AZMEX NICARAGUA SPECIAL 19-7-18

AZMEX NICARAGUA SPECIAL 19 JUL 2018

Note: From La Jornada, Mexico.


Nicaragua commemorates anniversary of Sandinista revolution amid protests
Reuters | Thursday, 19 Jul 2018 09:27

http://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/2018/07/19/nicaragua-conmemora-aniversario-de-revolucion-sandinista-en-medio-de-protestas-5034.html

Paramilitaries clean the floor in front of a painting that says "seller of Ortega's native land", in the neighborhood of Monimbó in Masaya. Photo AFP

Managua Nicaragua celebrates on Thursday the 39th anniversary of the victory of the Sandinista Revolution but, after three months of repression of the protests against President Daniel Ortega that have left almost 300 dead, more and more Nicaraguans compare the ex-guerrilla with the brutal dictator (Somoza) who was overthrown in 1979.

Amid claims from the international community for alleged human rights violations by the security forces and paramilitaries, Ortega, a 72-year-old former leftist guerrilla, faces his worst political crisis since taking his third consecutive term in 2017.

"The town is no longer with Ortega," said Arlene Correa, one of the five daughters of Francisco Correa, who was arrested in the week accused of supporting the protests against the president.

"With the human rights violations, the murders, (Ortega) looks more and more like Somoza, people are opening their eyes," she added at the entrance of the El Chipote prison, one of the main torture centers of the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, overthrown in 1979 by the Sandinistas.

A poll by the CID Gallup firm cited Ortega's disapproval by 63 percent in May after winning re-election at the end of 2016 with 72 percent support.

Enough violence

From early on, thousands crowded to reach Bolivar Avenue and locate to hear Ortega's speech, scheduled at the end of the afternoon on a stand located between Lake Xolotlan and a huge silhouette of the Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto Sandino, the leader of the local resistance against the American invasion in the first half of the 20th century.

With the blue and white banner and red and black flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front - the ruling party - Ortega's allies arrived from all over the small country of 6.2 million inhabitants.

"It was violence, we have suffered years of wars and now to want to return to the same thing," said Alexander Mendoza, a law student, referring to the conflicts that the country waged in the 20th century as the US occupation between 1927 and 1933, the overthrow of Somoza in 1979 and the war of the Contras, financed by the United States between 1981 and 1989.

From the weekend until Tuesday, special police forces supported by paramilitaries sympathetic to Ortega regained control of the last bastions of the opposition protesters in Managua and Masaya, leaving more than a dozen dead in heavy fighting.

Despite the repression, opponents say they will continue to protest until Ortega resigns.

The demonstrations against the Government began in mid-April as a reaction to a reform of the social security system, but they expanded after the violent repression.

Between the demands, the opponents demand by the state control of the mass media, the suspicions of electoral fraud, the manipulation of the justice, the corruption and the intention of Ortega of wanting to establish a "family dictatorship" of the hand of his wife , Vice President Rosario Murillo.

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Some background, but be aware it from wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

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