When on July 19, 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front defeated Anastasio Somoza, most South American countries were subjected to military dictatorships – Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, etc. We were living in times of resistance and the School of the Americas was in full swing training torturers and assassins with the State Department collecting victories against the Soviet bureaucracy in the middle of the Cold War.

At that time, the victory of Sandinism was the revenge of all Latin American peoples against puppet governments of US imperialism and the interests of the regional oligarchies. Militants of the revolutionary left from all over the continent enlisted in brigades in support of the Sandinist revolution, it was the second triumphant revolution!

Like in a third-rate action movie script, Daniel Ortega – who assumes the government backed by the Nicaraguan people and the world left – becomes its most brutal opponent and buries the legacy of Sandino and the Sandinista Movement, becomes one of the most brutal and inhumane dictators of this beginning of the century, persecutes and imprisons opponents and former comrades. Pressured by the effects of the economic crisis and the need to maintain his agreements with the local oligarchies and the North American government, in 2018 Daniel Ortega imposed a harsh reform to the social security system and the unease that was already great resulted in strong mobilizations of pensioners that soon became a mass uprising that began to question the government and its methods. Within the FSLN there were purges and persecutions.

The mobilizations, suffocated by repression, gave way to the hope that the presidential elections scheduled for 2021 would put an end to state brutality. As in the Moscow trials, Ortega and Murillo accused, convicted and sentenced to prison several of the most important commanders of the Sandinista Revolution (Dora Maria Mercedes, Commander Two, imprisoned for more than a year in prison, without the right to see the light of day; Hugo Torres, Commander One, died in prison without the right to medical care; Mónica Baltodano lives in exile; Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, a victim of sexual violence, lives in exile to avoid being arrested after denouncing the abuses committed by her stepfather), the opposition candidates (all viable candidates were arrested), and from then on, anyone who criticized the government was arrested.

As the opposition silenced or imprisoned Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo lead the country’s biggest electoral farce since the defeat of Anastasio Somoza’s dictatorship. In Brazil PT and PCdoB celebrate the farce, in Chile the declaration of the central committee of the Chilean PC was disavowed by the elected president Gabriel Boric and by party deputies who had to withdraw their congratulations to the new mandate.

Unfortunately, an important part of the so-called democratic left is silent in the face of the atrocities committed by the Ortega/Murillo dictatorship, a complicit silence that goes from the PT leadership to the Bolivian government, including the authoritarian Nicolás Maduro, who, like Ortega, is burying the legacy of the Bolivarian revolution.

Daniel Ortega is not just another dictator, he is not just another neoliberal government of an authoritarian character that came to power because of a political vacuum or a frustrated experience with a government of the so-called progressive camp. Daniela Ortega and Rosario Murillo came to power in Nicaragua with the support of the Nicaraguan left, which fought against Somoza, and of the Latin American left, which defeated dictatorships and coups d’etat, but above all Daniel Ortega came to power in the name of the left and the legacy of the Sandinista revolution. With his policies of collaboration with the U.S. government (he signed the FTA, collaborates with the DEA, and is the main dam to contain the migratory wave that is devastating the continent), among other policies that attack the rights of the Nicaraguan people, Ortega and Murillo are burying the legacy of the Sandinista revolution and staining the libertarian flag of the revolutionary left with blood.

Fortunately not all the world left is conniving or ignoring Ortega’s authoritarian course and the violations and atrocities committed by the government. Gabriel Boric’s statements and Gustavo Petros’ public positions are just one expression that we are not alone in the struggle for a future of freedom.

On July 6, 7 and 8, a delegation of internationalists from several countries, headed by parliamentarians from the Latin American left and human rights organizations will arrive in San José, Costa Rica, a neighboring country to Nicaragua, to denounce the Ortega/Murillo dictatorship.

In addition to showing solidarity with the thousands of Nicaraguans in exile in Costa Rica, our mission is to meet the ex-combatant Mónica Baltodano, with whom we have been working in recent months to denounce the atrocities of the Ortega/Murillo dictatorship, to articulate with the legislators of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) in Costa Rica new initiatives to support the Nicaraguan resistance and finally to protest against the human rights violations and persecutions of the Ortega/Murillo family regime along the border with Nicaragua.