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By Jill Clark-Gollub
[Jill Clark-Gollub is the coordinator of Americas Without Sanctions, a project of the SanctionsKill campaign. She is also a member of the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network. This article was first published in Black Agenda Report on June 11th.]
An Inmate in the Nicaraguan prison system receives a diploma after completing a technical course of study while inmates are dehumanized in a prison in El Salvador (Photos: El 19 Digital and Anadolu/Getty Images)
Opposition media from both Nicaragua and El Salvador, along with the Washington Post, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, all vilify Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega by equating him with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Although Ortega and Bukele are both serving consecutive terms, and a Central American polling firm reports that they enjoy high popularity among their respective populations, the two presidents actually offer a study in contrasts.
Crime and punishment
Bukele is praised for drastically reducing violence in El Salvador, but his political career is actually based on perpetuating it. First, some history. The country’s gang problem originated in the bloody US-supported war of the 1980s, including US and Israeli funding and training of death squads, that forced thousands of young men to escape forced military recruitment by fleeing to the United States. As an underclass of undocumented immigrants, and without the support of their families, many of these young men wound up in gangs on the streets of Los Angeles or in its prisons. In the mid-1990s, thousands of these gang members were deported to El Salvador, bringing violence back to a country that had just lost 75,000 lives in a brutal conflict. As Hillary Goodfriend writes, “the devastated neoliberal economic landscape proved fertile terrain for the US gang culture imported by Salvadoran youth deported from Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.” The right-wing ARENA governments of the postwar years responded to the gang problem with an iron fist.
Then from 2009-2019, while the former guerrillas of the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional—FMLN were in office, a preventive approach was attempted. Goodfriend notes that structural problems were addressed with “unprecedented increases in social spending, including critical education, health care, land, infrastructure and agricultural investment.” But these efforts were frustrated by a majority opposition legislature that limited spending on such programs, and USAID funding for a private sector approach that favored the opposition. The FMLN also made its own mistakes, including secret negotiations (along with the Catholic Church) for a gang truce, which was initially successful but politically costly once it fell apart. Still, progress was made as Salvadoran youth found more alternatives.
Nayib Bukele arrived on the national scene as the FMLN candidate for mayor of San Salvador in 2014. There has been suspicion that his political rise was based on secret deals with the gangs, and an increasing number of international media are giving details on how that worked. He is alleged to have bribed the gangs for their loyalty in that mayoral race, outbidding the ARENA candidate 2:1. Bukele soon broke with the FMLN and ran against the party in the 2019 presidential election. MS-13 gang leaders are alleged to have negotiated with him prior to the vote, demanding an end to extraditions to the US, shortened sentences, and control of territory. In return they reduced the homicide rate by hiding their crimes. After Bukele’s election, the official murder rate fell, but disappearances went up. This gang also helped him get out the vote for his legislative supermajority in 2021, sometimes violently. While he colludes with the gangs in secret, the public face of Bukele’s crime policy is a return to the repression of the ARENA years.
In March 2022, Bukele instituted a state of exception which persists to this day and has led to the imprisonment of an additional 85,000 people, giving El Salvador the highest incarceration rate in the world. Several social movement leaders are among those detained without trial. Meanwhile, many Salvadorans enjoy comparative safety in the country’s streets since the gang violence is less visible and small businesses no longer have to make extortion payments. This, along with savvy manipulation of social media, has made the president extremely popular among a segment of the population, particularly voters living in the diaspora. Now Bukele has gleefully agreed to serve as an offshore jailer for Donald Trump, and seems to delight in images of dehumanized inmates in crowded cells, indicating that they will never leave. Conditions are torturous and rehabilitation is non-existent. As Alan MacLeod reports, “cruelty is the point.” And violence persists.
The photos at the top of this article show the stark contrast in attitude towards prisoners in Nicaragua vs. El Salvador. While Bukele serves cruelty and humiliation, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega focuses on human dignity and rehabilitation—particularly through education. A recent article tells of some 8,400 inmates enrolled in university studies, vocational programs, and completing primary and secondary schooling. Inmates are also allowed to work, if they so choose, and their earnings are sent to their families. Sentences are frequently reduced for good behavior. Reconciliation is a hallmark of the Sandinista movement, which abolished the death penalty in 1979. Corporate media stories about “political prisoners” are part of a US-funded propaganda campaign and should be viewed skeptically. This article gives information about the heinous crimes committed by those US media heroes.
In Nicaragua there is minimal gang activity, drug trafficking, and drug abuse. At 6 per 100,000 population, the country’s homicide rate has been declining since 2007 and is currently just below that of the US. This is thanks to successful implementation of the kinds of social programs the FMLN attempted in El Salvador, which have engaged the youth and greatly reduced poverty. It has been a steady, long-term process that prioritizes the formerly impoverished majority; not an illusion for social media. People are empowered by creative programs that help farmers feed their families and communities, support entrepreneurs in starting a business, promote women’s health and safety, reinstate rights to Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples, and allow Nicaraguans of all ages to get an education. These are not changes that can easily be turned back, and are the reason that Daniel Ortega keeps getting a larger and larger percentage of the vote in each election.
NGOs
The Washington Post and Amnesty International inaccurately equate El Salvador’s new Foreign Agents Law with Nicaragua’s non-profits law. The Nicaraguan law requires organizations to report payments coming from outside the country and tell how such money is spent, prohibiting the use of foreign monies for political activity. It is meant to curtail foreign interference like the 2018 coup attempt that subjected the Nicaraguan population to three months of politically-motivated terror. This article provides detailed documentation of the extensive flow of USAID regime-change money to Nicaraguan opposition and media outlets before 2022. In a shameless admission that they are still dependent on US funding, the Nicaraguan opposition took to social media at the start of the second Trump administration to decry the crisis they had fallen into because their US funding was cut. Contrary to what the Post and Amnesty would have us believe, media outlets dependent on US government funding are not “independent.”
Unfortunately, USAID/NED funding for Nicaraguan opposition media operating outside the country has already been reinstated.
El Salvador has also been targeted by USAID in the past for political purposes, including during the FMLN administrations. US meddling is less likely to target Bukele, given his close alignment with the Trump administration. Criticism of the new law’s provision to charge Salvadoran charities a 30% tax on international donations does seem valid. In Nicaragua, most charitable organizations pay a 1% administrative fee on international donations, while the wealthiest charities pay up to 3%—a far cry from Bukele’s 30% tax.
Treatment of Migrants
Ortega never participated in the schemes the Trump and Biden administrations negotiated with Nicaragua’s northern neighbors to inhibit the flow of migrants; nor did he impose a ‘special fee’ on migrants in transit from Africa, as Bukele did. Nicaragua accepted direct flights from Haiti and Cuba as a humanitarian gesture to ease the crises that US intervention created in those countries. For a period, Nicaragua was a transit country for migrants looking for an inexpensive and safer route to the US that avoided the dangerous Darien Gap. It was rewarded with baseless accusations of “human trafficking” by the US Congress.
Meanwhile, Bukele zealously collaborates with Trump’s mass deportation/incarceration plan for migrants, even refusing to release a wrongfully deported Salvadoran man. Daniel Ortega has adamantly denounced this, demanded the return of the kidnapped Venezuelans held in El Salvador, and pleaded for respect for all migrants. Nicaraguan migrants who are deported home from the US are welcomed with free health check-ups, a meal, transportation to their home communities, and a small stipend to get re-settled.
Handling of the COVID-19 pandemic
El Salvador had one of the most authoritarian responses to the pandemic. The Bukele government shut down the economy, used military repression to enforce a nationwide quarantine, declared a state of exception, and forced people into COVID detention centers, where many got infected and some died. Bukele tweeted sadistic photos of gang members crowded together like sardines in prisons—bragging about his repressive response with no regard for the danger of spreading the virus.
President Ortega did the exact opposite: the economy and schools remained open, while children continued to receive their daily lunches. The government deployed a massive public health campaign with house-to-house information visits, prepared public hospitals to treat COVID, established a hotline for contact tracing and monitoring of patients, and released some prisoners. No one was jailed or went hungry due to the pandemic; the government did not incur excessive debt; and Nicaragua achieved the highest vaccination rate in Central America.
Nicaragua had one of the lowest excess death rates from the pandemic in the world (292/100,000). UNICEF congratulated Nicaragua on its pandemic response because unlike children who faced lockdowns, Nicaraguan youngsters did not experience more health risks, poorer nutrition, decreased vaccination rates, or diminished education outcomes due to the pandemic.
Salvadoran children, unfortunately, faced all the detrimental effects of an extreme lockdown. The country’s democracy suffered, the economy shrank severely, and the government incurred tremendous debt. The excess death rate in El Salvador due to the pandemic was 364/100,000.
Israel/Palestine
Historically, Zionist collaboration with right-wing repression in Central America has included the selling of napalm to ARENA governments to use on the Salvadoran people, and aid for Nicaragua’s Somoza dictatorship and contra terrorists. Now, despite Bukele’s Palestinian heritage, he has clearly allied with Israel. His imports of Israeli weapons and surveillance technology are growing at an alarming rate, and El Salvador is one of the most extensive users of Israel’s Pegasus spyware, reportedly deployed against dozens of Bukele’s critics.
In contrast, Sandinista Nicaragua has a long history of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Since October 7, 2023, Ortega has resolutely supported the Palestinian people’s right to peace and self-determination and the end of Israeli aggression. His was the first nation to join the South Africa suit at the International Court of Justice over Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. Nicaragua then filed its own suit against Germany for aiding and abetting genocide, which succeeded in reducing weapons sales to Israel and reinstating German funding to UNRWA. Nicaragua does this despite threats of increased sanctions from the US Congress and Israel.
Government social spending
Since Bukele became president, classic neoliberal policies have cut education, healthcare, and poverty reduction programs introduced by the FMLN governments before him. Schools are being closed and healthcare is increasingly unaffordable. Meanwhile, there are constant increases in spending on the military, policing, and prisons.
Social spending has been a priority for Nicaragua since President Ortega took office in 2007 and now constitutes 60% of the national budget. There have been vast improvements in health, education, nutrition, housing, drinking water, roads, and electricity. The country’s Human Development Index has surpassed El Salvador’s—remarkable since Nicaragua’s per capita GDP (an important component of that score) is half that of El Salvador. And Nicaragua ranks third lowest in the western hemisphere for military spending, even behind Costa Rica which supposedly has no army.
Briefs
By Nan McCurdy
Multitudes March to Honor Heroes and Martyrs
Sandinistas marched on June 14 through the different municipalities of the country in honor of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Massacres of Batahola and Kilocho Sur. On June 14, 1979, while Somoza was bombing Managua neighborhoods, at Kilometer 8 of the South Highway out of Managua, young combatants from San Judas Barrio were attempting to break through a National Guard line to connect with popular forces further south. They were ambushed by heavily armed members of the National Guard who then refused access to the wounded by the Red Cross and left the bodies exposed to the elements. The next day in Batahola Barrio, young combatants from many Managua neighborhoods were retreating toward San Judas Barrio when they were attacked by the Guardia, some of whom were stationed on the grounds of the US Embassy. Over 180 young fighters were killed.
Last week, the population accompanied the different remembrance walks with pride, celebrating the life and legacy of those who offered everything for the homeland. The walks that will be held in the rest of June and first half of July also signify the achievements of the Revolution and the prosperity that Nicaragua has reached in the second stage of the Revolution from 2007 to date. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.
Record International Reserves Strengthen Confidence in the Economy
The Central Bank reported that Nicaragua’s gross international reserves (GIR) reached a new historical maximum of US$6.98 billion in May 2025, reflecting a sustained growth that consolidates the country’s economic stability. According to the chart published by the Central Bank GIRs have shown a steady upward trend in recent years, with a notable increase of US$207.5 million in the last month alone. The coverage of the monetary base by GIRs stood at 3.5 times, a level that ensures a solid protection against possible economic shocks. Likewise, the GIR/Imports ratio remained stable at around 9.0, underscoring the country’s capacity to sustain its trade needs. This increase was driven by net purchases of foreign exchange at the foreign exchange desk, movements in Non-Financial Public Sector accounts and legal reserve requirements, as detailed in Nicaragua’s Central Bank Monetary Indicators report. (La Primerisima, 13 June 2025)
27,000 Tourists Visit Volcano Nature Reserve in 2025
Between January and June 2025 more than 27,000 tourists visited the Cerro Negro, Las Pilas, El Hoyo and Asososca Volcanic Complex Nature Reserve, located in the western part of Nicaragua. The Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) has installed cameras in the area to monitor wildlife, recording species such as ocelots, coyotes, and rabbits. This tool will strengthen conservation policies and biological monitoring. The Ministry is promoting actions to protect biodiversity and promote sustainable development in these natural areas. See Photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.
ENATREL to Provide Internet and Cell Phone Services
The National Assembly ratified a credit agreement for more than US$84 million between Nicaragua and the People’s Republic of China to develop 4G and 5G digital connectivity that will benefit 5.37 million users. The project will be carried out by the National Electricity Transmission Company (ENATREL). It will become a new provider of cell phone service, fixed line and Internet communications giving Nicaragua its own digital connectivity for the first time. “With this international agreement, the greatest beneficiary will be the consumer, employment will be generated, digital and communicational inclusion will be promoted closing the gap between rural and urban areas,” said the president of the Economic Committee of the National Assembly, Deputy Wálmaro Gutiérrez. (La Primerisima, 17 June 2025)
Nicaragua Wins 22 Medals in Athletics Championship
Nicaragua participated in the Central American U18 and U20 Track and Field Athletics Championship, from June 13 to 16 in El Salvador, with a representation of 30 athletes, 3 coaches, 2 delegates and 1 technician from the departments of Granada, Caribe Norte, Rivas, Matagalpa, Masaya, Carazo, León and Managua. The team achieved significant results in terms of medals and important national sports records for the country: 4 Gold medals, 14 Silver medals and 4 Bronze Medals and 5 National Records. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.
Nicaragua Withdraws from UNHCR
Rosario Murillo, Co-President, said that Nicaragua had withdrawn from UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), because it has become an instrument of manipulation and interference. “Yesterday Nicaragua withdrew, based on our dignity and greatness as a heroic people, from the nefarious UNHCR, which behaved and behaves truly contrary to the interests of the people and the families of the people.” The Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry announced that Nicaragua will no longer cooperate with UNHCR due to its intervention in the country’s internal affairs. The Ministry said that UNHCR was issuing biased statements that distort Nicaragua’s reality. (Channel 2, 13 June 2025)
Former President Violeta Chamorro Dies in Costa Rica at 95
Nicaraguan Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sent out a statement upon learning of the death of former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in Costa Rica. In it they stated that “Her figure represented a contribution to the necessary peace, first, at the triumph of the Revolution, in the Government Junta of National Reconstruction and then from 1990 onwards.” Ortega and Murillo went on to say that, “The 1990 election results reflected the infinite weariness and suffering of the war imposed on Nicaragua by the imperialists of the earth, but represented the possibility of a conclusion to that unjust and bloody war. By recognizing her government, we all set out to work for the stability and security of the lives of Nicaraguan families. May Doña Violeta rest in peace and may the peace that we all safeguard and defend continue to shine beautifully in our sky, to advance towards the liberation from poverty.” (Nicaraguan government press release, 15 June 2025)
Remembering the Chamorro Years
This is a remembrance of the years under the presidency of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro by Nan McCurdy, who lived in Nicaragua during that period.
The United States was determined for its candidate to win in the 1990 elections. US officials hated the Sandinistas and the revolution because it was setting an example of how a small impoverished nation can lift itself up through involving the people in government and providing the programs people cared about. The population was very involved in these programs; it was real democracy by the people. So, the US put together a coalition called the National Opposition Union (UNO), sending US government advisors (probably the CIA working under some cover) to organize them and to tell them who would be their candidate – Violeta Barrios, widow of newspaper owner Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Doña Violeta had been known for providing good cocktail parties for her late husband’s cronies and for playing Ouija Board with her friends in Rivas.
In 1989 US President George HW Bush put recorded messages on all the radio stations in Honduras and Costa Rica as well as Voice of America, telling Nicaraguans that, if they voted for the Sandinistas, the US would continue the cruel war, the full economic blockade, and more. The Contra war had gone on since early 1981 and Nicaragua had lost between 30,000 and 50,000 Nicaraguans – no one is sure – and people were tired of war. So, they voted for the US candidate with a gun at their backs.
As president, Doña Violeta let her son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, carry out her duties with most observers agreeing that she was always just a figure-head.
Under the Chamorro presidency, neoliberalism reigned in Nicaragua. The US had told her administration that, if Nicaragua would remove its demand to the US for the billions of dollars the International Court of Justice in their 1986 decision had said Nicaragua deserved, the US would provide her with billions in aid. That never happened.
Instead, they and the US dominated international financial agencies – the IMF and the World Bank – told her that to receive loans she would have to follow the cruel structural adjustment mandates being imposed on poor countries around the world.
Number One was to privatize everything the government owned including national banks, electricity, communications, businesses, land, etc. The government sold it all off at the price of wet hay. This was what they had been told to do – since the buyers were wealthy Nicaraguans and foreigners – many from the US. These government businesses – communications in particular – had brought money into the state to spend on life-giving programs like health care and education. Without them the budget for these programs took a hit.
The privatization of education was called autonomy. People had to buy school desks and their children had to carry them to school. Parents had to pay for formerly public primary and secondary schools; and the children had to wear shoes and uniforms. Many kids didn’t study – especially in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands dropped out of school.
Chamorro even privatized the railroad which was a great form of public transportation especially for people from the countryside. She sold it off – someone bought the cars, the rails and even the ties, the timbers where the rails sat. It was so sad for people to see this destroyed – and for what? – a very small amount. But these governments under US policy mandates like Chamorro’s didn’t want public transportation.
I remember campesinos literally crying because they were selling their land for $15 an acre! This was the first land they or their families had owned. The government ran a very savvy campaign to convince the poor who had received land under the agrarian reform in the early 80s that the government would take their land anyway, so they might as well sell it for something. So once again land changed hands from the poor to the rich.
The Chamorro government, like the two neoliberal governments that followed, were directed (always by the US, through the USAID, IMF, WB, and IDB) to make the state small by firing hundreds of thousands of state workers – especially health care and education workers. During the first three years of the Chamorro administration hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the US as there just were no jobs. Nicaragua actually had some laws to protect the environment and labor rights. But if you don’t have government workers to apply the laws to corporations, you might as well not have laws.
Many people went to the cemetery before their time – I believe many more than had died in Reagan’s war. There was real hunger all around the country. It was very hard to get health care. You couldn’t get so much as free aspirin at a health center. Health care became a big money-making enterprise. If you visited the countryside in particular you could see the desperation.
Micro, small and medium scale farmers couldn’t get loans so they couldn’t plant more than a little. Prices of the basics like beans, rice and corn went up and many people died from lack of food and health care – especially children. All of the Sandinista social programs like lunch programs in schools ended as soon as Violeta Chamorro came to office in April 1990.
The Sandinistas had passed a law to give 6% of the national budget to the country’s universities. The Chamorro administration was not complying with this and students were not getting scholarships and could not continue their studies. One of the saddest things was to see so many people without jobs. Men sitting out on curbs with nothing to do.
Violeta Barrios and her husband Pedro Joaquin Chamorro came from money and power. Doña Violeta’s husband’s ancestors included at least six presidents. The Chamorros and their children – all alive, most in Costa Rica – because of this history think they should be running Nicaragua – or some cousin with a famous last name and money. They hate the Sandinistas because now the people in power – Deputies, Ministers, Mayors, etc, come from people without money, many from families that were poor. In the 80’s everyone studied – everyone, whether in literacy classes, primary or high school, university, or a technical degree; and more than 50% of those in college were women. And in the 90’s, out of power, the Sandinistas helped their members get degrees, masters, doctorates so they could facilitate real democracy in Nicaragua starting in 2007 when they returned to power. But people like the Chamorros think only people like themselves can successfully administer power.
