News SOS for Journalists Latin America Culture

Photos Photo of the Day Videos

Self-Determination and Sovereignty for Nicaragua

Public letter from Latin America calls for defending democracy, sovereignty, and the self-determination of the Nicaraguan people.

By Gabriel Boric* (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – The exile of hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, the persecution of those who think differently, and the consolidation of authoritarian family rule do not represent the principles of a democratic left. Defending Nicaragua’s sovereignty today means defending the right of its people to express themselves, organize, and freely decide their future.

In 1979, Nicaragua defeated the Somoza family dictatorship, one of the longest-lasting and cruelest in Latin America. The popular insurrection, led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), brought together a broad alliance of political and social forces around a common goal: to build a country founded on democracy, freedom, social justice, and national sovereignty. The Sandinista Revolution thus became a reference point for those who defended the right of peoples to decide their own destiny and maintained that social justice was inseparable from freedom.

The 1980s were marked by a war that left tens of thousands of victims and deepened political polarization in the context of the Cold War. In 1990, amid profound economic and social deterioration, the FSLN lost the elections. The government recognized the result and handed over power. Nicaragua then entered a new political stage that, despite enormous limitations, opened spaces for pluralism, electoral competition, and alternation in power.

But the FSLN’s subsequent history progressively moved away from the principles that had inspired the Sandinista Revolution. Through agreements among corrupt political elites, electoral reforms, and the gradual subordination of state institutions to party control, democratic checks and balances were weakened. Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency in 2007, and electoral, judicial, and political institutions rapidly began losing their independence, while the conditions for free and pluralistic political competition steadily........

© Havana Times