Barbara Moore, December 1st 2018
Stephen Sackur of the BBC program HardTalk was one of the few journalists to pose any serious challenge to an opposition member of Nicaragua’s political divide. That took place in mid-August and the interviewee was Juan Sebastian Chamorro. It was a proper grilling and clearly caught Chamorro off balance. Those opposed to the Ortega government have largely been able to control the narrative due to their extensive connections to the international media. Additionally, papers such as The Guardian and The New York Times have been reporting negatively on Daniel Ortega for years.
Recently Stephen Sackur interviewed Felix Maradiaga and this time the conversation was far more congenial. Felix Maradiaga had emerged as the leader of the opposition until another individual named Christian Jose Mendoza was arrested and then made an extensive and detailed confession which implicated Maradiaga in multiple criminal activities. The video was released while Felix Maradiaga was in the United States meeting with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and because of the revelations, Maradiaga delayed his return to Nicaragua.
The questions Sackur put to Maradiaga were almost identical to the ones he had asked of Chamorro. Unfortunately, there was little follow up and Sackur seemed to accept whatever responses Maradiaga offered. For instance when asked about ‘Viper’ Christian Mendoza’s street name Maradiaga simply said he did not know the individual and had never had anything to do with him.
Yet, following Viper’s arrest Felix Maradiaga appealed to his followers to meet him at El Chipote, (the main detention center in Managua) to demand the government release the ‘political prisoners’ He made that request at 4:07 a.m. again at 8:24 a.m. and again at 9:51 a.m..
It seems probable that before his arrest Viper was aware the authorities were looking for him. His family reported him missing and later it was learned he had taken refuge in Ciudad Sandino at the home of a US American, Carlos Camacho. He was apprehended at this location on May 31.
Before learning of the arrest Felix Maradiaga communicated on Twitter with a person who goes by Think Nicaragua who wrote: “Is there news of Christian Fernandez?” Maradiaga replied, “I don’t think so. Right now we have volunteers and are being vigilant. If anyone gives us information about Christian I will let you know.” That screen shot appears at 1 min and 45 seconds into this video. At 50 seconds the same video shows Maradiaga in the company of organized crime figures, one of whom takes out a gun and waves it around.
Just as Sackur had forced Juan Sebastian Chamorro to acknowledge that the opposition was not always peaceful, in his interview of Felix Maradiaga he referred to a massacre which took place in a rural part of the country called El Morrito. In Morrito four police officers were gunned down during an opposition attack on the local municipal offices and the adjacent police station. A local school teacher was also killed during the attack. Nine police officers were kidnapped and abused while being held at the roadblock where the opposition gang was based. They were eventually released after being beaten up and abused.
One thing which can be said for Maradiaga is that he is a consummate liar. Unlike Juan Sebastian Chamorro he was not at all flustered but calmly renounced the violence and again portrayed himself as an individual of conscience who is simply overcome with concern for the civic values of his country. Yet had Sackur dug a bit deeper cracks in the façade might have appeared. Medardo Mairena has been charged in conjunction with the massacre which took place in Morrito and no one has championed the cause of Mairena more than Felix Maradiaga who uses the hashtag #YoSoyMedardo on virtually every post he makes to Twitter. The background of his Twitter account features a photograph of Mairena.
NPR described Mairena as a peasant labor union leader yet his peasant group is not connected to any of the large organizations who represent the agrarian sector, not La Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) or Via Campesina. No figures on the number of or identity of those he claims to represent seem available. He is known to operate in the same territory as another faction known as the anti-canal group which is led by Francisca Ramirez also known as Chica Ramirez.
Mairena’s trial has resulted in the release of a trove of evidence which is indisputable. Whats App communications document Mairena’s involvement in the tranques (barricades) which paralyzed the country between April and July this year and other details including financing from Miami and payments to criminal gangs who ran the tranques. In short, proof that the crisis did not spring from a popular uprising but was a well-organized, financed and armed insurrection that aimed to break the constitutional order of the country through violent means. The evidence also definitively tied Mairena and members of his group to the Morrito deaths.
In the interview with Sackur, Maradiaga claimed the record of the police was tarnished before the recent crisis and that they have been responsible for no less than 80 extrajudicial killings. However, that figure is questionable because it refers to incidents involving violent criminals gangs using firearms against police and army operations, almost entirely in rural areas. By most accounts the police in Nicaragua have been credited for their community policing practices which have make Nicaragua one of the safest countries in the region.
In 2017, the Alliance for Global Justice responded to a report published by Global Witness that claimed security forces were responsible for a number of extra judicial deaths The AFGJ response asserted that the fatalities were taken out of context in an effort to target Nicaragua. Without coincidence the deaths took place in the rural western part of the country where Medardo Mairena and Chica Ramirez are known to operate. Some have charged that coercion was often used by the anti-canal organizers and in retrospect those mysterious deaths have served a larger goal. The Global Witness Report and a similar Human Rights Watch report were foundational in the effort to label Ortega as authoritarian.
The majority of opposition groups involved in the recent crisis prove to have few followers, but they have worked for years in conjunction with the right-wing media and foreign funded Nicaraguan human rights organizations that are equally anti-Ortega to create the illusion that there are real reasons for the population to be discontented with the Ortega government. For many who are familiar with the political landscape or who suffered at the hands of the opposition during the crisis, the trove of evidence revealed in the trial of Medardo Mairena is not surprising.
Having barely scratched the surface of Maradiaga's involvement in violence, Sackur during his interview allowed Felix Maradiaga to conclude by drawing a comparison between Venezuela and Cuba and Nicaragua. And although there may be some similarities in terms of violence employed by opposition protesters or government resistance to imperial power, all most of the world understands about Venezuela is that the country is in deep economic crisis and subject to US sanctions. In Nicaragua, the crisis earlier this year was deliberately provoked by minority opposition factions using media manipulation and terrorist violence to overthrow a popular government of an exceptionally stable country. Hard Talk's interview with Felix Maradiaga let him off the hook both for his heavy dependence on US funding and for his leading role in organizing the terrorist violence of that failed coup attempt.