Celebration of the 45th Anniversary
of the Air Force of the Army of Nicaragua
July 30th 2024
Address by Daniel
Beloved Nicaraguan Brothers and Sisters, families who are enjoying Peace in our Country today, just now the Army's Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Avilés, has given us an account of what it has meant to achieve this Peace, to conquer this Peace, how much blood was spilled, and, as he recalled, how the first aerial bombing was of the city of Ocotal, where the Army In Defense of National Sovereignty was then managing to threaten the seizure of the barracks there; so then they brought in the aviation.
And how many battles, the battle of Nicaragua to expel from our Nation the president who had imposed himself by arms, the Yankee William Walker, president of Nicaragua, and as his first Law sought to establish slavery in Nicaragua.
But the Yankee was defeated, yes, by Peasants, by Comandantes like General José Dolores Estrada, and by Heroes like Andrés Castro, who took that stone from his trench to strike down the Yankee who was coming at him.
And further, this Land was defended by our Heroes whose blood also runs in our blood, our Indigenous Ancestors who managed to defeat the invader Gil González Dávila who came with the Sword and the Cross to conquer these Peoples, and that was the first defeat suffered by the Spanish here in these Lands, the conquistadors.
Compañera Rosario Murillo, Vice President of Nicaragua; Army General Julio César Avilés Castillo, Commander-in-Chief of the Nicaraguan Army; Doctor Gustavo Porras Cortés, President of the National Assembly, Compañero; Chief of the General Staff, General Bayardo Ramón Rodríguez Ruiz; Inspector General, Major General Marvin Elías Corrales Rodríguez; Chief of the Air Force, Brigadier General Efrén Alejandro Marín Serrano. He trained there in Bulgaria, where he forged himself as a Pilot and learned to fly the MIG23, which was the most advanced plane then in the Socialist Bloc.
Minister of Defense of the Republic of Nicaragua, Compañera Rosa Adelina Barahona Castro; Director General of the National Police, First Commissioner Francisco Javier Díaz Madriz, Beloved Brother, Beloved Compañero; Commissioner General Horacio Sebastián Rocha López, Minister Adviser to the President of the Republic for Security Affairs; Deputy Director of the National Police, Commissioner General Zhukov Serrano Pérez.
Attorney General of the Republic, Beloved Compañera Ana Julia Guido; Attorney General of the Republic, Compañera Wendy Morales; President of the Supreme Electoral Council; Minister of Transport and Infrastructure; and Advisor for Investment, Trade and International Cooperation of the Presidency of the Republic.
I don't know if the Compañera President of the Supreme Electoral Council, Compañera Brenda Rocha, has returned yet, a Hero who, at the age of 14, there in the Mining Region , when the troops that the Yankees were training and arming attacked the Mining Region, her arm was destroyed and she lost her arm. She is the President of the Supreme Electoral Council and participated as a delegate to the elections of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The Minister of Transportation, our Brother General in Retirement Oscar Mojica; Compañeros of the Corps of Generals and Senior Officers, Members of the Military Council; Chiefs of Air Forces of the Conference of Central American Armed Forces; Defense Attachés, Military, Naval, Adjuncts, and Heads of Military Missions accredited in the Republic of Nicaragua; former Chiefs of the Air Force in the honorable condition of Retirement; Air Force Officers in the honorable condition of Retirement.
Dear, beloved Relatives of our Beloved General Augusto Sandino, here is your grandson Walter, who also belonged to the Air Force, Walter. Also his granddaughters, great-granddaughters now of our General Sandino. And here he is present through them, Blanquita, and Blanca Arauz, they are all present accompanying us in this Celebration.
Beloved Relatives of Air Force Brothers and Sisters fallen in the line of Duty; Air Force Chiefs, Officers, Pilots, Technicians and Flight Navigators, Non-Commissioned Officers, Class troops, Soldiers and Blocks of Troops.
Brothers and Sisters all, Compañer@s all. Today is July 30th and just 2 days ago, July 28th was the Birthday of Eternal Comandante, Hugo Chávez Frías, a Brother with a Heart in which the Teaching of Christ was ever present, to help, to help his People and also to help even very poor families in the United States of North America, because there too there is poverty and misery and he promoted programs there to bring benefits to poor families in the United States.
The fact that the US rulers hated him, rejected him, did not lead him to act like them but rather to show generosity to the US people, always denouncing, as he did.
On that day, the 28th, Elections were held in Venezuela, one more Election of the many Elections that have taken place in Venezuela and ever since Chávez all the Elections have been won. But there was always the diabolical germ of those who call themselves democrats but who are nothing more than tyrants who disrespect the votes of the People, because quite simply they have no respect for the People, rather they want them to go hungry, go through difficulties, while they themselves get richer every day.
Chavez won that election and I was in the Venezuelan Parliament at the time when he was sworn in, and later we marched through the streets of Caracas from the Parliament to the area of the Presidency where he was to appoint the Cabinet Ministers. And not much time had passed, I would say not even a year or so had passed, when the coup came against Comandante Chávez.
Mind you, he had won the elections cleanly and the same people who are currently trying to mount a coup against President Nicolás Maduro managed to mount a coup against Comandante Chávez, the Legitimate President. And the determining Force there was the Strength of the People and alongside the People, the military, who were loyal to the President, loyal to Chávez, and together with the People they defeated the coup plotters, and Chávez regained the Presidency.
Well, the elections were held on the 28th, we all saw how they developed, and in many countries they were starting to offer results even with much less than the percentage before the results given there in Venezuela. They start giving data when only 8% of the votes were in, then 15% of the votes, and well, everyone has their own way of administering elections, but with 80% of the votes in, there they gave the results that President Nicolás Maduro had won the elections. He won the elections with 51% of the votes when the count was already at 80%, therefore, by then, being irreversible.
And that's when the plan began to unfold with greater fury, the plan that the coup plotters, the terrorists, had been working on long before the elections. And on the 29th what did we see? We saw the other candidate, who is really the puppet of the Ultra-Right, declaring that he was the President.
And they had already paid, buying humble people from the urban neighborhoods, the same scheme as here in 2018, so that people, impoverished youth, drug addicts, went out to cause destruction, destroying City Halls, destroying Health Posts, destroying vehicles, destroying small businesses.
And a case happened there, that one of the coup plotters who was running to where they were burning down some small businesses, with people screaming, the business owners in tears, and the other coup plotters who had already gone ahead and burned down one of the businesses, thought that the person arriving was the owner of the business, and they killed him, burned him, set him on fire.
That day the Army and the Police acted with great prudence, because the coup supporters were also shooting at the Police, since they are armed, shooting at the Police they killed a Police Officer and wounded 97 Police Officers.
That behavior, is a kind of behavior reflecting that the plan was already very well organized, like that part of the plan where a number of Latin American governments all attacked the electoral results, already describing the Elections as not being correct. But, who had appointed them as Electoral Judges to say which Elections are correct and which Elections are not?
We have those scrummages constantly, not only in Latin America, but also in Europe, how they disqualify the results of the contests they lost; how they disqualify the results, but there is no interference there from other countries saying that the results were not correct.
And of course, the representative of the Government that claims to be the purest and cleanest Government in the world pronounced, the one that practices the purest and cleanest democracy, the spokesperson of military and economic power, because there the Presidents do not govern anything. The ones who rule there are the economic powers, the military powers, the ones who want more wars. And they came out disqualifying Venezuela's Elections; for that, the greatest Democrat, the United States of North America, is right up front.
But you don't have to go very far to realize that they are pharisees, because when their Election took place where the two candidates were Al Gore, the Democrat candidate, and Bush, the Republican candidate, the Election was won by Al Gore and there was the scandal in the US, a scandal worldwide, because they stole the Election from Al Gore.
And what did the Republicans do? They looked for a Republican Judge there in the District concerned, they went to the Judge and told him to say who had won, and the Judge said Bush had won, Bush the son, yes. That was seen by everyone, that electoral fraud was seen by everyone, that electoral theft was seen by everyone.
But let's come a little closer in time, when it comes to Elections, to see how Mr. Donald Trump sought re-election, a racist, an enemy of women, an enemy of Latin Americans, an enemy of everything to do with indigenous people. Racist to the core, and he says it all calmly, publicly insulting Women.
He was facing the current President of the United States, Biden. Well, the election was going on and Biden was winning the Election, but Trump started shouting that the Election was being stolen from him, that it is a fraud, just like that with those very words: This is a fraud, and he has kept on repeating it until this very moment that this was all a fraud, as calmly as you like.
And because this fellow is a racist, he's also a bully, he comes and makes his plan, organizes his plan for the Congress not to give the presidency to Biden, and he goes and calls on the Republican rank and file to take over Congress.
Remember well what kind of democracy that is, remember well, fellow Nicaraguans, what happened in the United States: They took over Congress! The Capitol was vandalized, and there were no Security Police there to stop those who were assaulting the Congress. Why not? Because they were on Trump's side. But before they entered, the Congress had managed to vote for Biden, but since that moment this fellow has not stopped pouring fire, spewing fire, hatred and repeating that it was all a fraud.
And I would like to know, from those who are now acting as judges, those rulers who are acting as judges of what has happened in Venezuela where there was an Election that was won by President Maduro; well, first of all, who invited them to qualify or disqualify? None of them have dared to question the fraud that it is said took place in the United States, as Trump alleges, or the fraud that took place in the United States when they stole the Presidency from Al Gore to shoo in the son of Bush.
Apparently, nothing was going on there! Nothing happened there! Meanwhile, those who tear their garments as if they are great democrats, here in Latin America they tear their garments as if they are the great democrats, well let them have a look at how well their own house is doing, how they spend their time disqualifying there when they do not like the electoral results, how they fight in their Congress or in their Assembly, how they exercise violence in every Election. Ah, but now they want to appear like meek little doves..
The Yankee simply said, we have to strike the Bolivarian Revolution and you have to toe the line, because if not the Yankee will tell you: If you don't join in striking the Bolivarian Revolution, then for you there'll be sanctions. They threaten them like this, they very calmly threaten them, and what we are facing now is an outrage, a disrespect to a Heroic People, the People of Bolívar, the People of Chávez, the People of President Nicolás Maduro.
Today we saw the Army Commanders meeting with the President, and the Head of the Venezuelan Army, General Padrino, making strong statements. They are going to comply and are complying with what the Supreme Electoral Council of Venezuela decided, because the Electoral Council of the United States cannot decide there, nor the Electoral Council of any Latin American country.
Since when, since when have the Costa Rican rulers been the Electoral Council of Latin America? Since when? No one has given them that power. That Guanacaste was stolen from us? True, Guanacaste was stolen from us. That they wanted to steal the San Juan River from us? That's also true. And now that General Mojica has announced that cleaning is going to be done along the River, a letter has already come from them, saying they have to be taken into account. No! That's not how it is.
If it were a matter of carrying out work that also affects Costa Rican territory, then they would have to be taken into account. For example, if we decided to build the Canal along the San Juan River, we would indeed have to communicate to them, explain to them, so that the Canal could be carried out along the San Juan River. But it is already clear from the Studies that have been done, that the best route of the Canal is not along the San Juan River. Why? Because there is a big reserve there that we have to conserve. And to make the Canal there would be to disrupt, destroy the Reserve that runs along the San Juan River, which we explained that very well to the Company that has been working on the feasibility studies, and that's why the Canal passes very far from the border with Costa Rica.
Unfortunately, as I was saying to you, we see how Latin American rulers have set out to try and destroy the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people, to try sinking it, destroying it, carrying out the Coup so as to put in place a puppet of the Empire and the Imperialists of the Earth. But we are sure that they are a Brave People, the People who rescued Chávez when he was already taken prisoner, the People of Bolívar, and the People of Nicolás Maduro who have managed to fight their battles in the middle of a terrible blockade.
A terrible blockade and the Yankees have robbed them, yes, the Yankees and the British have robbed Venezuela of billions of dollars, they have stolen them, very quietly. Why? Because there we have a State, the imperialist States that have practice gangsterism, they handle all these issues like gangsters and when they see the opportunity to steal a people's wealth, they steal it and nothing happens.
There is no United Nations body condemning the fact, just as there is no United Nations body to say we have to respect what the Venezuelan People have decided, that we have to respect what the Supreme Electoral Council of Venezuela reported, but instead the United Nations is also reading from the same script.
Because the United Nations and its Leadership is nothing more than an instrument of the Imperialists of the Earth, there the Peoples may be represented by their Governments, but unfortunately their Governments submit to the Imperialists of the Earth, because these are always issuing threats to them, they threaten those Governments, who then give in.
So there is no democracy in the United Nations, there is no democracy at all. There has been more than 60 years of blockade against Cuba, and voting has been going on for some time now. Year after year the overwhelming majority of the Delegates of the United Nations have voted to suspend the blockade against Cuba, and there have been votes where the Yankee has stood alone with Israel, that is, two votes, no more, despite the demand of the rest of the world, because it really is a crime, a genocide that is being committed against the People of Cuba.
Note mind you, the overwhelming majority voting there in the Plenary of the United Nations in favor of the blockade being suspended, and the Yankees simply ignore it. And they call themselves democrats, but they don't practice democracy, they practice gangsterism, they are gangsters.
Today, Beloved Nicaraguan Brothers and Sisters, beloved Families, we are paying tribute to the Air Force of the Nicaraguan Army on the 45th Anniversary of its Foundation, we say to the People, because it is the People that have decided so, that here we have an Air Force, we have Armed Forces, we have an Army, we have a Police Force, which is as they say, the People in Uniform defending themselves, defending themselves first of all from aggression, defending the Sovereignty of the Nation, defending the Right of the People to continue growing, to continue improving living conditions, which is the path that we have been traveling since the coup attempt of 2018.
And we will continue to fight for Peace, Peace is the basic Principle for a Society to be able to function, for a People to be able to develop, for a People to be able to grow. If there is no Peace, it is impossible for a People to develop, but for there to be Peace there must be Loyalty, Dignity, Firmness, Values, which we have inherited from all the Heroes and Martyrs who throughout History have given their Lives in defense of Sovereignty.
Long live the Air Force on its 45th Anniversary!
Sandino Lives on, the Struggle Goes On!
A Free Nation or Death!
Long live Blessed, Socialist, Solidarity-inspired, Sandinista Nicaragua!
See you again soon, fellow Nicaraguans.
Declarations of Rosario, Vice President of Nicaragua, after the Celebration
Commemorating the 45th Anniversary of the Air Force of the Nicaraguan Army
July 30th 2024
A very good evening, Juan. Practically at the start of these Days of Heroic Commemoration, 45 years of our Army, of our Air Force. Our Soldiers also all celebrate these Victorious Times, these Victorious Days. We are celebrating Victorious Days.
And what great pride knowing that our People have an Air Force that is not one of genocide. We were liberated from genocide 45 years ago. This Air Force that serves you with Pride, an Air Force that also serves you with Recognition, with Respect, because we know that the People are the Architects, the Protagonists, the Owners of Every Victory.
We have listened to our Comandante Daniel guide us through what is happening in our Sister Venezuela, and we have been categorical in condemning the phonies who unite in their rant against our Peoples. We condemn those clowns who unite in trying to destroy our Peoples.
We have been emphatic in condemning Hatred, because we have suffered Hatred, it is a movie, a fiction, because those full of Hatred have no Power. They are fictional, but an evil fiction. And that's what we see, destruction, looting, and above all their cruelty towards humble people and their cruelty toward the Symbols of Redemption, of the Liberation of Peoples.
But we know that the perpetrators can hold no ground, because the People want Peace, we want to work in quiet, we want to prosper and live out our Pride, our National Pride. And what is the Pride of the People? The Paths of Redemption, of Liberation, the Ways to be able to shake off the dominion of the Imperialists of the Earth. Ways and Paths that are of Peace, because the Pride of our Peoples is precisely in the construction and daily defense of Dignity, Sovereignty and Peace.
As our Comandante Daniel always says, without Peace we are going nowhere. That is why every act of Dignity, of National Sovereignty, is an act of defense of the Right we have to live in Peace. And never dare to oppose Peace, because it is to challenge the humble, challenge the Right of the Poor to live as Human Beings, to live working so as to progress.
Don't let the fraudulent ones make that dare, those sinister clowns, because that's what they are: Sinister clowns! And who commands them? The same bosses as always. Who do they answer to? To their usual bosses, to Imperialism, to the Colonialists, to the Neo-colonialists.
But as we also say day after day, as our President said on July 19th: Here in Our America-Caribbean, Proud, Dignified, Sovereign, Here No One Surrenders! We are fighting against the Yankee who represents the Imperialists of the Earth, the Enemy of Humanity! And We are Going Onward, We are Going Onward in Sovereignty, in Rights, in Peace, Tranquility, Security, which is what we have, Thank God, and it is what we deserve.
Let us Go Onward then, Compañeras and Compañeros, in full Solidarity, indeed, with the Peoples who are fighting for their Rights and with the Peoples who are defending Peace at all costs.
Warm embraces, Friends...! These Days of Victories, Days of Struggles, because like all our Heroes, Sandino Lives On and the Struggles Go On. Chávez lives on in Venezuela, the Struggles Continue and We Are Together, United, as Brother and Sister Peoples, United in Victories. Thank you, Compañeras and Compañeros.