El Faro English shines a light on Central America. Subscribe to our newsletter.
It was no small news on May 13 when retired general Humberto Ortega warned his brother, President Daniel Ortega, in an op-ed in exiled newspaper La Prensa to stop engaging in global great-power conflict amid what he called the risk of a “surgical strike by the North American government, if they [the U.S.] were to consider it indispensable.”
But he trampled even more sensitive toes when, in a May 19 interview with Infobae, he posited that no dynastic successor —Daniel Ortega’s wife and confidant, Vice President Rosario Murillo, or their son, diplomatic envoy Laureano Ortega Murillo, who have spent years positioning themselves— would be politically capable of filling the void if Ortega, 78, were to suddenly die.
Humberto, a key strategist in the 1979 Sandinista Revolution and architect of the current Army who has for years dealt muted critiques of the regime from a delicate familial perch, this time described his brother’s rule as “dictatorial”, and denounced that “radicals” in Daniel’s inner circle would “like to kill” him. “I prefer to die defending these principles than give them the chance to humiliate me [by forcing me into exile],” he said.
Within hours of publication, the National Police surrounded his house, confiscated his devices, interrogated him, and ordered him to report his every movement.
Two days later, on May 21, authorities deported Judith Butler, a U.S. journalist and longtime resident who had recently agreed to translate his op-ed.
“Humberto has always had a half-critical posture, but never stopped being a fervent Sandinista,” observes journalist Wilfredo Miranda. “He has walked the tightrope of criticizing Ortega’s authoritarianism while trying to tone down or hedge his brother’s responsibilities in the brutal repression unleashed in 2018.”
“They [the regime] made an example of Humberto Ortega, given his boldness in publicly commenting between the lines on his [brother’s] health,” says Edipcia Dubón, coordinator of the Dialogue of Women for Democracy and an exiled former Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) legislator.
In a May 21 column for exiled digital outlet Confidencial, dissident former guerrilla commander Mónica Baltodano wrote that the attacks on Humberto Ortega “indicate that the old block of power is weakening.” Authorities responded that same day by seizing a retirement home belonging to her and Julio López Campos, ex-director of international relations for the FSLN, a property holding their life savings.
The Rosario factor
“Humberto was trying to provoke a reaction from the Sandinista militancy,” says economist and 2021 presidential candidate Juan Sebastián Chamorro, “because there is a great deal of discontent, particularly among the historic leaders who, like him, deeply resent being relegated in favor of a new bourgeoisie of corrupt officials.”
Journalist Wilfredo Miranda attributes the swift reaction to Humberto to how sensitive the succession issue is for Rosario Murillo, also known as “co-president”, a title with no legal basis that reflects her clout. In recent years, Murillo has accumulated administrative powers and political influence in institutions like the National Police and the National Assembly.
“It hurt Murillo that Humberto said [in the press] that if Anastasio Somoza had failed to install his son as a dynastic successor, she would be even less capable,” Miranda says. “Since the 1980s, Rosario Murillo has been a divider between brothers. She has always tried to distance her husband from any external influence, to control him herself.”
Indeed, other insiders have been bitterly sidelined over the years: Omar Halleslevens, a retired general and VP during Ortega’s unconstitutional third term (2012-2017), was expelled from Murillo’s office in May 2023; Samuel Santos was replaced in 2017 after ten years as foreign minister; Dionisio Marenco, Managua mayor from 2004 to 2008, fell out of favor after criticizing the government and Murillo, who called him a “traitor”.
A slate of old-guard Sandinista revolutionaries splintered in the mid-90s to form the MRS, disgruntled by Ortega’s authoritarian arc. Starting in 2018, many of them were exiled or imprisoned for up to two years, baselessly accused of abetting an alleged U.S.-sponsored coup effort, and stripped in February 2023 of their citizenship and properties. Former guerrilla commander Hugo Torres, who in 1974 freed Ortega from a Somoza detention center, was one of them. He died in prison in February 2022.
In recent years outer-orbit officials have also defected, like Ambassador to the OAS Arthur McFields in March 2022, or been removed. Werner Vargas, appointed by Ortega in early 2023 to lead the Central American Integration System (SICA), publicly announced his resignation just months later, last November, as other Central American nations denounced an effort by Nicaragua to stack the regional institution with political loyalists and as Ortega called to replace SICA observer state Taiwan with Russia and China.
For the second time in Nicaragua’s turn at the helm (2021-2025), the multilateral has spent the last six months without a secretary-general.
But the most brazen purge in recent years began last October, when the regime removed 10 percent of all Judicial Branch employees, most notably Supreme Court President Alba Luz Ramos, a longtime Sandinista loyalist disliked by Murillo, citing alleged administrative offenses related to public contracting.
Managua Appellate Judge Martha Quezada —who in 1998 dismissed charges against Ortega of sexually assaulting his now-exiled step-daughter Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo— was also caught in the dismissal dragnet.
Vice President Rosario Murillo and a spokeswoman did not respond to an email and text messages from El Faro English seeking comment on the decisions outlined in this article and the vice-head of state’s role in them.
Carrot, but mostly stick
Legal analysts have described the October firings as a “coup” orchestrated by Murillo, similar to the removal of the Salvadoran Constitutional Chamber by Nayib Bukele in May 2021 and the forced retirement in September 2022 of one-third of all judges.
But unlike in El Salvador, where the high-court magistrates were replaced overnight, in Nicaragua 10 of the 16 Supreme Court seats have been left vacant, including the presidency. Some have passed away and others have been removed or left for exile.
Former Supreme Court President Ramos has recently been allowed to leave home in Nicaragua but is under constant surveillance, a source with contacts in the judiciary told El Faro English.
The government has also slashed the Judicial Branch’s budget (including 80 percent cuts to “permanent salaries” and 66 percent from the Supreme Court’s earmark), stripped it of oversight of the national property registry, and diverted control of the voluntary judicial pension fund to the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute.
“Over the years Rosario has tried to bring the Judicial Branch under her control,” the source said. “They made it look like [Ramos was removed] due to corrupt management, but deep down it was political. There is now a vacancy, and she [Murillo] could try to take control of the presidency [of the Supreme Court], as she has done in Congress.”
Far from a rock in their shoe, the judiciary has enabled Ortega and Murillo’s total control of Nicaragua: The courts permitted indefinite reelection since the 2011 race; the ban of public demonstrations since 2018, mass confiscation of properties, and cancellation of two-thirds of the country’s NGOs, 28 universities, and some 50 news outlets; and the denaturalization in 2023 of dozens of citizens despite constitutional protections against statelessness.
“This is a regime imposed by terror, so they have no certainty of whether the people surrounding them really are committed,” adds the former legislator Dubón. “What really matters [to the government] is personal commitment,” not political belief. “But this requires total subordination, and in that sense nobody can make that commitment. In reality, [Ortega and Murillo’s] fear is legitimate.”
Since 2021, the regime has stripped the passports of former Supreme Court President Ramos and other officials who have fallen from grace, even touching former top officials from the military, a central plank of the regime; at the head of the Army are 20 loyal generals who have prevented most ascensions for over a decade.
It seems fitting that General Julio César Avilés, head of the Armed Forces since 2007, could seek a fourth five-year term in 2025, despite the fact that the Organic Law of the Army provides for one-term alternation of military power. Designed in part by Humberto Ortega, for years Army law was considered a democratic notch in the Sandinista belt.
This article first appeared in the May 28 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.
