate to the Ortega Government?

Below is a video (courtesy of Friends of Latin America) that shows two opposition-party monitors—one from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) and the other from the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)—explaining that they both oppose what they deem “intolerance” among a certain section of the Nicaraguan opposition that supported the violence of the 2018 attempted coup. They also condemned U.S. sanctions, which they said would affect all Nicaraguans, regardless of political affiliation.

In the following video by Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez, a former Contra militant leader explains why she allied with the Sandinistas and the Ortega government.

Were Foreign Journalists and International Observers Allowed In Nicaragua?

This reporter, as well as 66 other journalists, were accredited as press prior to the elections. Not a single journalist on the ground reported seeing or hearing of their colleagues being banned from entering. A few election companions had trouble entering Nicaragua if they did not provide a negative COVID-19 test result on a printed document that contained both the seal from the testing facility as well as a doctor’s signature.

Meanwhile, no journalists from corporate media outlets were on the ground. Yet, outlets like the New York Times went on to claim the elections were dubious in nature. One Times reporter, Natalie Kitroeff, was met with facts from journalists on the ground while she tweeted from Mexico City that the elections were rigged.

Aside from 67 journalists, 165 international “accompañantes electoral,” or election companions, were allowed to participate. The journalists and election companions traveled from 27 countries. Some flew from as far away as Russia and China, while 70 election companions traveled from the United States.

Despite corporate media’s claims of being denied access to Nicaragua, this reporter only knows of one journalist who was denied access. But the Nicaraguan government wasn’t involved. Steve Sweeney, international editor at the Morning Star, a socialist newspaper in the United Kingdom, tweeted he had been detained in Mexico en route to cover the Nicaragua elections. Over three days, he was denied food and medical access as a diabetic, as he describes in the tweet below.

Meanwhile, the corporate media has not raised their voices to decry the conditions under which Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange and independent journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal have been held, both of whom the United Nations has reported are being tortured in prison.

Only one European Parliament member attended. Mick Wallace represents Ireland in the parliament and opposed the European Union cooperating with the United States to engage in a hybrid war against Nicaragua. He can be seen expressing opposition in the video below that he tweeted on November 11.

A “hybrid war” is a term historian Vijay Prashad uses to describe the documented U.S. policy of wearing down a country’s defenses through “unconventional” tactics such as economic sanctions, funding proxy groups and NGOs, and distributing misinformation.

Nicaragua decided not to use the term “election observers” because of how OAS and EU election observers in the past had used their role to legitimize meddling in the country’s affairs, according to Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry representatives. Because of that history, as well as the OAS’ documented role in helping create the 2019 coup in Bolivia, Nicaragua did not allow the OAS to send election companions.

Were Nicaraguans Prevented From Voting?

Despite mainstream media claiming people were sometimes violently kept from voting, journalists on the ground in cities as diverse as Bilwi in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Bluefields in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and in the Pacific northwestern city of Chinandega found a free, fair and transparent process in which Nicaraguans voted. Voters in Bilwi told The Convo Couch, a U.S.-based media outlet, that the government’s response after two hurricanes last year hit the Caribbean coast solidified support for the FSLN.

The Foreign’s Ministry’s Campbell told journalists 10 departments (Estelí, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua) and two autonomous regions contained 63 voting centers and 791 voting stations.

Everywhere foreign journalists and election companions visited contained a peaceful and orderly voting process. Voters expressed gratitude and pride in their country’s elections, which took a year to plan, according to government officials.

Many journalists recorded election workers supporting elderly and disabled people to vote, many times carrying them to voting stations.

Below are videos journalists on the ground developed to show how voting looked in different Nicaraguan cities.

 

Voting in Bilwi

 

Voting in Bluefields

 

Voting in Chinandega

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.

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Racism, Exclusion and State Violence: The Brutal Repression of Peaceful Protest in Colombia

Esther Ojulari and Harrinson Cuero Campaz May 10, 2021 Esther Ojulari and Harrinson Cuero Campaz Admin, Americas, Archives, Colombia
Truck containing group of Afro-Colombians during strike
Afro-Colombians from northern Cauca during the May 2021 national strike (Twitter/Renacientes)

Mobilizations took to the streets of Colombia on April 28 in a national strike to protest social injustice and aggressive tax reforms proposed by the Iván Duque government. Student movements, trade unions, young peoples’ organizations, feminist groups, and indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ movements marched, blocked roads and held cultural activities in urban centers and rural territories throughout the country, exercising their right to peaceful protest. But the state wasted no time in responding with violent repression, especially in major cities such as Calí, Bogotá, Palmira and Popayán.

Although the vast majority of protests have been peaceful, isolated incidents of looting and violence have been used as an excuse for using excessive force against protesters. Media discourses around “good protesters” and “bad protesters” legitimize this response. Widespread reports of infiltrators are being used to provoke violence and looting, as has been the case in previous strikes in the country. Armed forces reportedly have stood by and allowed looting to take place, only to later respond to such incidents with violent repression.

Rather than heeding the demands of the citizens against the tax reform and social injustice, the state has responded with militarization, turning peaceful demonstrations into scenes of war. Helicopters circle above protest points and communities, while tanks thunder through narrow city streets.

Several cities are occupied by four armed state actors:

  1. armed police,
  2. Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (ESMAD, or Mobile Anti-Riot Squads of the National Police),
  3. military forces and
  4. Grupo Operativo Especial de Seguridad del Cuerpo Nacional de Policía (GOES, or Special Security Task Force of the National Police Force).

Instead of seeking to pacify the situation and protect citizens, these forces have increasingly threatened security, peace and human rights. 

 

Flagrant Human Rights Abuses 

Countless videos recorded by protesters and onlookers circulate daily on social media, showing cases of police brutality, indiscriminate shootings, and the use of tear gas inside barrios that contain children and elderly people. Over the past few days, the violence has taken on a new face in Calí, with the presence of plainclothes police officers and reports of unmarked cars carrying out drive-by shootings against protesters.

Bogotá-based non-governmental organization Indepaz reports the following occurred between April 28 and May 8:

  • 47 murders (the majority of whom have been young adults and 4 of whom were minors),
  • 12 cases of sexual violence,
  • 28 eye injuries,
  • 1,876 acts of violence,
  • 963 arbitrary detentions and
  • 548 forced disappearances.

Reports are circulating of people being arrested and denied information of their destination, violating their rights to due process and exposing them to the risk of arbitrary detention, cruel and inhumane treatment, and forced disappearance.

Armed police have threatened lawyers and human-rights defenders when inquiring about missing people at police stations. The international community woke up to the seriousness of the situation when, on May 3, members of a humanitarian mission including UN and state representatives were attacked by armed police while waiting to enter a police station in search of missing people. On April 7, as a humanitarian mission was taking place north of Calí with the presence of Senator Alexander Lopez, a drive-by shooting took place, injuring one person and killing three.

 

The Racialization of State Repression

The violence and repression has a disproportionate impact on Black communities, only mirroring Colombia’s ongoing internal armed conflict. For example, 35 of the 47 murders Indepaz reported took place in Calí, home to South America’s second-largest Afro-descendant population. No surprise that structural and systemic racism are deeply ingrained in Calí. Many of the most aggressive cases of state violence have been carried out in neighborhoods with majority or significant Afro-descendant populations, treating communities as enemies of war. Historically, these barrios have suffered socio-economic exclusion, further entrenched by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, structural racism and state violence. Many barrio residents already were victims of forced displacement, having fled the armed conflict in the majority Afro-descendant regions of the northern Cauca Department, in which Calí is located, and the Pacific coast.

While official statistics do not reveal the proportion of Black victims in this current wave of police brutality due to a lack of disaggregated data, photos of victims clearly show the disproportionate impact on young Afro-descendant men. 

Racial profiling not only underpins state violence, but is central in the denial of state responsibility and impunity. Already, discussions around existing gang violence and urban conflicts are being used to question whether many of these young men participated in the protests or were delinquents killed in the context of the everyday violence in their communities. This discourse no doubt seeks to reduce the numbers of protest-related deaths, simultaneously justifying the deaths of young Black men. The first death registered in Calí took place in the majority Black barrio, Marroquin II, where a 22-year-old man was killed. But the military later denied his death was related to the protests.

 

Militarization, Imperialism and the Protests

The current situation in Colombia cannot be understood in isolation from the wider armed conflict and the ever-deepening neoliberal agenda supported and sustained by the United States and multinationals that feed off Colombia’s natural resources. U.S. imperialist interests in the region have been clear since the late 19th century, with the attempted invasion of Colombia’s neighbor, Panama, in 1885 and the start of the Panama Canal project in 1904. In 1948, the Organization of American States was created during a meeting in Colombia.

Colombia has been the strategic point for Washington’s political, economic and military operations in recent decades. Thanks to U.S. technical and logistical support, Colombia is now one of the greatest military powers in the region. With the 1999 signing of Plan Colombia and the 2002 Patriot Plan, U.S. military presence and influence has only deepened.

Further, U.S. military support has always depended on state policies that benefited U.S. imperial interests. For example, in 2009 the United States signed an agreement with the Uribe Government to be able to operate from seven Colombian military bases. Although this agreement was blocked by the Constitutional Court, the Santos government later arrived at alternative bilateral agreements. These enabled access and use of the bases in practice, and further facilitated the fruitless and dangerous strategy of spraying the herbicide, glyphosate, on illicit crops. All of this sustains the ideology of the “internal enemy” and the terrorist threat that underpinned the original emergence and expansion of paramilitarism in the 1980s.

It is precisely this paramilitarism model the Colombian state is using in the context of the current protests, particularly in Calí, where state agents, often without proper identification, collaborate with civilians to shoot and kill protesters from high-end cars.  The Indigenous Guard, accompanying the protests in Calí, have suffered several attacks of this kind, most recently on May 9, when eight people were wounded. 

This violent state repression is yet another consequence of imperialist intervention and the extractivist neoliberal project that uses militarism to eliminate a historically racialized population it considers residual as well as a threat to the capitalist, white-supremacist order.

Esther Ojulari is a human-rights and racial-justice activist and sociologist. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of London, writing on transitional justice and reparations for the Afro-descendant people in Colombia. She worked for eight years as a consultant in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Afro-descendant rights. Esther is currently Regional Coordinator in Buenaventura, Calí and Northern Cauca for the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES). She is a member of several Afro-descendant and African-led international networks and coalitions.

Harrinson Cuero Campaz is a Afro-Colombian rights activist. He is a Ph.D. candidate writing on sustainability in urban and regional planning for biologically and culturally diverse territories. He is a social activist and member of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, or Black Communities Process). Harrinson currently works as regional representative of Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) and as a coordinator for the formulation of the Special Territorial Plan of the District of Buenaventura 2021-40.

Haitians protesting against neocolonialism
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This Is Not a Crisis—This Is a Rebellion: A Report from the Front Lines of Haiti

Danny Shaw May 11, 2021 Danny Shaw Admin, Americas, Americas, Archives, Haiti
Haitians protesting against neocolonialism
Haitians protest against neocolonialism in the streets of Haiti in March 2021 / Twitter/DannyShawCUNY

All of Haitian society is in revolt.

A mambo and hougan—the traditional voudou priestess and priest—lead ancestral ceremonies before rallies take the streets and block the central arteries of Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, and other Haitian cities and towns. After one of their members was kidnapped, leaders of the Protestant Church directed its congregation to halt all activities at noon on Wednesday and bat tenèb. Bat tenèb, literally “beat the darkness,” is a call for all sectors of Haitian society to beat pots, pans, street lights and anything else as a general alert of an emergency. A Catholic church in Petionville held a mass with political undertones against the dictatorship. When marchers from outside took refuge from the police inside the church, the Haitian National Police tear gassed the entire congregation.

Ti Germain, a well-known Lavalas activist, was hauled away by President Jovenel Moïse’s henchmen for protesting in the downtown Chanmas Plaza last week and has not been seen since. Peasants come together to form self-defense units against land grabs by the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK, or Haitian Bald Headed Party) and their foreign backers before mobilizing in the streets themselves. With the spiritual hymn of resistance blaring from a sound truck, “A fight remains a fight. My sword is in my hand, I’m moving forward,” tens of thousands of protesters move toward police lines guarding the Delmas 96 entrance, which seals off the Haiti of the 0.01 percent from that of the 99.99 percent.

Chanting “The People Poetry Revolution!”, young writers and poets took to the streets on May 3 calling for a Haiti where youth have a future. A cultural worker, Jan Wonal, asserts, “They [the imperialists] fashion themselves the messengers of art, literature, history of art. So, for us, cultural revolution against cultural imperialism is an imperative.”

All of Haitian society is in revolt.

 

Haitian T-Shirts Say: "Slaves Revolt"
Haitians at a March 2021 protest wear T-shirts that read, “The slaves have revolted.” / Twitter/DannyShawCUNY

Who Cares About Haiti?

CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the full gamut of mainstream media outlets have paid scant attention to this social insurrection. The headlines—if they mention Haiti at all—have focused on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Biden regime’s deportation of Haitians to the “civil unrest” of Haiti. The anti-neoliberal rebellion goes unmentioned.

According to one protestor at a mass demonstration, “If we were Hong Kong, Taiwan or in any country the U.S. lists as an enemy, there would be everyday coverage of our movement.”

The corporate press only mentions Haiti in the context of a natural disaster, a deadly disease or chaos. Millions of people in motion in a U.S. neocolony like Colombia, Chile or Haiti are not deemed newsworthy. The dominant narrative is people in the streets protesting is not a revolt, but a “political crisis.” It is not convenient for a neocolony to make noise and rise up against the empire’s handpicked lackeys and puppets.

In response to the media whiteout, Haitian intellectual Patrick Mettelus emphasized, “Our national liberation struggle is first and foremost a battle of ideas; it is an informational war. How can we counter the dominant narrative and show what is good, beautiful, encouraging and hopeful from our homeland?”

 

Showdown: Haiti vs. Imperialism 

Ignoring months and years of widespread anger, Moïse continues to say resigning is not an option. The United Nations and Organization of American States (OAS) agree the U.S.-backed despot has another year remaining in his presidency, even though the 1987 Constitution stipulates his term ended on February 7. Former president Jean Bertrand Aristide called the UN, OAS and United States “the troika of evil” for the heavy-handed role they have played in Haiti’s historic destiny. This alone explains why Aristide was twice the victim of coup d’etats orchestrated by these neocolonial forces.

Moïse went before the United Nations General Assembly on February 24. In a 28-minute display of arrogance, the tone-deaf puppet patted himself on the back for supposedly carrying out ongoing socio-economic reforms. Adding insult to injury, Moïse now intends to brazenly overturn the 1987 constitution. This constitution was the result of consultations among hundreds of local committees representing all sectors of society一women, peasants, poor neighborhoods, etc.一coming together on the heels of the 1986 dechoukaj (uprooting) that overthrew dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Enshrined in the constitution is protection of Haitian cultural and economic sovereignty, and women’s empowerment, among other democratic rights. Today, these same sectors, representing the vast majority of Haitian society, are taking to the streets against Moïse and his dictatorial scheme to overturn the people’s constitution.

The reformist wing of the opposition has propped up a transition president, Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, who has been in hiding since February 7, in fear of persecution of Jovenel’s National Intelligence Agency (ANI). Ruling class families such as the Vorbe/Boulos faction, which supported Jovenel (and Michel Martelly before) have now turned on Moïse and want to replace him without systemic change.

Kidnappings have reached epic proportions. The djaspora (Haitians in the diaspora) are afraid to travel back home. The Center for Human Rights Research and Analysis reported 157 kidnappings in the first three months of 2021. This lawlessness is representative of a society that has lost all confidence in Moïse. The most oppressed layers of society have been overwhelmed by the weak gourde (1 U.S. dollar equals 87 Haitian gourdes), widespread joblessness and no hopes for a dignified future. According to the UN’s World Food Program, half of Haiti’s 10.7 million people are undernourished. This bleek social reality has pushed the most castaway to resort to armed violence and taking hostages.

The fundamental demand of the popular sectors is a “sali piblik,” or a united transition away from dictatorship and neocolonialism that involves and empowers the masses of Haitian people.

While the corporate media silences Haitian voices, the Committee for Mobilization Against Dictatorship in Haiti (KOMOKODA), Leve Kanpe, the U.S./UN Out of Haiti Coalition, and other diaspora and anti-imperialist organizations across the United States and the world are standing with the historic Haitian rebellion.

“The ‘Core Group’ is a cabal of predatory countries and institutions created by the United States of America after the overthrow and kidnapping of President Aristide in 2004 to give a veneer of international legitimacy to their domination over Haiti,” KOMOKODA stated as the group protested May 3 in front of the French embassy in Port-au-Prince, “Join us as we stand in solidarity with the Haitian people, who are in the streets fighting for their liberation and their emancipation.”

Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. Since the most recent rebellion began on February 7, he has traveled to Haiti twice to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.

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Q&A: Filmmaker Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez on “Nicaragua Against Empire” & Getting the Story Right

Toward Freedom Editor May 24, 2021 Toward Freedom Editor Admin, Americas, Archives, Q&A

 

Toward Freedom Editor Julie Varughese recently spoke with Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez, a Honduran communist content creator based in Los Angeles. Fúnez produced a film, “Nicaragua Against Empire,” which premiered May 15 on YouTube. The film casts a lens on the landscape, culture and geopolitics that led to the ongoing Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Interviews with Sandinistas, peasants, as well as African and Indigenous peoples of the country’s autonomous zones were captured during a March 2021 13-member delegation Sanctions Kill and the Friends of the ATC (Asociación de Trabajadores Campa, or Rural Peasant Workers Union) organized.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Filmmaker Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez in Nicaragua in March 2021

 

Julie Varughese: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Let’s start with the purpose of the delegation.

Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez: The delegation I was on was called, “No to Sanctions in Nicaragua.” The ATC is Nicaragua’s oldest and strongest peasant workers union that played a central role in the Sandinista Revolution and was the organization that facilitated the land redistribution of over 4 million acres to peasants from the landlords, owned by the Somoza family dynasty. The delegation was organized by Friends of the ATC, which is the international solidarity organization of that group, and also Sanctions Kill, which a lot of U.S.-based anti-imperialist organizations are part of. The delegation was 13 days long, but I was only able to attend for about 10. It took place from March 12 to about March 25.

JV: All of the delegation participants were asked to complete a project related to this trip. Why did you choose to make a film?

RF: Film is one of the best ways to educate the masses, educate a broad range of people of all educational backgrounds. While I love writing, and my background is in writing and journalism, I feel nowadays people don’t take the time to sit down to read an article as they would to watch a film or documentary. That’s more accessible, especially to people who don’t necessarily know how to read or write. I felt producing a film was the best way to approach the project because it achieved the goal with the maximum end of teaching people and exposing people to the successes of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution. To a broad range of people, not only in the U.S. and the European Union, but all over Latin America, where there is a Nicaraguan diaspora. It also highlights the diversity of revolutionary culture that has been produced by the Sandinista Revolution. Music is a big part of the culture of the Sandinista Revolution. Music that talks about workers’ rights, Sandino and fighting U.S. imperialism. Music, videos and art in one documentary form is the best way to incorporate everything.

JV: What kind of projects did the other participants create?

RSF: Some people made photo essays. That’s a great way to capture the Nicaraguan revolution. Others also wrote articles. I definitely think writing articles about Nicaragua is great. One person did a listicle like, “10 things you need to know.” Also, organizing seeds. The collection of seeds and books. One of the biggest struggles right now for countries that are being pillaged by sanctions is food sovereignty. Being able to grow your own food, independent from Monsanto, independent from the multinational imperialist agricultural companies. For example, in India, we have one of the highest farmer suicide rates in the world, who have been forced into growing GMO food. Part of the delegation work has been to help collect seeds for people in Nicaragua to help them continue to grow Native and Indigenous crops that have been grown in the Americas for thousands of years because the global elites are trying to eliminate that, trying to be the sole creators of these genetically modified seeds. We also collected books in Spanish and in Indigenous Nicaraguan languages like Miskito to deliver them to children on the Caribbean coast, which was hit hard by two hurricanes in November 2020.

JV: Nicaragua is part of what former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton called the “Troika of Tyranny.” Nicaragua has been hit by sanctions. How do sanctions affect the country and what can people in the United States do about that?

RSF: John Bolton definitely singled out Nicaragua. At the end of 2018, after the protests, he began imposing more sanctions like the NICA Act, limiting their trade just like with Cuba and Venezuela. I think one thing that sets Nicaragua apart from Cuba and Venezuela is Nicaragua has not been getting love. A lot of the progressive left that supported the Sandinista Revolution in the ‘70s and ‘80s has succumbed to the U.S. propaganda. The solidarity movement for Nicaragua is not as strong, but the problems are still urgent. I think the best way to explain the impact of sanctions is to bring it to a micro level, to bring it to a human level. “Sanction” sounds misleading or not specific. It doesn’t have the same effect as “economic warfare” or “economic blockade.” That’s the reason people in Cuba have referred to the U.S. embargo as a blockade. For example, if we compare the country of Nicaragua to a single mother who has recently lost her job and is struggling to find a job because of a criminal record she got for something she didn’t do. She’s being accused of abusing her children and not giving them food and water. She constantly has these credit card companies on her back, hounding her to sign up for debt and trying to control her life. When she refuses to accept the debt, they make up lies about her. They say she’s not feeding her children, and that when her children try to speak up, she suppresses them. It doesn’t matter if they’re true. The fact is they’re repeated over and over. So sanctions mean where the bank calls you to say, “We can’t do business with you because you’re hitting your kids and not feeding your kids. And if you call a lawyer, we’re going to accuse the lawyer of collaborating with the criminal. We’re going to accuse any workplace that tries to hire you of collaborating with the criminal.” Now that single mother is not able to feed her kids. We were originally supposed to go to Nicaragua in February, but it had to be postponed to March because American Airlines canceled our flights over the sanctions. So now there is less travel—same with commerce. It’s a strangulation.

JV: That’s a very helpful example to use. To use the example of a mother who cannot feed her children. How do these sanctions affect business people who come from outside?

RSF: The economy of Nicaragua had a change in 2007. There’s two stages of the Sandinista Revolution. The first stage was from 1979 to 1989. At this point, the party was more influenced by Marxism-Leninism and by liberation theology, which it still is to a degree. It was more influenced by Marxist economics and it had a very similar command economy model like the Soviet Union and Cuba, where there was very little foreign investment, where there was central planning. There were gains and losses with that model. Obviously, one of the gains was you didn’t have to deal with private enterprise and foreign bourgeois leaders trying to sabotage the economy. The con was it was entirely dependent on the Soviet Union and Cuba. So once the Soviet Union collapsed and once Cuba went into the special period in 1990, that same year Nicaragua’s economy went into a crisis. And that year, they had an election, and the neoliberal candidate, Violeta Chamorro, won the presidency. She implemented free-market reforms. Neoliberalism at its worst, where private companies ruled the country. The second stage of the Sandinista Revolution began in 2007, after the 2006 election of Daniel Ortega. The economic model is very different. The new government is called the Government of Unity and Reconciliation. So even though the Sandinista Party is in the front as a ruling party, it’s a consensus government where they work with the national bourgeoisie, where they’re more open to commerce with the imposition of labor laws. Interestingly enough, this has led to more economic gains, where they have the Sandinista government in power watching private enterprise. So when they mess up, the government is able to kick them out. For example, I visited a cigar factory in Estelí. Nicaragua is one of the biggest producers of cigars now. Even now, cigars that say they are “Cuban cigars” are made in Nicaragua in a factory owned by Cubans from Florida who are not necessarily on the political left. But they’re allowed to trade in the country because they follow the rules of the Sandinista government. I got to tour the cigar factor with the ATC and talk to the workers. While there is a private sector in Nicaragua—including foreigners—it’s still under the control of the Sandinista government. This is very similar to the model we see in Cuba, Vietnam, China or Venezuela. A small private sector does operate in the country as long as the benefits are for the Nicaraguan people.

JV: If sanctions are going to stifle your ability to do business, I almost wonder why anyone would want to stay doing business there.

RSF: That’s a great point. That’s the impact of sanctions. The sanctions are intended to scare these companies out. The sanctions are intended to criminalize any companies doing business with Nicaragua, in order to strangle their economy. That’s why I think the new mode of socialism includes private enterprise. But some use that for a justification, for saying [socialism] doesn’t work.

JV: How does the call of Nuestra America (Our America) resonate with the anti-imperialist movement in Nicaragua?

RSF: Nuestra America or Latin America unity is central to Nicaragua. Nicaragua had a central role in those movements in the 20th century, and even before that in movements in Latin America. Nicaragua is at the center of not only Central America, but Latin America, geographically. It’s at the crux of north and south, it’s at the crux of the Caribbean, it’s at the crux of Mesoamerica, which includes Mexico and Central America. And very close by is South America. Nicaragua has historically been in a position to see potential unity between all Latin American and Caribbean countries, especially because it has one of the narrowest points in Central America between both oceans, where an inter-oceanic canal can be constructed to ease trade between all of the countries. Many people in Nicaragua have been working to create this canal to counter the Panama Canal, which is under the control of the U.S. imperialists. And to make this canal for use for the Latin American and Caribbean people. The concept of Nuestra America, which Jose Martí wrote about in his essays in the 1890s, is very central to Nicaragua, to many leaders. For example, the liberator of Central America, Francisco Morazán in the 1800s, who was from Honduras also fought some of his toughest battles in Nicaragua against the Costa Rican nationalists, who wanted to divide and split up the Central American Federation. Morazán, similar to Simón Bolívar in South America, wanted to unite Latin America as a federation of Latin American republics because they understood the United States was the rising imperial power, and the only way to defend their lands from tyranny would be to unite all of the countries as one United States of Latin America. In the early 1900s, you have Augusto César Sendino, who was one of the earliest members of the Central American Communist Party, which was the first, if not, the second communist party in Latin America, that sought to unite Latin America under one communist movement as the Soviet Union was growing. Sendino worked with Martí in El Salvador to build something like a Soviet Union in Latin America. This upheld the idea of Nuestra America, this upheld Martí, Morazán and other people, who envisioned a united Latin America. Later on, when the Sandinistas were able to win in 1979, they also sought to expand the revolution across the region. There’s a Time magazine article in 1980, where they show President Daniel Ortega. It says, “Reagan sees red.” They didn’t want just to claim victory in Nicaragua on the Sandinista front. They wanted to expand socialism across Central America. In late ‘70s and early ‘80s, El Salvador was in the middle of guerrilla warfare, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FLMN) was very close to winning the entire country. The Sandinistas were arming, training and supporting them, to eventually revive this idea of a united Central America under socialism. So for many years, Nuestra America has been central to Nicaragua and I would argue Nicaragua has been one of the strongest proponents.

JV: In the United States, African and Indigenous peoples are colonized internally. From what you saw in Nicaragua with the autonomous zones over there, how do you think that would work in a settler-colonial state like the United States?

RSF: That’s a great question. One of the most inspiring things I was able to see in Nicaragua was they are able to not only talk about, but provide autonomy to Black and Indigenous people on the coastal areas. You hear liberals and hipsters in the United States talk about autonomy or free liberated spaces. These same liberals and hipsters will talk about Nicaragua, that it’s a dictatorship and say they betrayed socialism. That they’re revisionists, capitalists and tyrannical. But right now in Nicaragua, the two biggest departments are autonomous. The two autonomous regions make up more than 50 percent of the country. There’s actually more land for Black and Indigenous than for the Mestizo population. They’re building autonomy right now. It serves as a model for many countries, not only in Latin America, but around the world, that have nations within nations. One of the interesting things about comparing Nicaragua to the United States is both are a “prison house of nations,” as Vladimir Lenin described the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union. The United States is an imperialist country that, from its root, has been based on pillaging, colonialism, racism, banking, white supremacy. So the identity of the United States would have to be done away with. Nicaraguan nationalism is at its core anti-imperialist, and it’s a vastly smaller and poorer country. It’s vastly different from U.S. nationalism. But I think modelling the U.S., based on what’s happening in Nicaragua, there would have to be a restructuring of U.S. society, where nationalism and the flag are replaced. And autonomous regions could be created for Africans and Indigenous people, and Hawaii and Puerto Rico. When we flew into the autonomous areas, we needed special visas for traveling to that area. It was very easy with Sandinista representatives. But everything has to be done through local tribes and local communities. They have five levels of government. Aspects that can be learned from is like how private companies and the government have to pay a tax to the Miskito people, or the Garifuna people, or other Afro-Indigenous communities. Not even the government has full control of the land. The local people lease them that space. Same thing with tourism: Foreign companies along the Caribbean coast, which is where a lot of the tourism is with the beaches, they have to pay a tax to the Indigenous groups, who at any point can decide those companies need to leave.

JV: What would you say to people who are interested in making films to share information about alternatives to the system inside the United States and to the U.S. empire?

RSF: It’s all about the story you tell and the people you’re speaking with. I went with a Canon camera that I’ve had for five or six years that cost $200, and a simple audio recorder. With that, I was able to speak to a lot of people. Looking back at the film, there are certain shots I look at, I can say, “I could do this better. I could do that better.” But I was the scriptwriter, the camera person. Everything was me. Everybody could do that. We live in a time where anyone could do that. Some of those shots, I recorded with my iPhone. It’s not so much the technology or equipment. The most important thing was making the right connections. If I didn’t have connections with the ATC, I wouldn’t have been able to have former Sandinista guerrillas show me the country after the armed struggle. That’s why it’s important to get involved with organizations, even if you’re an amateur [filmmaker]. That’s why mainstream media gets these stories wrong, because it’s like these random dudes from Europe dropping into a protest, who just take a flight to Managua. And it’s an illusion, because you go there and see a protest and think, “Okay, this must be good.” But without an OG, without an elder, without somebody who has seen what the country was like before socialism, during the neoliberal period, you’re not going to understand that context. There has to be some level of humility and open-mindedness. The right people are going to show you the right story. If you’re able to meet the right connections, that’s the best way to produce something like this that is able to show a different side of a country that is constantly bombarded by the mainstream media.