The co-presidents of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, this time resorted to a new tactical approach: expelling and exposing political prisoners who were in a state of enforced disappearance. The movement takes place on the eve of a decisive decision for the Sandinista regime: the administration of Donald Trump will have to decide whether to expel the Central American country from the DR-CAFTA free trade treaty or impose 100% guarantees, due to systemic human rights violations in the Central American country that – according to an investigation by the Office of the Trade Representative in Washington – constitute a “burden on US trade.”
Throughout the morning, Sandinista propaganda media showed journalist Fabiola Tercero one year and four months after her arrest, her home destroyed and her disappearance from the public radar. “A bad lie if it falls to the revolutionaries,” state media headlines, in an attempt to discredit all of you who want to know the whereabouts of the caller.
In a tactic previously used by the co-presidential system, and classified by human rights bodies as “coerced confessions,” Tercero said that official journalists who “in recent years had been living in their house with their mother, in the William Díaz neighborhood, 2nd District of Managua,” had suggested it. Four days earlier, the regime also silently slaughtered five other political prisoners, including journalist Leo Carcamo.
In previous months, the US Embassy in Managua had continued to campaign on behalf of Tercero and Carcamo. He demanded that the Managua regime test the lives of the contacts and reveal their whereabouts. In order for the political analysts consulted by El Pais to read this slaughter and exposure of these people as an attempt by the two-term presidency to return to using political prisoners as bargaining chips for their convenience, on November 19, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR for short in English) will conclude a phase of public consultation on this investigation that concludes that the regime’s “policies, actions and practices” are “unreasonable and constitute a burden or restriction” on North American trade, according to the decision. Under Section 301 of the Trade Law of 1974.
What the USTR will bring to the Oval Order table will be some options that would represent a fatal blow to the economy of Nicaragua, whose main trading partner is Washington: kicking out DR-CAFTA, Nicaragua’s capitalist trade pact, and imposing 100% of Nicaragua’s FTA. It is an action that has always been feared by Managua, especially by North American businessmen in the textile, tobacco and coffee sectors with interests in the Central American country, which has lobbied strongly in the United States capital to avoid receiving such a fatal blow, without involving serious human rights violations.
“And here political prisoners enter again as currency,” Salvador Lucio Marenco, a human rights lawyer at Colectivo Nicaragua Nicaraguan Nunca Mas, tells El País. “In addition to the deliberations on the Free Trade Treaty, there is another important thing: for the first time in a long time, the dictator spoke to the international community at the UN Third Committee, when the expert group presented its report on crimes against humanity. At this session, the Deputy Ambassador of Nicaragua expressed his concerns about the sanctions regime and economic measures.”
Will the United States fall again?
This is not the first time that Ortega Murillo has imprisoned political prisoners in order for the imprisonment to weaken the concessions of the international community. In this sense, former opponent Eliseo Nunez believes that these recent, untimely assassinations are an attempt to open negotiations – or strengthen them if there are negotiations – to reach the expulsion of the DR-CAFTA and Arancil.
However, the opponent who was stripped of his citizenship warns that this may also be a Sandinista nonsense to “save time” in strengthening his relationship with China, behind the creation of expensive special zones for Asian interests. “To allow Chinese companies to export to the United States under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), avoiding sanctions and tariffs,” Nunez analyzes. “As I said before, keeping Nicaragua in CAFTA would be a mistake.”
Juan Carlos Gutierrez, a researcher who was also stripped of his citizenship, in return aims to prevent the United States: he insists that the maneuver to imprison political prisoners is a tactical strategy that does not lead to any change in the background. When Ortega Murillo loses his income, he finds himself stuck in prison. “What you are doing is managing the terror that you felt in a large part of the population, because these slaughter operations achieve three goals at the same time,” he says. Here we mention: “Reducing the political cost of maintaining the consciousness of unjustly imprisoned people, reducing the economic expenses involved in keeping them in prison and transferring the psychological and material burden to their families. Freeing people from fear, like the case of Fabiola Tercero; without the ability to communicate, without work, and with constant low alertness.”
Right now, the last political prisoners don’t want to talk to Nadi, let alone their families, but every day they have to present themselves at the police station to sign an aid document. However, the economic future of Nicaragua – more than 55% of whose trade reaches the United States – will be in the hands of President Trump, through the mediation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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