This photogallery was published in Spanish on July 7, 2018.
Nicaragua has spent three months on the brink. July 19 marks the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, when masses gathered to celebrate the triumphant arrival of the rebels in Managua, the capital city. Here to mark that historic anniversary this year is a rebellion against the leader of the Sandinista revolution itself: now-president Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua commemmorates its revolution with a role reversal: the one who once fought against a repressive government is now the oppressor.
El Faro has traveled to and from Nicaragua since the first days of the protests, including to the National Autonomous University (UNAN) in Managua. Conditions rapidly worsened and now seem stagnant. On Apr. 16, 2018, the governing board of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute approved a reform to the social security system. After its ratification the next day by President Ortega, protests erupted. Students took control of the main public universities. The government responded with repression and, in four days, 70 people died. Ortega's nullification of the social security reform on Apr. 23, did not stop Nicaraguans from protesting. The discontent was no longer just directed at the INSS reform, but against the regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Nicaraguans took to the streets en masse to demand their resignation. By mid-May, a negotiating roundtable with the government had been installed, moderated by the Catholic Church and attended by the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy (ACJD in Spanish), a coalition of students, campesinos, civil society members, and business leaders. The exit of the Ortega-Murillo government through early elections was an idea discussed at the roundtable, though the president has publicly stated that he will not accept that option. 'The rules here are set by the Constitution of the Republic through the people. The rules can't be changed in the span of a day simply because it dawned on a group of coup plotters,' said Ortega on Saturday, July 7. He would continue his campaign to end the protests by force.
What was at first a student rebellion in Managua expanded to the whole country. Tranques, or informal barricades constructed by protestors, became a part of Nicaragua's urban and rural landscape. The municipality of La Trinidad rose up against the regime. Its inhabitants took the town and declared it a liberated territory. Even the Police abandoned the place. Masaya and Monimbó, bastions of the Sandinista revolution, turned against Ortega. Many of those who oppose the government consider themselves Sandinistas, but not Orteguistas. In three months of protests, around 350 people have died.
*Translated by Roman Gressier
