PEN Uruguay asked writer Gioconda Belli why the Nicaraguan people left the path of democracy and re-elected Daniel Ortega in 2006?

Whoever has read Gioconda Belli is immersed in a literature of exuberant tropical eroticism, where one sees women with breasts like volcanoes and men with broad backs like vast prairies. Gioconda, without a doubt, is Nicaragua’s most universal writer. Passionate revolutionary, Sandinista and in love with her country. In short, as the BBC said, she is «one of the most sensual and contentious voices in Latin American literature». In addition, she was one of the most prestigious and credible voices of the Sandinista Popular Revolution.

«They will not pass love, we will defeat them.» wrote the poet when it was presumed that the United States might intervene in Nicaragua. But the anti-Sandinista intervention never happened; rather, it was the Nicaraguans themselves who defeated the FSLN in an election in 1990 to undertake a democratic and republican process.

From then on, the FSLN was expected to become a more democratic party, but Ortega’s autocratic ambitions skyrocketed to such an extent that in 1995 he had already «expelled» from the organization its more moderate cadres such as Sergio Ramírez and even Gioconda Belli herself. At present, the Sandinista party is nothing more than a shell that shelters Orteguismo-Murillismo (a kind of neo-Somocismo) who, to the extreme, manipulate ideals to their benefit, distorting everything in which Belli and hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans believed.

But returning to the question of how Daniel Ortega managed to become President again, Gioconda clarified that in reality, in those 2006 elections, «the majority of Nicaraguans voted against Ortega». According to Belli, «62% of the population divided their vote between two liberal parties. Ortega won with 38% thanks to a pact he had made with the ruling Liberal Party. In exchange for guaranteeing the freedom of the president of that party who was accused of corruption».

The plot to return to power

The president of that party mentioned by Belli, was President of Nicaragua in the period 1997-2001. His name is Arnoldo Alemán and he was accused of corruption by his own vice-president, engineer Enrique Bolaños, when he won the 2001 elections to govern until 2006. Alemán and Ortega had made a pact in 1998 in which Ortega was able to place like-minded magistrates in the Supreme Court of Justice and in the Supreme Electoral Council. Ortega’s objective was to have greater representation in the branches of government.

Mr. Bolaños assumed the Nicaraguan Executive in January 2002 and immediately moved the gears of the Judiciary to open corruption cases against former President Aleman. Enrique’s crusade was of excellent service to Ortega who already had faithful judges and magistrates in the justice system. So we could understand that Ortega was ahead of his time, since with Alemán sentenced to prison, the Sandinista caudillo had as hostage the liberal caudillo who commanded the other half of the magistrates of the Electoral Power.

That is why Gioconda Belli explains that «Ortega achieved an electoral reform to lower the % required to win in the first round from 45% to 35%. This pact divided the liberals. This is how Ortega won; by making arrangements with corrupt people and sowing division».

It was necessary to clarify to our readers the tricks used by Ortega to reach the presidency again and not easily blame Nicaraguans as naive.

When the social protests of 2018 broke out, the regime radicalized to such an extent that now what exists in Nicaragua is a de facto police state, which has killed 355 demonstrators according to the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) and has imprisoned almost two hundred opponents of political relevance and keeps under the boot any hint of citizen rebellion. The stages of repression have been several, and one of them is the closure of civil organizations of various kinds such as the Nicaraguan Academy of Language.

An Academy that is almost a century old

In 2028, the Academia Nicarguense de la Lengua will be 100 years old. Its coat of arms depicts «the encounter between the captain of conquest Gil González Dávila and the cacique Nicaragua», as a synthesis «of the dialogue between two cultures, from whose fusion would emerge the mestizaje of Nicaragua».

The shield motto was taken from «Salutation of the optimist» by Rubén Darío: «In spirit united, in spirit and yearnings and language». That yearning for unity in the language was erased with the stroke of a pen by the regime, but for Belli this procedure «does not even have a macabre plan to separate Nicaragua from Spanish»; because simply, according to the poet «they close the Academy in a wave of closures of independent institutions that provide various services to the population and that represent the space for action and freedom of civil society in the country». So, what is behind this situation?

To do this, we must review a little of the motivations of this unique couple who live with:

An unbearable inquin

The current situation in Nicaragua should not only be interpreted in the light of simple politics, and even less, to attribute it to a confrontation of an ideological nature. This story of a novelistic brawl is also a personal one. It is wrapped up in the anger of a couple traumatized by the loss of power. On Ortega’s side, when he unsuspectedly lost it on February 25, 1990; and on Murillo’s side, for being «in the 80’s quite ignored. A minor figure whom Ortega did not take much into account», according to journalist Fabián Medina, author of the book «El preso 198». An unauthorized biography of Daniel Ortega.

But Murillo, the wayward, the eccentric, the one who wanted to be a poet, was also ignored by the select intellectual circle of Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, Claribel Alegria and other renowned Nicaraguan writers.

The harbinger of a massacre

Rosario is known for her arrogance. She does not admit contradictions and acts on her own. In 2018, she is accused of being the author of the operation «Let’s go all out», where 355 protesters were killed. However, it is curious how in a mysterious poem she wrote in the 1970s she seems to foreshadow a terror coming from a sin of the future. The omen goes like this:

I’m afraid and I don’t know how to say it
I am unprotected!
There is an endless line of ants
that I have left seeing
about to accuse me of some crime
pushing me to fall
tangling my already tangled legs
enjoying my silence, my many questions,
imagining myself on the floor
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny ants
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny,
poor little ants with tears
looking for how to climb the ladder.

Murillo’s race to the pinnacle of power was unsuccessful for decades. He was anti-popular inside and outside the party. His reputation as a hysterical and overbearing boss, aroused the rejection of the commanders and the militancy. However, he found the opportunity to seize power in the most depraved way anyone could imagine.

Like Agamemnon in the Orestiad, who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia so that the good winds would drive his ships to Troy, Murillo sacrificed his daughter Zoilamérica so that the winds of power would blow in his favor and, in this way, maneuver over Ortega’s will. In 1998 Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo accused her stepfather of rape. Rosario Murillo contradicted her daughter and immediately defended her man; in exchange, he gave her 50% of the power. In this way Murillo repaid Ortega for her contempt.

Control everything

Many have labeled as absurd the closing of the Academy and other civil organizations that have no political impact, nor do they represent a threat to the governability of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. When we asked Belli what the dictators are after by closing the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, she told us: «To control everything». «That’s what they are after: to leave no loopholes that allow society the independence to organize itself autonomously and function for its own purposes. It is a government very concerned about the use that the Nicaraguan people would make of their freedom. That is why they are preventing them from having it».

As of the date of publication of this note, the Nicaraguan National Assembly had closed approximately 1,000 civil society organizations. It seems that the 2018 protests aroused an unfathomable fury, a blaze of hatred and vengeance against poor people on whom the weight of their fury and anger is falling everywhere.

Nicaragua is increasingly isolated from the world, submerged in a dystopian world similar to the one Belli describes in his novel Waslala, where he inserts us in an imaginary country controlled by bandits, adventurers and smugglers. Nicaragua is an outcast in the hands of a family clan.

Uruguay and Nicaragua in literature

However, this interview of brief answers, gave place to remember that at some point in history, literature united Uruguay and Nicaragua in the figures of Rubén Darío and José Enrique Rodó at the dawn of modernism, where the two intellectuals sealed their action on the Castilian literature of America. In both coincided the demands of difficult taste and perfect expression. But we can also say that the coincidence remains in the figures of Delmira Agustini and Gioconda Belli in terms of their love poetry. Delmira is considered a pioneer of erotic literature in Latin America, so the coincidence required us to ask Gioconda Belli if she considers herself an heiress of Agustini:

It’s interesting what you ask because women, as Delmira experienced in her time and I experienced in mine, we never seem to stop making a fuss. There is a very old taboo associated with the freedom and pleasure of the female body. As long as it has been the man who has dictated the rules about that freedom and that pleasure, everything has been fine. There was no objection to the use of the female body as a sexual object. The scandal is born when that «object» decides to stop being an object and is named subject, mistress of her sexuality.

Belli visited Uruguay in 2019 to present her novel «Las fiebres de la memoria». On that occasion, who writes this article, attended the event and outside the bookstore «Puro Verso» where the event took place, this writer heard a group of Uruguayan women comment that «Nicaraguan women must be very interesting», so it was unavoidable to take advantage and ask Belli her consideration about this comment: «I don’t know in what tone they must have said it. At first sight it seems to me a comment that affirms a real fact and that is that women in Nicaragua, for having been politically involved, and having that experience, we are indeed interesting».

During that visit, Gioconda Belli was honored as an Illustrious Visitor of the city of Montevideo, a distinction that she shared with Daniel Ortega when he visited the city in 2008. For this reason, it was necessary to ask her: Do you think that the city of Montevideo should keep Ortega that honor? His response being: «it is not up to me to decide that, but anyone who documents what has happened in Nicaragua since 2018 will realize that the decorated man is now a bloodthirsty dictator who was no longer seen in Latin America decades ago.»