Nicaraguan Revolution Betrays its Supporters

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

In April 1987, when I was working as a journalist in Washington, an idealistic young American engineer, Ben Linder, was killed in Nicaragua by the Contras. They were the Reagan-sponsored forces fighting the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSNL) rebels. The Sandinistas were trying to overthrow Anastasio Somoza, the brutal right-wing dictator whose family had controlled the country for four decades.

Linder was one of the so-called “sandalistas,” a sarcastic term for American leftists helping the revolutionaries, who indeed triumphed two years later. I wrote a piece about him, as did many other newspaper reporters.

Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the FSNL was founded in 1961. It attracted public support in the United States by presenting itself as a “coalition of the oppressed.” Left-wing magazines in the 1990s proclaimed Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua as a newly liberated country, and an example to others in central America. 

The Sandinistas under leader Daniel Ortega have ruled the country ever since, but not in the way Linder and others would have imagined. Reality has a way of upending dreams.

On July 19, the Nicaraguan president, who rules with his wife and “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, told the country that he will not hold any further elections, to prevent the opposition from coming to power.

Ortega made the announcement during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 victory. “We will work with the National Assembly and the relevant institutions on laws, because we need laws that build a wall, a barrier, against the coup plotters and the traitors who sell out their country,” he declared. He promised that the days of “parties backed by the Yankees” were over.

“With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” observed Tiziano Breda, Latin America senior analyst at the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. They had already pushed through a constitutional reform that extended by one year the presidential term due to end in 2026.

The elections were due to take place next year, but Ortega gave no details on whether they would be cancelled or whether the opposition would be barred from taking part. During the 2021 election campaign, the regime outlawed parties and jailed all opposition presidential hopefuls. International groups described it as a farce. Ortega claimed he won 76 per cent of the vote.

Ortega and Murillo are afraid that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power. Therefore, instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.

In 2018, the regime carried out a violent crackdown on dissenters that killed more than 350 people, wounded hundreds, jailed thousands and forced nearly one million Nicaraguans into exile. The government in 2025 expanded its repression to include even some government supporters.  

Last August, lawyer Carlos Cardenas and opposition figure Mauricio Alonso died in custody, according to the media outlet Confidencial. At least six other political prisoners have died in custody since 2019.

The constitution now allows authorities to revoke the Nicaraguan nationality of people deemed responsible for “treason.” At least 452 Nicaraguans have been arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, leaving many stateless; authorities have also seized their assets. Over 200 members of the Catholic clergy have been forced into exile, deported, or denied re-entry since 2022.

On July 13, the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua denounced the government’s sudden revocation of credentials for numerous lawyers and notaries, warning the move effectively erased a vital part of the nation’s legal profession overnight and stripped citizens of their right to legal defence.

“Over the past week, corroborating evidence has mounted, providing reasonable grounds to believe that the Nicaraguan Government is systematically stripping numerous lawyers of their legal licenses,” stated Jan-Michael Simon, its chair.

The UN group also condemned the death of prominent indigenous Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera while in custody. At the time of his arrest in September 2023, he was a deputy in the National Assembly for the Indigenous political party YATAMA.

The latest measures come on the heels of a sweeping purge of the judicial system that has been underway since October 2023, when police took control of the Supreme Court of Justice. Since then, eight magistrates have resigned or been forced out, and more than a thousand judicial employees have been dismissed.

The constitutional reforms in 2025 stripped the judiciary of its status as an independent power of the State; they redefined the judiciary as an “organ” that the presidency “coordinates” and reduced the Court from 16 to 10 justices, all appointed by co-presidents Ortega and Murillo.

After President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces in January, and as the Trump administration increases pressure on Cuba, two countries that have been allied with Nicaragua, Ortega’s government has become even more restrictive.

Felix Maradiaga, a presidential hopeful who was jailed in Nicaragua from 2021 to 2023 before being expelled to the U.S., saw Ortega’s comments as “a confession of fear. Ortega publicly acknowledged what has always been his true intention -- to prevent his tyrannical project from being subjected to any form of democratic competition,” Maradiaga told Reuters.

Like so many others betrayed by previous revolutions across the world, what would someone like Ben Linder think about Ortega now?

 

Why do First Nations Fear an Independent Alberta?

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The annual general assembly of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) passed an emergency resolution on July 16 to protect treaty rights from threats posed by the Alberta separatist movement.

It states that no province has the legal authority to alter, reduce or extinguish treaty rights, or the constitutional relationship between First Nations and the Crown. Former national chief Matthew Coon Come declared that Quebec chiefs, who faced a provincial separation referendum in 1995, stand in solidarity with Alberta chiefs. “Their fight is our fight,” Coon Come declared. “Their struggle is our struggle.”

AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak also spoke out at the meeting against separatism. “They’re not taking any land with them,” she warned. “That’s going to stay right here with First Nations people. This is our country and we say what happens.”

In May, the federal government launched 30-day consultations with Indigenous peoples and others, on proposed regulatory changes surrounding approvals for major industrial projects. Legislation would be tabled following the consultation period. This provides an implicit virtual veto power to First Nations.

Nepinak took aim at the federal government’s desire to fast-track approvals for major projects, insisting that economic development cannot come at the expense of First Nations’ rights. “I think if any project is going to move forward anywhere in this country, speak to First Nations people.”

No matter how the Alberta referendum vote on independence goes on Oct. 19, Chief Kelsey Jacko of Cold Lake First Nations said communities will be ready to protect their treaties, which pre-date the creation of Alberta as a province. “We’re going to be fighting in court,” Jacko said.

This poses an interesting question. Indigenous treaty rights do predate the creation of Alberta. But in many cases, they also predate the formation of Canada. They are, as many point out, with “the Crown.” In other words, to the time when the lands north of the United States remained under the control of the British Empire.

But why, if Alberta – and for that matter Quebec – seceded from the Canadian federation, would Indigenous peoples feel threatened? Would those new countries, as successor states, not inherit the same treaties?  Also, as we know, many consider Canada a settler-colonial enterprise guilty of genocide against First Nations. So why even take sides between “Albertans” and “Canadians,” who are equally guilty, in this conflict? Why protect a state responsible for such crimes?

On the face of it, one would think this doesn’t make sense. Clearly there’s more involved.

With the passing of the 1982 Canadian constitution, Indigenous rights are inherent and, in many cases, legally paramount. Since then, First Nations in this country have expanded their understanding of these, to the point where they are acquiring a form of “dual power” alongside and within the political system of Canada. It has become the case that major decisions, especially economic ones, cannot proceed without the approval of the native people involved.

There have been other examples of this around the world: Fiji, where ethnic Fijians controlled their own political organs in the Great Council of Chiefs, separate from the overall ones for all citizens, including themselves. This is becoming the case in New Zealand, where Maori in Aotearoa -- their pre-conquest name for the country -- are acquiring collective rights alongside the political rights of all others. In effect, they have dual political rights within two different political systems alongside each other. Other citizens are represented only by one.

Most Canadians seem to have forgotten that the Charlottetown Accord, which failed to gain acceptance in 1992, would have created an “Aboriginal right to self-government” enshrined in the Canadian constitution. It would have recognized Aboriginal governments as a third order of government, analogous to the federal government and the provinces and constitutionally autonomous from them.

The prior Meech Lake Accord also suffered defeat, in June 1990. Almost simultaneously, a major conflict known as the Oka Crisis erupted in Ontario. It was a standoff between Mohawk protestors, Quebec police, the RCMP, and the Canadian Army, that lasted 78 days. It was sparked by the proposal of development of a golf course on their Kanesatake lands, which included an Indigenous burial ground.

The dispute, which included two fatalities, was the first well-publicized violence between First Nations and provincial governments in the late 20th century. A political shot across the bow, it was traumatic in its effects -- a turning point for the Indigenous movement in Canada and a wake-up call for other Canadians.

The Canadian federation is now a multi-ethnic state, unlike in 1867, when it was created by “two founding nations, English and French,” in four provinces. (No other groups, including, notoriously, the many First Nations, were involved.) And in such entities, minority ethnic peoples have more say than in states based on ethnicity or religion.

The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires in the First World War resulted in the creation of nationalistic states, all of which proved difficult, and sometimes disastrous, for minorities. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia also created internal wars, and many remain ongoing.

Should Alberta or Quebec become homogeneous sovereign republics, they might even jettison the rights of Indigenous people in a new constitutional order. This is clearly what the AFN and other native groups fear.