Nicaragua: News & Updates

Sovereignty is not argued about It is defended Augusto Cesar Sandino It is an irrefutable fact that the United States orchestrated, financed and unleashed the violent coup attempt in 2018 against the democratically elected FSLN government. Spokespeople of the U.S. establishment, from former president Trump, extreme right wing senators and deputies, all the way down the food chain of its formidable ‘regime change’ machinery, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and, of course, USAID, repeatedly stated their aim was to bring about ‘regime change’ in Nicaragua. In this connection, the significance of U.S. Nicaraguan proxies is ephemeral and purely utilitarian (does anybody remember Adolfo Calero, Miami-based Contra leader?). Such proxies are activated to sow chaos, violence and confusion to facilitate a U.S.-driven ‘regime change’ intervention, but for the huge U.S. democracy-crushing machine, when plans do not work, its proxies are disposable human assets. In the 2018 coup attempt, the operatives on the ground, disguised as civil society bodies committed to the rule of law, democracy, civil liberties, human rights and other fake descriptions, were in fact U.S.-funded proxies entrusted with the task to bring down the FSLN government by means of violence. The resistance of the Nicaraguan people defeated the coup and thus the nation will go to polls in November 2021, prompting the U.S. ‘regime change’ apparatus to launch, in despair, an international campaign aimed at demonizing the electoral process itself.

Biden administration looks to sanctions against Nicaragua, an approach that has historically had mixed results. The NICA Act’s targets may have been government ministers, but its victims were Nicaragua’s poorest communities.The NICA Act’s targets may have been government ministers, but its victims were Nicaragua’s poorest communities. The World Bank, having praised Nicaragua’s use of international funds to relieve poverty and having financed over 100 successful projects since the Sandinistas first took power in 1979, suddenly halted funding in March 2018. It did not resume work for nearly three years, until late 2020, when the bank belatedly helped respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and two devastating hurricanes. The Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund similarly stopped funding large projects, and their help in response to the pandemic and the hurricanes was also delayed. Not surprisingly, opinion polls show that over three-quarters of Nicaraguans oppose these sanctions, and even the Organization of American States described the NICA Act as “counterproductive.”

As high schoolers, most of us learned about the Monroe Doctrine. Many people assume that the Monroe Doctrine is U.S. law, and possibly even international law. It isn’t either of these. President Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, in his State of the Union Address. Now, almost 200 years later, we still use the Monroe Doctrine to justify our interference in the internal affairs of other countries in the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine has symbolized the United States’ self-proclaimed right to run roughshod — whenever and wherever we please — over sovereign nations to our south. The U.S. has invaded and occupied many countries. For some of them, like Nicaragua, we’ve done this more than once.

Aviva Chomsky, author most recently of Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration, points out that the president’s new plan for Central America, supposedly aimed at the “root causes” of migration to this country, is the disappointing equivalent of ancient history even when solutions are actually available. He’s once again offering that region the kind of “aid” that helped create today’s “migrant crisis.” As it happens, more military and private development aid of the Biden’s plan calls for won’t stop migration or help Central America.

In the pursuit of addressing the ‘root causes’ of migration from Central America to the U.S. southern border, the United States is motivated by a foreign policy built on seeking to improve conditions in Central America countries. However, this policy fails to fully grasp the extreme conditions that now mark contexts of forced displacement.