Hora Cero
junio 16, 2025
To build the foundations of a dynasty, seven years of repression and a constitutional reform that demolishes the rule of law were necessary. That’s how long it has taken the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to shape a familiar authoritarian project, far removed from the revolutionary movement that shaped the youth generations of the 1960s and 1970s in Nicaragua. A project that, for many, is no longer a political party, but a system based on a logic of control and absolute power.
«This is no longer a political party; it’s a family political project by a group of new oligarchs in the country,» analyzes lawyer Yader Morazán, a former official in the Nicaraguan judiciary until 2018. He currently lives in exile and is one of the 94 Nicaraguans whose nationality was stripped in February 2023.
Morazán believes that the constitutional reforms implemented by the regime since 2019 have laid the groundwork for this authoritarian project, shaped by a new elite of supporters. “Since the reforms implemented in 2019, the internal checks and balances that existed within the Sandinista Front have disappeared. Currently, obedience and complicity are rewarded, not loyalty, because loyalty is a value oriented toward good, and applauding criminal actions constitutes complicity,” he emphasizes.
The reforms to the Nicaraguan Constitution have been the scaffolding for a process of maximum institutional erosion, complemented by repression. At the end of 2024, Ortega and Murillo revised the Constitution, affecting more than 100 articles. Among them was the legalization of the position of «co-president,» a position held by Rosario Murillo, who also serves as first lady and government spokesperson.
Under these reforms, the co-presidents have equal power and are both elected by vote. This is far from the truth, given the executive branch’s control over all other branches of government, including the electoral. Since 2012—when Ortega was reelected after coming to power—the election results have been questioned. In 2021, the regime eliminated the opposition by imprisoning presidential candidates from the movements that emerged from the 2018 protests.
«The constitutional reforms of November 2024 seek absolute control of the State… they constitute a rupture in the legal continuity of the Nicaraguan constitutional system, collapsing democratic institutions,» explains lawyer Juan Diego Barberena, a constitutional and civil litigator who is also exiled by the regime.
Barberena sees everything as a whole: both the constitutional reforms and the purges within the party are interpreted as «a mechanism to eliminate internal obstacles that could affect Rosario Murillo’s stability as a future leader.»
The FSLN’s purges against former members of the ruling elite reached even former and loyal historical figures, such as Bayardo Arce, one of the revolutionary commanders and an economic advisor. However, they did not stop with him. The most recent was the alleged capture of Néstor Moncada Lau, the regime’s security advisor and one of the most feared figures within the FSLN ranks. According to news reports, Moncada Lau was interrogated on Thursday, August 14, at the Judicial Assistance Directorate, known as El Chipote, then sent home on Friday; and finally, on Saturday, he was transferred to La Modelo prison in Managua.
Moncada Lau is a former official whose career dates back to State Security in the 1980s. He is also one of Ortega’s most trusted men, so much so that during the 2018 repression, he served as one of the main political operators between the National Police, the Army, and investigative bodies. His profile, although crucial to the regime’s control, has always remained in the shadows, away from the spotlight and public appearances.
The percussion also affects a key player in intelligence operations, Rodolfo Castillo, a retired colonel and Lenin Cerna’s right-hand man, a high-ranking official of the former State Security, and a key figure in the FSLN until his expulsion from the El Carmen presidential complex in 2011. On the first of August, the National Police arrested Castillo amid the purges the dictatorship has unleashed in recent weeks. According to a source interviewed by Confidencial, the capture of Castillo and his niece, Nadezna Obando Cerna, were «low blows» for him.
At the end of July, Nicaraguan media reported Cerna’s escape following the escalation of attacks against figures in the party’s inner circle. However, recent updates indicate that he was seen in Managua on August 10. According to the media, he was seen in the area of the National Stadium and on the Masaya Highway.
“What this reveals to us is that a restructuring is also taking place, and this is redundant, in the power structure. At other times, that structure was made up of people trusted by both Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. But now it’s clearer that those close to Ortega are being replaced by others more closely aligned with Murillo,” explains researcher and sociologist Elvira Cuadra, who has analyzed the regime’s repressive mechanisms in recent years.
After the escalation of the purges and the consolidation of a dynastic project, the only question left is who remains in the party that Ortega and Murillo have completely transformed. Gone is the revolutionary drive that marked young Nicaraguans and others around the world who did not hesitate to get involved in the Sandinista project. An ideal that, for many, is part of their origins and personal history.
Mónica Baltodano was 15 years old when she joined a nascent movement that emerged as the vanguard against a dictatorship. It was 1969, and Latin America was ablaze with revolutions and dictatorships. Her entry into the ranks of the Sandinista Front was initially linked to the student movement of the early 1970s and organizing in marginalized neighborhoods. Like many young women, she joined the movement inspired by liberation theology. Her goal: to defend a population affected and repressed by the Somoza regime.
“Nicaraguan youth at that time had been becoming aware of the effects the Somoza dictatorship had on Nicaraguan society through various channels. One was the student movement, and another source of awareness was liberation theology and the influence it had on young Christians who organized themselves into various movements. We became more integrated through our rejection of the extreme poverty experienced by the majority of Nicaraguans, the exclusion of peasants, and illiteracy. In other words, for social rather than political reasons,” says Baltodano, who rose to the rank of commander during her years in the military.
Today, their fate is that of almost all dissidents: exile. Baltodano had to leave the country with her family in 2021. That year saw an escalation of repression, with the arrest of activists, presidential candidates, and long-time Sandinista figures such as former commanders Hugo Torres and Dora María Téllez, among others. Torres died in prison after a prolonged illness and prison conditions that worsened his health.
His case exemplifies a total repression not only against new and current opponents of Sandinismo, but also against those who had been active in its early days and became dissidents. These were motivations with a strong component of social transformation and a strong sense of struggle against a harsh dictatorship.
«After the earthquake (of 1972, which destroyed Managua), the contradictions in Nicaragua accelerated dramatically. It became clear that the Somoza regime wasn’t interested in the people’s situation. It was a moment when many of us joined first the Revolutionary Student Front and then directly the Sandinista Front,» she says.
In the book «Students of Revolution,» by academic Claudia Rueda, anecdotes and similar accounts of high school and university students who led a frontal struggle against the Somoza dictatorship abound. One example, compiled by Rueda, is a protest led by students from the Central American University in 1970. They entered Managua’s old cathedral, accompanied by some priests, to take it over in protest of a wave of arrests the regime had made the night before. It was a success that led various sectors of society, including Jesuit priests and workers, to sympathize with the students’ cause.
Rueda also offers three keys to understanding this generation of young Nicaraguans, who, in a time like the Cold War, «are difficult to characterize. First, these students were not exactly Marxists or communists. Second, there was a religious and democratic component, which aroused the sympathy of broad sectors of society. And three, they were the result of decades of student political participation.»
«We young people found, let’s say, a connection between social struggle, social awareness of the problems of inequality, and the conviction that the dictatorship was primarily responsible for this situation in the country and for the absence of political and democratic freedoms,» Baltodano emphasizes.
On national television, the red and black flags wave on Bolívar-Chávez Avenue on July 19, 2025. The camera shows the silver Mercedes-Benz with Ortega and Murillo inside. Around them, a cordon of officers runs while guarding the vehicle. Another cordon of special forces from the Directorate of Special Police Operations (DOEP) separates the commander from his people.
The event lasted more than four hours. A vague Ortega once again resorted to rhetoric that was more reminiscent of the Cold War than the real situation facing the country. The table was purely family-oriented, with the new Chinese allies. There were no comrades or old cadres. Nor were there demobilized members of the Sandinista People’s Army, as in previous years. The old militants were dusted off for the various repressive operations that took place between 2018 and 2019, and were once again put on the shelf.
In the various branches of the party, both within the Assembly and in its propaganda, several names emerge whose affiliation is recent, and in some cases controversial. One of them is Wilfredo Navarro, a current FSLN deputy whose political beginnings date back to the youth ranks of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC).
Recently, Navarro said during a plenary session of the National Assembly that if he were in the opposition, he «would be in jail» or «volando verga.» He didn’t realize he had his microphone on while President Gustavo Porras was conducting a vote.
Another liberal cadre within the FSLN ranks is Enrique Quiñonez, a former critic and opponent of the Ortega government until 2016, when he forged close political ties with the party. In 2018, he was sworn in for a two-year term as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Council of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, a party-aligned group.
Quiñonez’s end of criticism of Ortega was marked by a commercial event. The FSLN rented one of its NicaBus buses for a commemorative event on July 19th, which Ortega used to carry out the tactical retreat to Masaya, a military and strategic action that took place during the final days of the Somoza dictatorship.
Moisés Absalón Pastora and Elida María Galeano Cornejo are also emerging as new allies in the party’s current structure. Pastora, who has various opinion pieces in pro-government media outlets, acts as a sort of propaganda disseminator. Galeano, meanwhile, has a history within the Nicaraguan Resistance—or the Contras.
Pastora’s background is linked to liberalism and the Somoza regime, but he has positioned himself as a staunch defender and propagandist for the regime. Galeano, for her part, has transitioned from armed resistance to joining the FSLN as a national representative and a member of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen). However, she has also been accused of using influence to free settlers who invaded indigenous territory, amid an increase in the murders of community members killed by invaders.
These are the new faces of Sandinismo: mostly individuals who once served in political movements opposed to the FSLN and who have now crossed the line for their own convenience or business reasons. Historical commanders and figures with authentic revolutionary trajectories and Sandinista ideology are a thing of the past. In this new era, it’s not even necessary to be a leftist to join the Frente, simply repeating empty rhetoric and unreservedly obeying the orders of the Ortega-Murillos are enough to become an honorary «comrade.»
Meanwhile, a new phase of repression is opening within the party’s inner circle, one whose scope remains a subject of study. «They’re reorganizing the entire power structure with people loyal to Rosario Murillo. Anyone who had any ties to Ortega, any loyalty, regardless of the institution or location, will be replaced. In some cases, in a positive way, in other cases, in a negative way,» projects sociologist Cuadra.
