Nicaragua Solidarity Coalitionm March 12th Webinar
Another Side of the Current Corporate Media Narrative about Nicaragua
presentation by Nan McCurdy
If you live in the United States you have recently been bombarded by disinformation describing the “unfair” treatment of 222 Nicaraguans. The corporate media has not ever told you that they were condemned for acts that would be serious crimes in any country in the world. But because their actions favored US interests - they are presented as people who fight for democracy.
Today I will share another side of the story you won’t hear in the corporate media.
In the early morning of February 9 in Nicaragua, 222 prisoners condemned for treason and other crimes were released. That evening President Ortega told the story of why they were released and how their paymaster took them to the United States.
These 222 “defenders of freedom and democracy” received money from the United States to organize and carry out extreme violence in the US-directed coup attempt of 2018 that killed 253 people and caused billions of damage to the economy.
Never covered truthfully in the corporate press, this coup attempt lasted 3 months and was many times worse than what transpired in the US on January 6, 2021 and also more destructive than the US-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019 against democratically elected president Evo Morales.
Their crimes included assassination, the brutal torture of hundreds of Sandinistas – which they video-taped and put on social media – there are hundreds of these videos; Crimes also included kidnappings, rape, and extortion at over a thousand roadblocks – known by the people as the roadblocks of death. They burned down public buildings including municipal halls, dozens of schools, machinery parks for road repair, hundreds of homes of Sandinistas, ambulances, buses and actual human beings.
An Amnesty was given in June 2019 with one condition that they not commit new criminal acts. Nonetheless these people chose to continue actions that harmed Nicaragua and its citizens, and they conspired towards another coup; They requested economic sanctions, blockades and even military intervention against Nicaragua.
In 2021 they were arrested and tried for conspiracy, for treason, for committing acts that undermine the Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination of the People, for inciting violence, terrorism and economic destabilization of the nation.
On February 9 President Ortega shared with the nation the story of how their expulsion came about. He mentioned how the US and the corporate media continually lambasted Nicaragua for having “political prisoners” when even the US and their CIA knew better than anyone, that all of these people had committed grave crimes.
But since Nicaragua wants to live in peace and promote reconciliation, Vice President Rosario Murillo suggested that perhaps she could talk to the US Ambassador to see if they would like to take the 222 prisoners to the US.
Daniel said he wouldn’t believe it until he saw it, but that she could certainly give it a try. The Vice President called Kevin Sullivan and soon afterward he had a trip scheduled to the US. When he returned he said that they would take the prisoners. And on February 9 the State Department sent a plane to Managua to pick them up. They were flown to Dulles airport, given two years during which time they can work. They were given 3 nights in a hotel, $300; and the more famous ones who speak English, were given dozens of interviews on the major media.
In a speech about a year ago Daniel had mentioned that probably the best thing would be to send the criminals to their boss in the United States.
The National Assembly approved the Special Law that regulates the loss of nationality, where it indicates that those declared traitors can lose their nationality.
What is the legal basis for this decision?
Article 1 of the Constitution states: "independence, sovereignty and national self-determination are inalienable rights of the People and foundations of the Nicaraguan nation. Any foreign interference in internal affairs or any attempt to undermine these rights is an attempt against the life of the people.
Nicaragua’s decision is supported by 7 articles (1, 2, 3, 9, 24 and 34) of the Constitution; and 5 articles (31, 409, 410, 412, 413), of Law 641 of the Penal Code as well as the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace.
Those "banished" who violated the legal and constitutional order, attempted against the State and the People, harming the interest of the Nation.
In total, 316 people have been deprived of citizenship. International bodies such as the UN refugee agency claim that this is illegal because the action was taken on “arbitrary grounds,” completely ignoring the evidence of what they had done.
Deprivation of citizenship exists in most legal systems including the US and UK. For example, the UK government has deprived 767 people of British citizenship since 2010 and taken away UK passports in 94 other cases. In the US, committing an act of treason can be grounds for losing citizenship or even death.
The People of Nicaragua are well aware of what these 222 people caused during the coup attempt. The People accepted, forgave, but never forgot the kidnappings, tortures and heinous crimes, nor their racist attitudes and colonial ambitions.
Images and photographs of people and incidents mentioned in this webinar
Now I’ll tell you about a few of these people in more detail
Cristiana Chamorro is part of the family of oligarchs that count seven members as previous presidents and have owned various media outlets including La Prensa, funded by the US since the 1980s when its primary focus was supporting the Contra.
Cristiana was the director of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation. This foundation was one of the main distributors of US money in Nicaragua.
On June 2, 2021, journalist William Grigsby revealed US documents which show that the US openly channeled US$16.7 million for the 2018 coup attempt through her Foundation. See Table.
Just from the USAID, the Chamorro Foundation received and channeled US$7.14 million from 2014 to 2021 (the year of Nicaragua’s most recent presidential elections).
The foundation also received money from other US institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, which spent US$4.2 million in the four years leading up to the 2018 coup on media and other organizations.
European states also gave millions to the foundation: for example, in 2020 alone, it received €831,527 (more than $1 million USD) from the Spanish Agency of Cooperation for International Development.
The Foundation’s main purpose was to channel funds to 25 opposition media outlets, several owned by the Chamorro family itself. For example, Confidencial and Esta Semana, both owned by Cristiana’s brother Carlos Fernando, received some US$2 million.
Cristiana Chamorro and her other brother, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, a member of the foundation board, were found guilty of money laundering and crimes of conspiracy in March 2022. From the time she was arrested until she was released on February 9, Cristiana was allowed to serve her time in her mansion.
Cristiana closed the Chamorro Foundation in February of 2021, saying she didn’t want to comply with the Nicaragua “Foreign Agents” law. She said the US had audited their accounting and said it was all fine. Her statement offended many Nicaraguans, who objected publicly, asking which nation she was governed by.
Under the Nicaraguan law, organizations receiving foreign funding must report on the use of the funding – similar to many other nations, including the US and UK. The main reason for any government’s requiring nonprofits to register is to ensure they are not receiving foreign government money for political purposes - exactly what was happening in Nicaragua before its new law took effect.
According to journalist William Grigsby and Liberal Party news analyst Enrique Quiñones, there was still US$7 million in the Chamorro Foundation account when she closed it. This money appeared soon afterward in three of her personal bank accounts.
Medardo Mairena, Pedro Mena and Francisca Ramirez are considered together because they were all leaders of the so-called “Rural Workers Movement” which controlled a large area of Nicaragua during the violence of 2018; they set up and managed many of the roadblocks of death.
Mairena and Mena are among the 222, while Ramirez was already in self-exile; Costa Rica accused her of misusing funds aimed at helping Nicaraguan “refugees.” She was one of 94 others found to be traitors and deprived of citizenship.
Medardo Mairena and Pedro Mena were sentenced to 216 years in 2019 for the July 12, 2018 brutal murder of four police officers and a school teacher as well as the kidnapping of nine police officers on in the small municipality of Morrito, Rio San Juan.
The Morrito attack, one of the worst events in 2018 involving up to 200 armed assailants, is the subject of a film by Dick Emanuelsson, based on interviews with the survivors.
The day after the murders and kidnappings, both Mairena and Mena were arrested at the international airport trying to flee. Evidence of their planning the Morrito massacre was on their cell phones and was also substantiated by two people present when the attack was planned. Mairena was also found guilty of ten kidnappings, organized crime, and aggravated robbery. He is one of the people in the first photo I showed being taken around by the Secretary of State.
Their sentences were to be 210 years but they would only have served 30 years because that is the maximum allowed by Nicaraguan law. Both were set free in the June 2019 amnesty.
On July 5, 2021, Mairena and Mena were rearrested and charged with the original crimes, having broken the terms of the amnesty by continuing to organize criminal activities. See youtube documentary on Morrito: By Juventud Presidente: 180 degrees of Truth. This and other documentaries are at the end of the article.
Dora Maria Téllez is seen as left-wing because she is a former guerilla fighter. But after 1990 she shifted sharply right, supporting right-wingers such as oligarch, Eduardo Montealegre and also supporting the 2019 coup in Bolivia in which the presidency was robbed from President Evo Morales.
Téllez and many other MRS members were in frequent contact with the US embassy in the years before 2018, as documented by Wikileaks. They are members of UNAMOS, formerly the MRS, or Sandinista Renovation Movement.
In April 2018, Téllez was at the forefront of organizing the violent roadblocks in Masaya, one of the cities most affected by the violence. Starting on April 18, the first day of the coup attempt, and on subsequent occasions, she was seen distributing money, food, drugs and munitions to the criminals who were making violent attacks on Sandinistas, on Sandinista homes, on buildings, directly on the police and later controlling the roadblocks.
In December 2018, the national police obtained a warrant and raided Carlos Chamorro’s office, searching for evidence of coup activities. They found a receipt for US$3,000 signed by Carlos Chamorro and made out to Téllez on the day the coup attempt began, April 18.
Her acts of treason also continued after the failed coup attempt. She called on the OAS to expel Nicaragua. In an interview with Confidencial, she expressed the hope that Nicaraguan military leaders would launch a coup similar to the one she previously praised in Bolivia. And, of course, she publicly lobbied the US to impose harsher sanctions on Nicaragua.
Félix Maradiaga, recently appeared on PBS Newshour and on NPR, where he was described as “a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate.” Yet he has never been a leading political figure or electoral candidate.
His nonprofit, the Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) was a major conduit for US funding prior to and during the coup attempt. Part of the money was then channeled for violence and destabilization. From the NED alone it received at least $260,000.
His organization trained students like George Henríquez who were taught things like how to make false internet profiles and how to send messages that would cause terror and violence. George was a close associate of Maradiaga going back to at least 2016. He was paid by the US to tour the US immediately after the coup failed. Apparently he is again touring the US and calling himself a presidential candidate.
One example was when millions of messages were sent out saying that the government killed a student on April 18. No one was killed that day, however, this led to great violence during the following days that shattered the public order across the nation.
During the coup attempt, a gang leader named Christian Mendoza, aka “Viper,” was captured by police. Viper’s full confession linked Maradiaga to organized crime and the plot to overthrow the government. Viper described a destabilization plan channeling people’s confusion and rage caused by the millions of fake messages into acts of violence.
Another goal was to recruit people with as many arms as possible.
Viper also stated that Maradiaga came to the UPOLI – the Polytechnic University - to give money to the violent group that had taken it over from actual students in the first days of the coup attempt.
A damaging video showed Maradiaga at UPOLI with a man called Pio Arellano who was brandishing a handgun.
Maradiaga sought sanctions against his own country at the Organization of American States (in June 2018): he was presented as a Nicaraguan representative to the OAS general assembly without any permission or even prior notification to Nicaraguan authorities.
On July 2 2021, Maradiaga was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the crime of undermining national integrity to the detriment of the State and the Nicaraguan society. He had been planning further violence.
Juan Sebastián Chamorro is a nephew of previous president Violeta Barrios de Chammoro. He was chosen by the US to head the Millennium Challenge Corporation under former neoliberal President Enrique Bolaños. The Millennium Challenge Corporation is another "independent" US foreign assistance agency created by Congress in 2004.
This video shows Chamorro’s arrogant classism. You can see him yelling at a humble street vendor and calling him a “come mierda,” which is equivalent to a “piece of shit.” The man responds that he isn’t a piece of shit like Chamorro – because Chamorro sells out his country for dollars.
Juan Sebastián Chamorro was found guilty on Feb. 23, 2022, and sentenced to 13 years in prison in March 2022. One criminal conviction was for requesting US intervention to help change the government. On Sept. 26, 2019, in Washington, DC, Chamorro declared, “We are carrying out important actions to isolate the Ortega-Murillo family.”
Other crimes involved channeling funds for illicit purposes from US institutions through his nonprofit, FUNIDES (Fundación Nicaragüense para el Desarrollo Económico y Social). Funding sources include The National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and the International Republican Institute. In the lead up to the 2021 presidential elections, FUNIDES received US$1,373,142 just from USAID. See Table.
FUNIDES had an important role in disseminating dangerous anti-government propaganda during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the BBC carried a report in May 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, written by Dora Luz Romero who worked for Chamorro-owned newspaper La Prensa, which included a FUNIDES wildly off the mark forecast that by August there would be 120,000 virus cases and 650 deaths.
While the BBC cast doubt on the figures of the Nicaraguan government about Covid cases, it reproduced the FUNIDES figures with no questions asked despite the fact that FUNIDES does not work in the health sector and it had received the US$1.37 million from USAID and over $120,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy.
Chamorro was also charged with participating in an international criminal organization to commit grave crimes against the security of Nicaragua. He claimed to be an election candidate in 2021, despite the fact that no political party chose to nominate him.
As usual, the international media repeat the same script: violation of "democracy" and "human rights" in Nicaragua. In the collective imagination they speak of those "exiled" by a "dictatorship", distorting and manipulating information according to their interests.
However, they always omit the crimes committed during and after the failed coup attempt by the US assets - those recently banished; they also omit how Article 3 of the US Constitution addresses treason by a US citizen. Unlike Nicaragua where jail is the sentence, it can mean execution in the US.
I believe it is high time that the United States focus on its own human rights violations: It has not signed a single international agreement in defense of human rights and hypocritically feels the right to talk against other countries.
There is an obvious double standard of condemning alleged human rights violations by the elected government of Nicaragua, on one hand, and, on the other, a conspicuous silence on the known, proven, and obvious human rights violations by the US in its sanctions against the entire people of Nicaragua.
The order of magnitude difference is dramatic. Even if every alleged harm to the 300 coup-mongers were true, it pales in significance to the US sanctions which deliberately target an entire population. Silence on one while a cacophony of self-righteous indignation on the other is unconscionable.
To put in the chat during my talk:
Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition website: Nicasolidarity.net
A number of articles about those released to the US:
Why 222 Nicaraguan Criminals were Deported and Why They and Others Lost Their Citizenship
https://nicasolidarity.net/articles/nica-notes-and-articles/why-222-nicaraguan-criminals-were-deported-and-why-they-and-others-lost-their-citizenship/
Reconciliation Does Not Mean Forgetting in Nicaragua, by Rita Jill Clark-Gollub
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/03/reconciliation-does-not-mean-forgetting-in-nicaragua/
Nicaragua’s “Political Prisoners” Would be Criminals by US Standards, by John Perry
https://fair.org/home/nicaraguas-political-prisoners-would-be-criminals-by-us-standards/
Gracias a Dios, The People’s Church in Nicaragua, by Becca Renk
https://www.tortillaconsal.com/bitacora/node/1362
Other Articles and Interviews:
The UPOLI was a Base for Terrorists Supported by the MRS and Other US Henchmen - https://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/6582
A few Documentaries and videos about what happened during the 2018 coup attempt, there are many more.
Felix Maradiaga with armed man at the UPOLI in first few days of the coup attempt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoGorunwJy0&ab_channel=CENTROAM%C3%89RICA
180 degrees of truth: Massacre in Morrito Town – there is an English version. In Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCCHq5eSdGc&ab_channel=JP%2B
Sander Bonilla's torture - a gay Sandinista from Leon. Both a priest and a pastor were present at his torture. This has English subtitles:
https://twitter.com/canaltn8/status/1009996712054870017