CIVICUS speaks with María Teresa Blandón, a Nicaraguan human rights defender and director of Feminist Programme La Corriente, a civil society organisation (CSO) whose legal status was recently cancelled by the authoritarian regime led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
What is the reason for the current wave of intensified in repression in Nicaragua?
Repression increased on the eve of the fraudulent 2021 elections, when the state specifically targeted the leaders of the main opposition groups who had been building alliances to participate in the elections, because even though they knew that conditions were extremely adverse, they insisted that this was the way out of the crisis.
From January 2022 onwards, the Ortega-Murillo regime further escalated its offensive, possibly due to a failure in its political calculations: it had thought that once the electoral fraud had been consummated and the opposition was thrown in jail, the opposition would abdicate its role and the regime would obtain the endorsement of the international community.
But neither of these things happened: the opposition did not resign itself and there was no international support; on the contrary, the regime’s isolation only deepened. The Nicaraguan opposition continued to constantly denounce the establishment of a de facto police state and to call for the regime’s exit through civic means. The CSOs that managed to remain in the country continued to denounce systematic human rights violations and repression, hence the approval of new laws to strip them of their legal status and assets.
Faced with a lack of legitimacy, the Ortega-Murillo regime has deepened its strategy of annihilating any form of citizen organisation that is not subordinate to its interests. To date, more than 1,600 CSOs have been eliminated by the National Assembly and in many cases their assets have been confiscated through the application of laws that openly violate our country’s constitution, which recognises the right to free association and expressly prohibits confiscation.
Until very recently, the power to cancel an organisation’s legal personality was in the hands of the National Assembly, but a new law assigned it to the Ministry of the Interior, which now has the absolute power to decide who has the right to associate and who does not. The procedure has been expedited and there is no recourse to appeal, which clearly speaks of the situation of defencelessness Nicaraguan civil society finds itself in.
The judiciary has remained silent in the face of the unconstitutionality appeals filed in 2021, following the approval of the Law on Foreign Agents, which obliges CSOs that receive funds from international cooperation sources to report their activities at a level of detail that makes it practically impossible for them to operate.
This way, the regime eliminates all forms of autonomous participation, leaves activists and human rights defenders in a more precarious situation, and obtains the resources it needs to feed the clientelist practices that are its trademark.
One of the problems faced by the regime is precisely its lack of resources to sustain the community development projects carried out by many of the eliminated CSOs. It can no longer count on support from Venezuela, nor can it continue to expand the family businesses that the Ortega-Murillo clan has built while in power. Many of these companies have been sanctioned, including the one that monopolises the fuel business, which has forced them to carry out various manoeuvres to keep them active.
What work does your organisation do?
Feminist Programme La Corriente has existed for almost 30 years and was born with the aim of contributing to generating critical thought and encouraging new forms of participation by women in Central America. Over the last 15 years we have expanded our work with young people and sexual and gender dissident collectives.
Throughout our journey, we have contributed to challenging heterosexism, misogyny and macho violence and built vital networks for the defence of rights. We have prioritised issues related to the prevention of violence, voluntary motherhood, women’s right to decide about their bodies and respect for sexual and gender diversity.
Efforts to research the reality experienced by women, young people and dissident bodies have been key to the development of training and public communication programmes. For us it is of vital importance to strengthen collective action through social movements capable of thinking and acting on the changes required by Nicaraguan society. We are also part of Central American and Latin American networks and alliances, from where we contribute to advocacy processes with governments and global institutions.
Precisely because we generate critical thought and defend rights, in May this year the National Assembly cancelled our legal status and in early July the police took over our facilities.
On what grounds was the organisation ordered to shut down?
Generally speaking, the arguments put forward by the Sandinista deputies who control parliament include an unfounded accusation that CSOs are potential money launderers because they receive funding from foreign sources, deliberately ignoring the fact that these sources are linked to governments and duly established cooperation agencies.
They also cite alleged bureaucratic infractions such as the expiry of the term of the board of directors, failure to update statutes and refusal to provide information requested by the Ministry of the Interior. On the latter point, it is worth highlighting the abusive ministry’s intervention: in accordance with the new law, it requires CSOs to submit detailed information on each activity to be carried out and personal data of the people with whom they work.
Such demands denaturalise the meaning of CSOs, turning them into an extension of the state, clear evidence of the totalitarian zeal of this regime. It is clearly an attempt to impose a model of absolute control that requires the dismantling of all forms of autonomous civil society participation.
Likewise, by shutting down CSOs that work with low-income groups of the population, the regime is trying to regain control of what it thinks of as its social base, which it seeks to recover or retain by means of clientelist policies. This is why it has eliminated organisations that promote access to education for low-income children and young people, fulfil the needs of people with disabilities, promote access to land and other resources for rural and Indigenous women and provide sexual and reproductive health services and support for women who are victims of violence, among others.
CSOs that work in the field of citizen participation from a rights-based perspective and with a clear focus on the defence of democratic values have also been closed. They have been declared opponents of the regime and their representatives have been subjected to surveillance, threats, exile and imprisonment. It is also a kind of revenge for generating evidence that contradicts the official discourse and denouncing the systematic violation of rights by the Sandinista regime.
Why has the regime specifically targeted feminist organisations?
Hostility against Nicaraguan feminists dates back to the 1980s. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), as a guerrilla force turned into party that came to power, never really reflected on the patriarchal logics of power, but simply replicated them unceremoniously.
The feminists of my generation had to endure an authoritarian and abusive relationship with the Sandinista government, which at different times expressed discomfort with the existence of women’s organisations, because from their perspective this weakened the unity of revolutionary forces.
They exercised their veto power to prevent women’s collectives from placing demands related to macho violence and sexual and reproductive rights on the public agenda. The leaders of these collectives were silenced and forced to take on the priorities set by the ruling party leadership.
The watershed that marked the feminist movement’s definitive break with the FSLN occurred in the late 1990s, when Zoilamérica Narváez, daughter of Rosario Murillo, who is both Daniel Ortega’s wife and Vice President, denounced the abuses committed by her stepfather for more than 20 years. When feminists clearly stood on the victim’s side it meant a break with the FSLN leadership, which has since perceived us as enemies. Zoilamérica’s denunciation encouraged further accusations involving other members of the FSLN national leadership, including the late Tomás Borge.
Additionally, during the 2005-2006 electoral campaign, part of the feminist movement participated in an electoral alliance of opposition parties that included the Sandinista Renovation Movement, now UNAMOS, which the FSLN considers traitors to the revolution for having demanded democratisation of the party and questioned Ortega’s authoritarian and strongman leadership.
As he returned to power in 2007, it immediately became clear that Ortega’s strategy was to dismantle feminist networks, which by that point had increased their capacity to put forward ideas and influence Nicaraguan society. The stigmatisation campaign began with a speech by Murillo in which she accused feminists of trafficking in women’s suffering and of wanting to impose a way of life alien to Nicaraguan culture. That same year, the government began to pressure international aid agencies to suspend their support for feminist collectives, causing many of them to leave the country.
Among the main strands of the Ortega-Murillo regime’s discourse was its supposed commitment to gender equality: they proclaimed as a key advance the achievement of gender parity in all branches of government. This idea was taken up by United Nations (UN) bodies and multilateral financial institutions, but feminists provided clear evidence confirming the persistence of inequalities and the absence of public policies to address women’s demands.
The absolute criminalisation of abortion, the absence of policies to prevent and punish macho violence, including sexual abuse against girls and adolescents, which is prevalent in Nicaragua, the absence of sex education, the failure to comply with the law that established the creation of a fund to distribute land to rural women and the violation of the labour rights of workers in foreign factories are among the many problems that remain unresolved by a regime that dares to compare itself with the countries that have made the most progress in terms of gender equality in the world.
What should donors, and the international community in general, do to help Nicaraguan civil society?
In such turbulent times and with so many hotspots of tension in the world, it is hard to appeal for solidarity with Nicaraguan society, which continues to bet on civic and peaceful change to move away from this new dictatorship and lay the foundations for the country’s democratisation.
However, we must continue to appeal to democratic governments, regardless of their ideology, so they do not look away from what is happening in Nicaragua and support our just demands for the immediate release of political prisoners, the suspension of the police state, an end to the persecution of CSOs and the Catholic Church and the full restoration of our rights.
We call for a coherent position on the part of democratic governments, UN agencies, multilateral financial institutions, regional integration blocs and political party forums to avoid any action that could contribute to prolonging the stay of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in power.
At this point it is inadmissible that they denounce the regime’s systematic human rights violations, including the commission of crimes against humanity, while at the same time voting in favour of granting loans to the very same regime, which in addition to increasing a debt that is already greater than the country’s GDP gives it greater room for manoeuvre to remain in power.
Active support for human rights defenders, independent journalists and CSOs is vital to sustain hope for democratic change that does not impose further suffering on the Nicaraguan people.
Civic space in Nicaragua is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with La Corriente through its website or its Facebook page, and follow @LaCorrienteNica on Twitter.