The Nicaragua Dispatch

31/08/2022

Ortega-Murillo’s shameless parade of political prisoners. Plus, Ortega’s atomic fever dreams … in this week’s Dispatch (if you like it, subscribe. Don’t cost nothing)

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.digital/political-prisoners-on-parade

17/08/2022

I had the Nicaragua Dream again

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.digital/the-nicaragua-dream

06/07/2022

The FSLN this week staged a coup against 5 opposition-won municipalities. They sent riot police to occupy gov't buildings, chase elected officials into hiding, and replace them with Sandinista stooges.

If that seems like a brutish and brazen move even by Sandinista standards, then you haven’t been paying attention to OrMu’s totalitarian takeover of Nicaragua.

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/a-sandinista-coup

22/06/2022

COSEP is trying to reboot talks with the Ortega regime. I talked to COSEP president Cesar Zamora to ask him why he thinks that’s a good idea https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/cosep-starts-talks-with-regime

15/06/2022

Much ado about Putin?
https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/much-ado-about-putin

01/06/2022

"Servile Sandinistas, private-sector accomplices, clueless tourists, shameless expats, and foreign tankies all try to normalize the situation. The foreign apologists are particularly loathsome. Their dismissal of Nicaraguans’ right to freedom is rooted in selfish whataboutism and foolish zero-sum arguments predicated on the simple-minded notion that problems in other parts of the world make Nicaragua look good by comparison."

Put it on Ortega's Tab
https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/put-it-on-ortegas-tab

28/05/2022

Carlos Fernando Chamorro me entrevistó sobre el tiroteo en Texas y la cultura de armas en los EEUU

Los nicaragüenses merecen información confiable y de calidad. Apoyá nuestra misión. Unite a nuestro Programa de Membresía 📺https://bit.ly/MembresiaConfidencial

25/05/2022

"By laying then lifting siege on two churches this week, the OrMu regime is sending an unmistakeable message to the church and Nicaragua's Catholic faithful: Your freedom is an illusion; your existence is capricious; we are the real higher authority."

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/ortegas-unholy-crusade

18/05/2022

While the Biden gov’t scrambles to salvage the Summit of the Americas, Nicaragua’s divisive role in the hemisphere could be Ortega’s biggest diplomatic win in years. It isn’t much, but better than having everyone against you. And division is what Ortega does best.

Plus, the chances that Ortega was actually going to attend the summit are probably close to zero. So this is the best outcome he could have hoped for — controversy and division over his forced absence. Makes him look like a victim for being excluded.

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/stumbling-towards-the-summit

12/05/2022

My latest article for confidencial

On most days Nicaragua seems like a problem nobody can solve. Nicaraguans have tried for years, alternating between periods of active protest and quiet accommodation. Neither strategy has worked. I

11/05/2022

There’s a new line of thinking that's emerging among some policy experts in Washington, D.C. After years of failing to coerce the Ortega regime into changing its behavior with punitive sanctions, visa suspensions, and strongly worded resolutions, some analysts are calling for a change of tack.

The new thinking, in short, is that perhaps the promise of sanctions relief can succeed where the threat of sanctions have failed. In other words, turn the stick into a carrot.

https://lnkd.in/g5_hywwM

04/05/2022

Individual testimonies from family members paint an a more detailed picture of neglect, abuse, and torture. Prisoners, all of whom have lost considerable weight (nearly 60 pounds, in the case of Tamara Dávila), are increasingly malnourished, sickly, and weak; they’re kept locked inside stifling cells with the lights turned on 24 hours a day, and subject to daily interrogations about fictitious crimes.

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/mayday-mayday

27/04/2022

After years of saber rattling. the Ortega-Murillo regime finally crossed the Rubicon this week by taking the unprecedented step of sending police to forcibly occupy the hemispheric organization’s offices in Managua, and confiscating all its documents and materials.

Less than 48 hours after taking control of the building, which is owned by a Nicaraguan family who rented the first floor to the OAS, Rosario Murillo announced the Sandinista government is expropriating the entire three-story home and planned to turn it into a "museum of infamy." (Seriously.)

In addition to occupying the first floor offices of the OAS, the Sandinista police also ousted the home's owners, who lived in the residential quarters on the third floor. Police forced the residents — a retired couple in their 60s and 70s, and neither of whom have anything to do with the OAS other than renting them office space — from their own home without any of their belongings, or even a change of clothes. The husband, the U.S. citizen, was thrown into the back of a police pickup truck and questioned by police for hours, before being released from custody but forbidden to return home.

Read full story in today's Dispatch:

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/ortegas-assault-on-the-oas

20/04/2022

When the tourists went away, the machetes came out.

Nicaragua's slumping ecotourism industry has weakened incentives to protect the environment. Now, boats that once carried tourists to photograph nature reserves are being used to haul firewood out of the mangrove forest.

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/tourists-vs-machetes

17/04/2022

Today is the day of resurrection.

Tomorrow, the anniversary of Nicaragua's rising — the start of a new Nicaraguan calendar year.

My commentary for The Dispatch

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/the-ghosts-of-april

13/04/2022

“April is a moment to remember the country that Nicaragua wanted to be, and the country it still aspires to become when tomorrow finally arrives. For now, Nicaragua is stuck in time. The other months come and go, but April remains.”

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/the-ghosts-of-april

06/04/2022

OrMu’s purge of Nicaraguan civil society took a more aggressive war footing this week thanks to a new law that allows the government to confiscate private property and criminally prosecute the directors of NGOs.
https://bit.ly/sandinistas-legalize-purge

30/03/2022

“No dictatorship is permanent,” Paul Reichler, Daniel Ortega's long-time lawyer, said shortly after resigning. “Lots of governments that appear strong in reality have shallow roots. The end starts with the first push — with the first winds.”

Reicher was the second high-profile defection from the Ortega dictatorship in one week, following the shock announcement by Arturo McFields, Nicaragua's ambassador to the OAS. The lawyer thinks that McFields' resignation could inspire others to do the same, and maybe spark the beginning of the end of the Ortega dictatorship.
https://bit.ly/mutiny-SS-OrMu

24/03/2022

Carlos Fernando Chamorro interviews Nicaragua’s OAS Ambassador McFields on the day he shocked the hemisphere by turning on Ortega

23/03/2022

Rebellion within the ranks? Nicaragua's ambassador to the OAS just came out against the Ortega dictatorship.

"Denouncing the dictatorship in my country isn't easy, but remaining quiet and defending the indefensible is impossible. I have to speak up, even though I'm afraid."

23/03/2022

All 7 opposition pre-candidates have now been convicted and sentenced to prison terms for daring to challenge the dictator to fair elections last year.

And what's fueling Nicaragua's alleged economic recovery, after the Central Bank reported 10% growth last year. Is any of that real?

Read today's Dispatch newsletter and find out: https://bit.ly/is-nicaraguas-economy-recovering

16/03/2022

“The only plausible explanation I can come up for the Ortega regime’s show trials is that cruelty is the point. This is about making political prisoners and their families suffer the humiliation and abuse of a senseless charade. This is about the absurdity of authoritarianism, suspension of disbelief. It’s a form of torture.”

Todays Dispatch newsletter:

https://mailchi.mp/confidencial.com.ni/why-is-biden-sending-nicas-to-mexico-jwvm726g55-1435587

16/03/2022

“They never told us we were going back to Mexico,” Elizabeth told us inside the women’s shelter in Ciudad Juárez. “They never said MPP. They only asked me if I was afraid of being sent back to Mexico, and I told them YES!”

https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/why-is-the-u-s-sending-so-many-nicaraguans-back-to-mexico/

11/03/2022

Here’s a video I took of Nicaraguans being returned to Mexico under MPP, handed over to Mexican immigration authorities in the middle of the El Paso-Juárez bridge. Nicaraguans now represent a disproportionate 59% of all migrants returned to Mexico under Biden’s reboot of “Remain in Mexico.” So we went to Ciudad Juárez to find out why. Reporting with for Confidencial Nicaragua. Read about it in next week’s edition of The Dispatch newsletter

09/03/2022

If you ask me to name the greatest wall of all time, I’m coming at you every time with 'El Gran Muro Murillo' — aka The Great Wall of Chamucistan. Most border walls are built to keep foreigners out. But Nicaragua's 1KM corrugated metal border wall was built to keep its own people in.
"Rosario's Border Wall" https://bit.ly/rosarios-border-wall

02/03/2022

"One man is accused of war crimes, the other of crimes against humanity. Now they've formed a strategic alliance. But what does this cynical brotherhood of tyrants mean for Nicaragua?"

In this week's Dispatch, we look at Ortega's Putin Problem: https://bit.ly/ortegas-putin-problem

23/02/2022

Read this week's Dispatch newsletter, "Ortega's Oligarchs"
https://bit.ly/Ortegas-oligarchs

16/02/2022

From this week's newsletter, "Death of the General":

"The general’s death was a wake-up call for the international community that keeps hitting the snooze button on Nicaragua. It’s also a wake-up call for anyone who thought Nicaragua’s splintered anti-Ortega majority could find enough common ground to build a united opposition."

Read more, subscribe:

https://bit.ly/death-of-the-general

11/02/2022

Here's the video we did of Erasmo Aragón, who unwittingly became the new posterboy for Nicaragua's migrant exodus after he chronicled his journey to the US in a twitter thread that went viral

El nicaragüense Erasmo Aragón publicó un "hilo" en Twitter que se volvió viral, pues en este relató toda su travesía hacia los Estados Unidos, a donde llegó ...