“An atomic bomb, so they will respect us” is the wish of the Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega when his mouth gets hot with his anti-American rhetoric. It is no coincidence that he said this bravado in front of Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, after a meeting with Managua in March.
Hatred of the Yankees and the anti-imperialist slogan continued to be two of the strong ideas in his speech. It could have been buried in the battlefields of the eighties, but unfortunately for the Nicaraguan people, it continues to repeat itself like a parrot as a justification for its isolation and to cover up its oppressive actions. desire
Ortega is also an expert on attacking where it hurts most for our politicians, Republican and Democratic. And his latest trick is particularly bad. Long gone are the times when Latin Americans left to proselytize in some “progressive” American forums. How many university activists, intellectuals, actors, etc. are willing to thank Che Guevara or the Sandinistas? Nothing can cover the failure of communism and the populist left in the region. As they say today in the business world, “there are no success stories to show in the presentation.” Without influence, without propaganda, without numbers to stop, without the capacity to penetrate them,
We know the detailed plan in a story published in the Wall Street Journal, which is based on using immigration as a political weapon to harm the United States. The report says that tens of thousands of migrants have been helped by Nicaragua to reach the United States. According to the WSJ, “Ortega’s open border policy for asylum seekers heading to the United States serves as a bridge for Haitians, Cubans, and Africans to reach the southern border.”
For example, it is said that Daniel Ortega opened the doors of Nicaragua to trips with tens of thousands of immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, and Africa, thus increasing the number of people who use the Central American country as a point of disembarkation on their journey to the United States.
It is estimated that so far this year, about 150,000 migrants have arrived by land, crossing the Costa Rican border. We need to add another 300,000 who arrived on flights to Managua airport. They all arrived to begin the overland journey north to the United States. The authorities did not stamp the migrants’ passports, but they charged them a “right of passage” tax of $150. The trick is that there is no receipt for this payment. There is no record of passage through Nicaragua.
So Ortega found a magic formula to undermine his main and historical enemy, and in the process, he made money at the expense of the desperate situation of hundreds of thousands of sleepless immigrants trying to reach the American dream.
Meanwhile, what are the measures to pressure Biden’s government? The penalties. But according to economist and Sandinista dissident Enrique Sáez, Ortega is “laughing” at the sanctions. In a forum recently held in Costa Rica, Sáez stated that “Ortega screams, moans when they hit him, and then laughs when he avoids the impact of the sanctions.”
So while Ortega was laughing, making money, and ruining the cost of US sanctions, he was doing business with Russia, Iran, and China. He mocked the Foreign Minister of Iran about the atomic bomb. Together with the Russian Sergei Lavrov, he agreed in March to reduce the impact of the sanctions, and in reference to China, he emphasized that the Asian giant is treating the Central American country with “respect” and without imposing conditions. Businesses with a dark side seem to have no limits in this kind of alternative economy to that of Western democracies.
The case of Ortega is another demonstration that the policy of isolated economic sanctions not only does not cause political changes in countries but also promotes the power of authoritarians, facilitating the connection between countries that are enemies. in the free world and harm the suffering people. Nicaragua is a good example for the two candidates for the White House who will compete next year to present a strategy to promote democracy and human rights in a region that does not continue to suffocate citizens suffering from this scourge of leftist populism.
