The 1979 Revolution was born from a broad national consensus and extraordinary popular participation, expressed in the National Literacy Crusade, community health programs, agrarian reform, and an exceptional flourishing of culture, education, music, and poetry. It also fostered a much more active citizenry, which, after the electoral defeat of 1990, would find new expression in feminist, environmental, municipal, and civil rights movements.

None of this means portraying the Revolution as a perfect process. That would be as false as the official narrative. Every revolution has its ups and downs. The Nicaraguan one is no exception.

Its history cannot be analyzed by ignoring the war waged by the Reagan administration, the armed aggression of the counterrevolution, or the enormous tensions faced by the new government. But neither can its own mistakes be concealed: the human rights violations, the repression of Indigenous and peasant communities, the restrictions on civil liberties, and, above all, the growing concentration of power in the hands of a small group of commanders. Perhaps it was there that one of the most important lessons that history has yet to teach began to take shape.

However, the responsibility does not end there either.

After the electoral defeat of 1990, Nicaragua had the opportunity to build a solid republican democracy. But economic policies that deepened inequalities, the inability to heal the wounds of war, and the absence of genuine national reconciliation fueled the resurgence of strongman rule under the populist figures of Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega. At the same time, the democratic commitment of governments like those of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and Enrique Bolaños must be acknowledged; they never imprisoned or persecuted their political opponents.

History shows that authoritarian populisms, whether right-wing or left-wing, thrive when democracies fail to meet the needs of the population. It was on this fertile ground that Ortega reappeared. And, once this process began, too many actors chose to accommodate themselves.

Sixteen years later he returned to the Presidency. But the regime he built no longer represented the continuity of a revolution, but rather the triumph of the true sins that made the new dictatorship possible: caudillismo, corruption, the arrogance of absolute power, the greed to perpetuate himself in government, the cult of personality, lies turned into state policy, and impunity as a system.

None of these problems originated in 1979. They grew over decades until they culminated in the regime that oppresses Nicaragua today.

Liberals and social-Christian sectors, conservatives, and opposition groups formed a pact. Big business prioritized the stability of its operations. Important sectors of the religious hierarchy legitimized the new leader. International organizations downplayed the signs of institutional deterioration, and some members of the international community even presented the Nicaraguan model as an example of good governance.

Meanwhile, Ortega was dismantling democratic guarantees one by one, capturing the electoral system, subordinating the other branches of government, and preparing to establish a family regime.

That is why it is intellectually insufficient to claim that the current dictatorship is simply a consequence of the Revolution.

No. 

It is also a consequence of the pact with Arnoldo Alemán; of institutionalized fraud; of business silence; of religious complicity; of international indifference; of the errors of democratic Sandinismo itself and of the collective inability to defend republican institutions in time.

Recognizing this shared responsibility does not diminish the responsibility of Ortega’s regime. It explains it. It allows us to understand how a society can gradually lose its freedoms, until one day it discovers that almost all of them have disappeared.

The April 2018 Rebellion demonstrated, however, that democratic memory remained alive. Barricades, marches, community organizing, and even old slogans reappeared as an expression of a citizenry that once again said «enough.» Young people who weren’t even born in 1979 participated, as well as former Sandinistas who once again confronted another dictatorship. The struggle ceased to belong to an ideology and returned to belonging to the nation.

That is perhaps the greatest lesson of our recent history.

Dictatorships don’t always erupt through a coup. Many are built slowly: they concentrate power, destroy institutional checks and balances, normalize corruption, and thrive on complicity and silence. This is an uncomfortable truth, but essential if we want to offer new generations an honest account of our history.

The 1979 Revolution may be remembered, as Ernesto Cardenal said, as a lost revolution. Others consider it a betrayed revolution. Perhaps both statements contain some truth. What history cannot accept is that the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship be presented as its inevitable outcome.

Revolutions do not inevitably lead to dictatorships. What does is the absence of limits on power; the abdication of institutions from their role; fear becoming the form of government; and the decision of too many to accommodate rather than resist.

That was the true seed of Orteguism.

The lesson for new generations is not to renounce the ideals of social justice and freedom that mobilized thousands of Nicaraguans in 1979. It is to understand that no cause, however noble, justifies the concentration of power in one man or one family.

Because democracy rarely disappears overnight. It is slowly lost, every time a society tolerates someone placing themselves above the law.

And it also recovers slowly, when a people decides that fear will no longer govern its destiny.

Exile, July 2026.