Masked individuals, armed with homemade mortars and bazookas, block avenues, close the main streets, attack state institutions, burn tires, start fires, loot and kill.
To date, approximately 170 people have died as a result of the chaos and violence in Nicaragua. A powerful media campaign follows the events and more than that, openly promotes, falsifies, and multiples them.
The violent acts are presented as peaceful demonstrations by students, and the press publishes photos of those supposedly killed by the Sandinista government, but just as the truth will come out, the deception is discovered.
Several have complained, demonstrating that the supposed dead are actually alive. One young man who resides abroad returned to state as such before the cameras, but of course this was not reproduced by the mainstream media.
U.S. author, journalist, and blogger Max Blumenthal recently published an article noting that a group of activists opposed to the current Nicaraguan government went to meet with leaders of Freedom House in Washington D.C. According to Blumenthal, the opposition group known as M-19, “were there to beseech Donald Trump and other right-wing U.S. government officials to help them in their fight against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.”
The links between U.S. organizations and the events underway in Nicaragua and other parts of the world are clearly revealed in Blumenthal’s piece: “The NED (National Endowment for Democracy) is a leading agent of U.S. soft power that has meddled in other countries’ affairs since its founding at the height of the Cold War, in 1983.” And the author cites Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED, in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The budget with which the NED operates comes from the United States Congress, which grants it millions of dollars every two years, as part of the State Department budget. The organization also receives donations from four associations: the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Ohin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Freedom House, indirectly funded by federal contracts.
The money is distributed to the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in turn distribute monetary and material resources to other organizations in the U.S. and around the world, and disburse money and materials for opposition organizations in countries whose governments are not to the liking of the U.S. government.
The report from this U.S. journalist identifies the culprits: “Aside from NED, USAID has been the most active promoter of regime change against socialist-oriented governments in Latin America. In Nicaragua, USAID’s budget topped $5.2 million in 2018, with most of the funding directed towards training civil society and media organizations.”
This is the same USAID that used funds from the Alliance for Progress, a U.S. “economic aid,” “political” and “social” program, a kind of Marshall Plan and the first big attempt to halt the prospect of revolution in Latin American and isolate Cuba, and finance repression. Instead of engineers, technicians, and skilled workers, USAID trained unscrupulous police, soldiers, paramilitaries, torturers, and killers; instead of factories, farms, and schools, detention and torture centers were built.
Let’s not forget that this is also the same USAID that financed the training of death squads, promoted “health” programs that concealed inhumane sterilization processes in Central America, and collaborated with CIA narco agents in the Iran-Contra operation.
USAID has created an extensive network on our continent, which attracts cadres, manufactures leaders, and penetrates civil society. A true interventionist army of “experts,” “advisors” and “consultants,” working to develop its subversive plans. In its first ten years alone, the NED distributed more than 200 million dollars in 1,500 projects to support so-called “friends of America.”
Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Iran, and Venezuela; wherever there is a government that goes against the interests of the United States, these generously financed experts in destabilization and chaos swiftly act.
Mercenaries, delinquents, hirelings of the “Soft Coup,” of the “Color Revolutions,” or other “revolutions” with eye-catching and peaceful names, designed in Langley’s laboratories, such as the Rose Revolution, Tulip Revolution, Orange Revolution, or known by names closer to reality such as the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia; where the purchase of uncritical consciences and deception, seduction through the use of attractive concepts for young people, and a lot of money, all the money that is necessary, are the soldiers and weapons of this new war. And of course, Nicaragua is now the target.
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AS early as 2016, talk of war against Nicaragua could again be heard in Miami, at a time when the streets of this nation were a regional example of security, peace, and prosperity, where a hardworking, tranquil people proudly enjoyed the social and economic advances achieved by the Sandinista government, that had established a national consensus, in the wake of one of the worst interventions carried out by the United States in Central America.
With no justification whatsoever - when the news from Nicaragua around the world was about a proposed inter-oceanic canal that would boost the economy and impact global navigation - Congress members who make a living off the U.S. war against Cuba and Venezuela were mounting efforts to reverse the prosperity and calm that reigned in the land of Augusto César Sandino.
Congress members, first in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, introduced a bill to create obstacles to the awarding of international loans to Nicaragua, hamper foreign investment, and put a brake on socio-economic development in the country. This imperialist punishment, cooked up by the worst of the anti-Cuban mafia in 2015, set in motion the fabrication of a pretext regarding the alleged lack of democracy, justified as a way to “guarantee electoral transparency and fight corruption.” The result of this initial maneuver was the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017 (NICA Act).
Ileana Ros, Albio Sires, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, and others, among the most reactionary legislators in Congress from South Florida, Texas, and New Jersey, are again attempting to reinvent the Contras and get rid of the Sandinista government, which has repeatedly shown at the polls that it enjoys the people’s majority support.
The tentacles of this subversive plot go beyond the capital, since these forces are well connected to the United States’ coup-manufacturing machinery, and laid the foundation for a media campaign in coordination with agencies specialized in carrying out dirty wars and soft coups, working with U.S. intelligence and the CIA, in particular.
In this specific case, international press media have documented the participation of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), as well their sub-contractors, which have been working meticulously, since Daniel Ortega was first elected, to re-invent a “new leadership,” selectively infiltrating key sectors of the economy, targeting youth, students, medium and small businesspeople, environmental and feminist groups, among others, to undermine the foundation of support for the Sandinista government.
It is revealing that on April 16, this year, following the same line espoused by anti-Cuban Congress members, USAID Administrator Mark Green announced that the U.S. government would continue supporting the participation of a “free … genuine” civil society in Nicaragua, after stating that the United States is concerned about the closing of democratic spaces in Nicaragua, “systematic” violations of human rights, and government corruption.
In March, Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Albio Sires sent a letter to Green, in which they call on the U.S. government to reverse its decision to provide “zero aid” to Nicaragua through USAID for the fiscal year 2018-2019, while at the same time calling on the agency to avoid supporting “members of the private sector linked to corruption, money laundering, or the Daniel Ortega regime.”
At the end of 2008, the media reported that USAID had provided at least a million dollars in Nicaragua that year to NGOs, radio broadcasters, and political groups like the Communications Research Center (CINCO), to intervene in municipal elections.
This financing, as was denounced at the time, contributed surreptitiously as “small donations,” that were not to exceed 25,000 dollars, was part of a large scale U.S. plan to overthrow the government of Daniel Ortega, carried out since then by internal agents from the Nicaraguan right.
The strategy mounted to discredit the Sandinista government in the media was conducted via two financing routes; one directed by USAID and the Casals & Associates firm, and another managed by the so-called Common Fund in Europe, which provided funds to organize campaigns and mobilizations to destabilize the government.
By 2008, media in Nicaragua had identified at least 14 subversive projects run by USAID across the country, under the cover of a wide range of titles and objectives, made possible by this funding.
Another key element of the U.S. machinery linked to the CIA is the National Democratic Institute, an instrument dedicated to promoting “change” that focuses on “empowering” so called “agents of change” in countries with governments not to Washington’s liking.
A Swedish journalist reported, this past June 4, that three students from Nicaragua were conducting a tour of Europe to raise support for a plot against the Sandinista government, stating that at least one of the youth represented an organization created and financed by the United States.
Jessica Cisneros, he reported, was active around the issue of the involvement and participation of youth in political processes, and was a member of the Movimiento Cívico de Juventudes (Civic Youth Movement).
Another of these “agents of change” promoting hate for the Sandinista government and support for a coup, was Yerling Aguilera, from the Polytechnic University in Managua (UPOLI) and specializing in research on revolution and the feminist movement, who, according to the reporter, has been an employee and consultant for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) in Nicaragua, that works to “strengthen the abilities of political, state, and social actors for a better informed public via creative, innovative services,” which has received 224,162 dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) between 2014 and 2017.
The NED has distributed some 4.2 million dollars in Nicaragua, over this three-year period.
The USAID, NDI, and NED have been busy in the country, with thousands of activists trained to “change society.” Hundreds of NGOs, universities, and political parties have received funds and materials as part of the subversive plan that was not conceived to advance through traditional political organizations, but rather those invented to give the impression that they emerged “spontaneously” from dissatisfaction, hiding the true interest of the North at work.
Although efforts were intensified after Ortega’s 2006 electoral victory, since 2015, with the approval of the NICA Act, U.S. agencies increased and broadened financial support and resources for their “agents of change” in Nicaragua, above all through leadership courses and money for young people in universities, NGOs, and political parties.
In their political, diplomatic, and media advice to the coup-plotters, Washington has insisted on demonizing Daniel Ortega and his government, an effort carried out not only by the White House, and its agencies, allies, satellites, and mercenaries, but also the corporate media monopolies and fabricators of lies, which magnify internal problems and accuse authorities for all types of human rights violations, totally omitting the crimes and destruction committed by individuals who have been “empowered” by the USAID, NDI, NED, and CIA, who have caused the failure of talks and calls for peace. As is the case in Venezuela, Donald Trump and his advisors, architects of a thousand invasions, do not believe in dialogue or pacts, opting for war on all fronts.
Nicaragua has become the epicenter of U.S. warmongering efforts, hand in hand with Anti-Cuban legislators and profiteers, and other veteran hawks. Washington is attempting to re-invent its strategy at the cost of human lives and destruction in the streets of Nicaragua.
