Press and other freedoms under attack in Nicaragua

Robert Magowan takes a look at declining freedom of the press in Nicaragua in a three-part series for Open Democracy. Part one is entitled In beautiful, beleaguered Nicaragua, a democracy lies dormant.

Such audacity is characteristic of the caudillo (the term for Latin America’s strongman demagogues), Daniel Ortega.  The management style employed by the former comandante and his wife, Rosario Murillo, is more akin to that of a family business than a nation state.  Observers and opponents have long grown accustomed to nonsensical turnarounds and impenetrable governance.  Some decisions, such as the weekly deployment of over a hundred heavily armed police in Managua to cordon off the CSE building from that small group of protesters, are drenched in 1980s paranoia, and might almost warrant pity.  Others, like one to declare Cardinal Obando y Bravo (previously branded “the arch-enemy” by Ortega’s revolutionary government) a national hero, are practically laughable.  But though it is only sporadically revealed, there also exists a much more sinister nature to this power couple’s rule.

Parts two and three are not yet available. Here was my take on developments from December 2012 for Al Jazeera - Chipping away at democracy in Nicaragua and Panama.