Marco Werman: Take us back to the beginning, 1979, 1980. Remind us who the Sandinistas were and who Ortega toppled.

Cindy Regidor: The Sandinistas led the revolution that overthrew the [Anastasio] Somoza [Debayle] dictatorship in 1979. This is a right-wing dictatorship that remained in power for 40 years. Daniel Ortega is a former guerrilla leader and one of the leaders of the Sandinista Revolution, and he was president of Nicaragua during the 1980s. Then, he lost a democratic election in 1990 and returned to power in 2007, and since then, he has gradually dismantled democratic institutions, and he has concentrated power around himself, his wife Rosario Murillo and their family.

Going back to the 1980s with the Sandinistas, they became something of the darlings of international socialist movements. The British rockers The Clash even named one of their most political recordings “Sandinista!” I want to go back to the 1990s and early 2000s when Ortega was not president. I mean, he actually ran several times and was defeated, but when he came back in 2007, help us understand how Ortega went from being a former freedom fighter, then a well-behaved democrat heeding the popular vote, to then becoming what is effectively a dictator. What happened?

Well, I think that at the beginning, they were pretending to be a democratic government and they knew that they had to play by the rules. But at the same time, they were systematically trying to co-opt all the other branches of power, the electoral authorities, the judicial system, and the electoral processes that happened during that time were not really fair. And so, the most obvious example of that was the 2021 election, when all the presidential hopefuls were either detained or banished and stripped of their citizenship. And so, what has happened is that because after the 2018 protests, they knew that they were no longer popular, they just decided to intensify repression, and they imposed a de facto police state. And so, they no longer cared about what the nation thought about them. They just knew that they needed to remain in power.

Cindy, can you just elaborate a bit more on how this co-dictatorship between Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario, has operated and how it’s further undermined democracy in Nicaragua?

In practice, Daniel Ortega has remained as the symbolic leader of the revolution, but it is Rosario Murillo who is well known to be the person who is actually taking all the decisions in the country. She gained notoriety in the 2007 election because she was the one who ran the campaign, and it was considered successful, of course, because they won. This also stemmed after Daniel Ortega was denounced by his stepdaughter for sexual abuse. And Rosario Murillo, she decided to side with Daniel Ortega instead of with her daughter. And so, what many people think is that that’s basically the moment where Rosario Murillo gained leverage and became Daniel Ortega’s equal.

Yeah, pretty stunning. How have these moves towards consolidating control of the country been perceived among Nicaraguans?

If you look at the footage from the 2018 protest, you can see that it was massive. The majority of the country, the private sector, the church, the NGOs and the population in general, they were demanding that the repression stop and that the president should resign. And the only reason why we no longer see that is because any kind of protest that is not allowed by the government is completely forbidden, and you can end up in jail or banished from your own country.

So Cindy, Ortega says with this move he’s building a wall between him and the opposition. What meaningful opposition still exists in Nicaragua?

Inside Nicaragua, there is basically none. And if there are some members of the opposition inside Nicaragua, they must remain silent and under the radar because otherwise they would be put in prison. And then the prominent leaders, they’re all exiled, and many of them after being in jail for several years. And the government then decided to expel them from the country. And so, they’re not allowed back in the country, and there’s no possibility of organizing any kind of movement from inside of Nicaragua because the repression, the crackdown, is very, very heavy.

I also wanted to ask you, Cindy, about relations between the US and Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. I mean, in recent years, we know they’ve been bumpy and antagonistic, but for some reason, Nicaragua lately seems to have escaped the level of attention and regime change that the Trump administration has directed at Cuba and Venezuela. Why does it seem the White House does not have Nicaragua in its crosshairs?

I think Nicaragua doesn’t seem to be a priority right now, especially when you have a country like Venezuela. And Nicaragua does not have Venezuela’s oil reserves, and Nicaragua doesn’t have the same geopolitical significance as Cuba. So, at this point, there is no public indication that the United States is preparing an operation similar to the one carried out against [former Venezueland President] Nicolás Maduro. But I do think that it does have an effect on how Ortega and Rosario Murillo are now acting. And I think that it does create fear and paranoia. But the reality is that, so far, what we have seen from the United States is mainly economic sanctions, visa restrictions, trade pressure, but no more than that, so far.

So, one last question, Cindy. Earlier when we heard Ortega making his announcement, I noticed some applause when he said no more elections. Who still supports him and Murillo in Nicaragua?

They still have a base, a part of the population who either strongly believe that they are still representatives of the revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. You may say radical left-wing Nicaraguans who still believe that Ortega and his wife are victims of a conspiracy by the United States. And there are also people who are afraid, and they work for the government, and they need to side with them because otherwise they could lose their jobs or worse.