In July 2018 he left Nicaragua and has not yet returned. The trip to Madrid has lasted longer than expected.

I did not come to stay, but the friends told me that the situation was very unstable, that it would delay the return a little. I decided to wait a month, but the situation did not improve and I am still here. In addition, since we are in a wave of repression in Nicaragua, it is important that there are voices denouncing what is happening outside the country.

The political crisis in Nicaragua broke out in April last year, but it can be concluded that the conflict has its origins in time.

In Nicaragua, the dictatorship was developing. In 2007, Daniel Ortega’s government came back to power with the promise to deliver on the second part of the revolution. The Government claimed itself to be left and anti-imperialist, but in reality it has pursued a policy that is contradictory to all this.

The feminist movement has long criticized that change of direction, right?

Nicaraguan feminism has long been critical of the leadership of the Sandinista Front, especially since, in 1998, Ortega's stepdaughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, denounced the sexual abuse suffered by her stepfather. Then came Ortega’s pact with the Liberal Constitutionalist Party on the right, German Arnoldo, to share control over the state and institutions. Not only that, but before the 2006 elections, through the criminalization of abortion, it made a pact with the most conservative churches, both Catholic and Evangelical. This penalty is maintained and gives way to discourses and policies against women’s rights. At the same time, steps have been taken backwards in the democratic functioning of the country: government control over state powers has been increasing to a total extent. Everything has become controlled by the party, and the climate of repression is increasingly intense. Above all, society was largely demobilized, except for the feminist movement that has kept itself on the streets with its complaints.

In the April uprisings, however, many sectors of society participated. A sign that society has mobilized.

In 2011, the Government approved the mega project of the interoceanic canal, the construction of which has been awarded to a Chinese company. Thus, a peasant movement formed by individuals from communities especially affected by the canal began to take place, which also suffered the government repression. The discomfort was increasing. In April, a fire in a Indian Corn biosphere reserve also began protests, as there is an invasion and trafficking of agricultural land. In a few weeks, a social security reform was adopted which reduced pensioners’ pensions and increased contributions, causing protests. These protests were brutally suppressed, and that repression pushed more people to participate in the protests. As the protests intensified, the repression intensified and killed several citizens: in the first two or three weeks there were more than twenty deaths, almost all young people. These killings erupted, causing protests to spread throughout the country. With all this repression and violence, the conflict generated in the cove of social security became somewhat greater and changed the social demand. From calling for the withdrawal of the Social Security reform [which the government subsequently withdrew], people went on to ask that the Ortega Government abandon power. By then, the people already wanted justice for the victims of repression and a process of democratization that would guarantee plural, free and transparent elections. All this happened in April last year, and today the conflict continues.

What is the situation now?

From April of last year until the beginning of July there have been street protests, but in July repression was reinforced by suspending public protests with arms in hand. Abandoning a multitude of deaths, he achieved his goal and established a police state in which it is not possible to carry out any kind of mobilization. People trying to protest are arrested, usually by judicial proceedings against them. In this regard, a legal reform was carried out in July, which allows any critical act with the Government to be described as terrorism or terrorist financing. It's all terrorism.

The numbers of victims of repression are impressive: According to data from the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CGPJ), the number of deaths is 326, although human rights organizations claim that they exceed 500.

Amnesty International issued a report on repressive strategies in Nicaragua. It is called “throwing death.”

It bears this title because the murders that occurred during the protests followed the same pattern: all the victims who shot in the head, neck and chest. He was shot to death, and with him the government had ordered public hospitals not to serve the wounded. As documented in the reports, there has been coordination at the state level to ensure repression and institutions have been at the service of the health system, the judicial system, the Prosecutor’s Office,… and the educational system, controlling students and using to support the government. Every institution has been in the service of repression. Therefore, at the moment, the demand for justice cannot be resolved by the judicial system.

For its part, Ortega assures that the situation in Nicaragua is completely normal and there are no exceptions.

The Government wants to give the impression of normalcy and not to allow demonstrations to take place on the street. His speech is that the popular uprising has been a coup attempt organized from outside, financed by the US and the imperialist forces. They say that they have disarmed the coup and that normality has already recovered in the country.

They have continuously changed their discourse: they initially denied everything; when it became impossible to deny the dead, the murders were attributed to the people who protested; when the presence of paramilitaries was denounced they said they did not know who they were, suggesting they were golfers; recently, a police chief said they were police who were doing their work in secret.

The pact with the Church, the criminalization of abortion,… it can be thought that the policies carried out have led to setbacks in women’s rights.

On the one hand, they speak of women as protagonists of the social sphere and as a destination for many public policies, but also of a discourse that is very conservative and familiar with religious conceptions, which makes feminism an enemy. The Government regards feminism as a foreign influence detrimental to Nicaraguan women. Ortega has taken a tremendous step backwards in the policies against male violence.

What is the role of feminists right now?

We are part of the citizens' revolt, and I think we have made a very important contribution to the idea that the struggle does not have to be violent. In addition, we have put on the table the idea of fighting from self-care, suggesting that it is not a question of risking and giving life, but of fighting for a dignified life. We have helped transform the heroic and militaristic political culture we were dragging around: The motto of the 80s and 90s “Patria libre ala hil” has been modified by the motto “To live a free homeland”. We consider this to be a significant cultural change.

There are those who see you as a puppet of imperialism and compare you to Venezuelan opponents.

Indeed, there is a sector that is not considered that Nicaraguans have the capacity to analyse reality and act in accordance with our criteria. I think they show a clear lack of respect and a colonialist attitude. These people, instead of observing, knowing and listening, analyze reality in a pre-established framework. We are not going to deny that the United States has Nicaragua on its agenda and that they are trying to make the most of it through this situation. But this revolt has not been organized outside Nicaragua, but emerged in the people, and young people have had a lot to do with mobilizing the whole country.

The Nicaraguan people have once again demonstrated what they have shown in the 1970s and 1980s: that they can endure a lot of time, but not all the time. The people who fought Somoza, the people who participated in the revolution, have participated in this revolt. The fact that a number of things have been repeated in the fight against the Somoza dictatorship has been very significant.

They also accuse you of belonging to wealthy classes.

This is easily discounted: How were you going to fill the streets with wealthy people? Given the reality of Nicaragua, it is statistically impossible. Observe the prisoners, because prison is a reflection of the reality of the country: poor people with few resources prevail.

It should approach, observe, listen and set aside the prejudices that are attributed to us. They have to recognize that things change, that they can evolve or invade, and that the current Sandinista Front has nothing to do with the 1980s.

Some fear that a possible change may bring a right-wing government.

That's what they say. In the face of a mass massacre, I believe that it is the same thing as a left-wing government as a right-wing government, that the murder and imprisonment of people cannot be justified in any way with impunity. Moreover, the Sandinista Front is not left-wing, because it does not make left-wing politics: it has a name, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Sandinista National Liberation Front), which in its day coincided with the meaning of those acronyms; and it also has some colors and symbols that connect with the past. But through the practice of these twelve years of government it has shown that its economic policy is neoliberal and extractivist, that although it is an anti-imperialist discourse, in practice it gives unscrupulous access to external investors, and that it is a very conservative country in social and cultural terms.

What kind of government will we have after a transition? We don't know. But the suspension of the elections in order to avoid a right-wing government would be unjustifiable. If people are willing to act like this in their country, I will shut up and we will all take that path. But no, here it is that people are asking us to maintain the situation in Nicaragua in order to prevent the arrival of some who may be more evil. There is no guarantee that what may come is a progressive force, but those of us who believe in it will fight for it. Those who believe in our struggle should support us, not ask us for a guarantee that we will win. Nobody can offer it.

Although the Government of Honduras supports him and Bolsonaro does so when he reaches the presidency, Ortega maintains the figure on the left.

I would say it's emotional. In general, I think it's the over-50s who are emotionally related to the dream of the 1980s revolution that hold that vision. They idealized the revolution, they have it on the altar and they don't want to touch it. They don't want to see reality. We say that the Sandinista revolution ended quite a few years ago and that we must mourn. History has been skilled and privatized, with its memories and symbols. Daniel Ortega wanted the revolution to be supplanted, but the revolution has always been much more than a person. Ortega and his colleagues have betrayed the revolution.

I read to Gioconda Belli that Ortega is forming a dynasty.

In particular, having lived through a dynamic dictatorship, Nicaragua had banned the subsequent re-election of the presidency, and Ortega has broken that rule: by having the judicial system under control, he obtained a ruling that allowed him to re-elect, and then he has modified the constitution. During the first presidential term his wife, Rosario Murillo, had no public office, as the Constitution prohibits its members from holding public office, but also violated that rule and created a Communication and Citizenship Council presided over by Murillo. In the last elections he has been a candidate for the presidency of the Caribbean country. As for the children, one is in charge of the oil bills, another is responsible for the negotiations of the interoceanic canal, another three are in charge of controlled media in recent times… If so, it is a dynasty. It has too many similarities...

With the dictatorship of Somoza?

Yes. I don't know, maybe you have to be a psychoanalyst to understand this dynamic, with which you end up imitating [ironically] someone who struggled in their day. They couldn't be more similar. For example, a comparison has been made with the pages of the newspapers of the time of Somoza and those of today, and the similarities were enormous: they equally disqualify the people participating in the protests, with adjectives such as vague and terrorists, and the reader is made to understand that they lead the country to perdition.