Event in Commemoration of the 45th Anniversary
of the Foundation of the Naval Force of the Army of Nicaragua
August 13th 2025
Address by Daniel
Good evening, Nicaraguan Brothers and Sisters, Nicaraguan families; Central American brothers and sisters who accompany us, who honor us with their visit, on this 45th Anniversary of the Founding of the Naval Force.
General Avilés reminded us that the Naval Force was founded really in 1980, because we had a kind of Naval Force, but one that was really very fragile, an improvised Naval Force, improvised after the Triumph of the Revolution in '79.
I still remember that, on a trip I made to the Coast there, we did a long trip there, I went with Lumberto, with Rosario, and there were pangas, small launches that the local communities used to survive, both on the North Caribbean Coast and on the South Caribbean Coast. And I remember that we were guided from the Mining Towns, that is, we went to the Mining Towns first and then to Bilwi, which is the capital of the North Caribbean Autonomous Region, and close to the Mining Towns.
They are Autonomous Regions because with the Triumph of the Revolution the inhabitants of these Communities were given Rights to own their land, Communities that had no land rights, who could have their lands taken from them at any time.
And this was made possible with the Autonomy Law, that is to say, an Autonomy Law was created and there we have, in the Northern Caribbean where they have their Assembly and make their decisions; in the Southern Caribbean, the same, they have their Assembly and they make their decisions.
If there is a Project coming from the Pacific Area, that Project has to be discussed first and approved by the Assembly, the Congress, of the Northern Caribbean Region or of the Southern Caribbean Region; otherwise it does not pass. That is to say, this is the only Country in the entire Region, in all of Latin America that has that Regime of Autonomy that came about with the Revolution.
I remember we crossed the plain there, until we reached Bilwi, and in Bilwi we went to take a tour of the Port, there were no Authorities there, and well, suddenly I saw a Dabur launch, which were modern, modern naval boats that had been delivered to Somoza, and well, there it was; and I went with the Compañeros and Compañeras to look around; I was not familiar with that type of boat, they were very modern indeed, never mind for those years back then.
So we arrived and were being received there by some Miskito compañeros and I started asking them, what knew about those boats, and whether they know how to handle them, if they could manage them. They told us that they were not familiar with those boats, because they were patrol boats of Somoza's Army, but that they had been cruising with them and since those compañeros are sailors by nature, that after all they had managed to move them around, from one place to another, and there they were getting used to them.
Of course, by the time we arrived, it had already been a month or two that they had been using the boat. And I said to them, could we take a tour with them? How far could they take us? Could they take us to nearby communities? Yes, they said, because we are follow the coast, we follow the coast there and there are the Communities, there are Communities where you can enter with the boat and other Communities you cannot enter, because there is not enough depth for the boat to enter.
All in all, in the end they assured us that they had not gone as far as Corn Island, Corn Island is really to the South and quite away out towards the center of those waters, out to sea. But could they take us all the way to Corn Island? They told us yes. Amazing how they had mastered the boat, and so we went along and we took a look at the maps. They handled their maps very well, and along with the maps, observing the Sun, observing the Moon.
So we went to several Communities, we entered the Communities, greeting people there; many people did not even know what had happened in Nicaragua, they didn’t know that Somoza was no longer there. And as we progressed, already nearing Bluefields, where the Poet Carlos Rigby was, before there is a community called Pearl Lagoon.
We were discovering that part of Nicaragua, one we really didn't know; so, they took us to Pearl Lagoon, because we had to get enough fuel to be able to make it from Pearl Lagoon to Corn Island, which seemed to us to be a very dangerous route, why? Because there was a disagreement there, with our Colombian Brothers and Sisters, about the maritime delimitation.
Everything off the coast of Nicaragua are waters that are Nicaraguan. Colombia, which has claimed lands and waters in the area, is very far away, so far that the only communities that are nearby there, close to Nicaragua, yes, and very far from Colombia, are some Communities that have family relationships, our Foreign Minister, for example, Valdrack Jaentschke, was born just across the way, on lands that the Colombians have claimed. But we went to court, we won in court; we have spoken with the Colombian Presidents about how we can arrange this now, normalize it. Since there is a court ruling.
We have won two judgments in the International Court: One, against the United States, which should indemnify us with at least US$17,000 million for all the damages they caused us in the war. And the other ruling is the one that gives Nicaragua jurisdiction over the area Colombia claimed, but in fact, quite simply, the Court has now ruled in favor of Nicaragua.
I have spoken with the Presidents, we have had exchanges, so let's see when it may be possible, but we have not managed to address the issue yet. President Petro has communicated to us saying that they were willing and we immediately told our counterpart to start delimiting what the Court sentence ordered. We are still waiting. Of course, Colombia has many problems and we understand that.
The truth is that the Naval Force that the General was talking about there, first, was the one that was being equipped with what they had there, and the most modern boat was that Dabur, the rest were fishing boats, they worked with those; fishing boats, both on the Pacific and the Atlantic waters. In other words, it really could not be formally called a Naval Force, rather it was a Naval Force put together with Soul really, with a lot of Soul, with a great deal of Love, but with very few resources.
And we kept going until the Triumph of the Revolution in 1979, and at that moment the Revolution triumphed and so we could then organize a Naval Force. Why? Because the Somoza government had left boats, left ships, had left naval means back then with which the Naval Force could be organized.
The Naval Force was being organized, we can say that the founding moment was 45 years ago; but what was it that we had at that time, with a lot of pride, great courage, a great deal of boldness, that we could call Naval Force? A Naval Force which had yet to be developed. And under what conditions? After all, we were emerging from a war with more than 50,000 dead, the war that we fought against Somoza.
The Revolution Triumphed, we thought President Carter was going to have a judicious position. He was really prudent in that he didn't come along to make war on us, but when we told him that we didn't have an Army, because a lot of the weapons had been taken to Honduras or Costa Rica, the National Guard had taken them, and that we needed weapons to be able to organize the Army, to give the country security. Then he told me that they could help us with anything else, but not with weapons.
So then we had to organize an Army with our fingernails, and what was indisputably decisive, enabling us to advance in very difficult conditions, was the contribution the Soviet Union provided and the contribution that the Cuban Brothers and Sisters also provided to us. Of course, they were not contributions sufficient to organize an Army like the one we have now, but well, it was enough to lay the foundations of an Army.
With President Carter we were already entering the 80s, but President Carter left, he lost the elections, and the gunslinger arrived, who in fact came from Hollywood, Ronald Reagan, who immediately declared war on us and cost us so much blood, so many lives, another 50,000 lives in that war which lasted 10 years, from 1980 to 1990.
That was in fact a war which did not even have the support of the US Congress, it wore them down greatly, and in the end, well, the Peace Agreements came and the war was put to an end.
That is, two brutal, bloody wars, and with armies that could not really be called Armies, but in the end, there in that way they were being built up, they were being organized, until they were in fact an army. And how many young people died in that war, how many peasants, how many women, how many working people... It was terrible!
President Reagan felt so committed to it that he organized what they called the Counterrevolution, they armed them, they financed them, they trained them, they offered them training camps back in the United States, and he went to the extreme, not only of asking for more and more funds from Congress to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, but one day he appeared with a group of Contra leaders, and said: I am also a Contra! The President of the United States.
Unfortunately, the world somewhat lacks respect, affection, friendship, and that is why there is no Peace, today more than ever there is no Peace in the World. There have never been so many simultaneous wars, so many acts of terrorism, on a huge scale, as those that are happening in these times. And the United Nations can do nothing, because those directing these wars are the powerful, the warlords who have nuclear weapons.
Here perhaps what made it easier for us to reach a moment of peace in Nicaragua was the fact that we Central Americans became independent from Spain, back in 1821, we became independent from Spain, and we had more sense of the meaning of Life, of Peace, such that the first thing we did was to abolish slavery. Because in Central America, back in the time of the Spanish, there was the right to have slaves, and we Central Americans decided to abolish it.
But then came the big businessmen came, the big companies of the United States. At that time the big companies of the United States were looking for a way to cross from their East Coast to the West Coast, we are talking about the years 1850, 1855. Why? Because the Gold Rush had exploded and the whole population that was on the East Coast was looking for a way to go to the West Coast to get some Gold... Gold Fever!
But it turned out that the transit, the journey meant crossing the whole North American territory, you had to cross it all, to go from New York to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, in conditions where there were no roads, they traveled in wagons pulled by horses; they were exposed to assault, they were exposed to the fact that the indigenous population, whose lands had been stolen, lands stolen by the Europeans who had invaded the United States, they were rebelling and those they found along the way they attacked, maybe only with arrows and spears, but they still attacked them.
So then, that crossing was extremely risky, because of its length and the dangers; that's why the shipping companies went looking for the passage, and they found it. The way had already been found by the Spanish, the English had found it, the Germans had found it, when the European invasion of the Americas began, they regarded it as simple, why? Because they found an 8,000 square kilometer lake, a river, and on the other side a short transit; that is to say, it was enough to open up that transit and the Canal route was already there.
So, then they were all fighting, because the Spanish, the French, the Germans, all fought for riches, they killed each other for wealth; the European democrats fighting and killing each other for wealth. And they wealth they sought not only in Gold, it was also sought in the form of transit routes.
And the most brutal, the most terrible, incredible thing is that there have been and still are descendants of those European Human Beings who legalized the slave trade, the slavery business, they traveled to Africa, bought entire families in exchange for trinkets, and they were given to them as ready captives.
Then they were taken to Europe, in Europe there were customers interested in owning slaves and who bought them; then they were sent on to the United States and they were also sent to some countries in this region where they trafficked slaves, including Nicaragua, as I said earlier, including Nicaragua.
So, they trafficked in slaves, that is to say, they bought slaves with their whole family and back then a slave was no more than an object, which could be beaten, could be burned, could be killed, and nothing would happen. There was no justice for the slaves. And who implemented those policies? The very ones who presented themselves as the greatest of democrats, as the most advance Human Beings.
And that's where the conflict over Nicaragua began, because when the Europeans came to fight over that transit point, they even said that whoever managed to control it would dominate all of the Americas. And in the year 1855, two Nicaraguan political parties were even then fighting over the transit route: one, a Liberal Party, and the other, a Conservative Party.
The Liberal Party had its Presidency and its Congress in the City of León, and the Conservative Party had its President and had its Congress in Granada. Then they were fighting, they were engaged in a war, before the big gringo companies arrived.
Then, the gringo company of a famous shipping entrepreneur, Vanderbilt, came along, reached agreement with one of the political parties, the Liberal Party, offered them a “good cut” as they say, a good commission, in return for giving them the right to use that route.
And well, once they were getting organized and were already taking steps to get US functionaries from the company to come to expedite the work, they realized that given the war here in Nicaragua, they would have to support the one who was giving them the route, they had to support the Liberal Party, and so they brought from the United States what were called at that time Filibusters, fighting men, especially from the Southern part of the United States who were mercenaries.
And at the head of the mercenaries came this fellow, an intellectual, a lawyer, a slaveholder, who had obtained properties in farms back in the Southern part of the United States. This gentleman's name was William Walker; a Doctor, a Lawyer, William Walker. He came with a troop of filibusters, well armed, with weapons neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives here had.
So when William Walker came, he was there with his troops and people believed he was an employee of the President, because the President had hired him, but there he just shot the President, ended that government and called an election in which of course he was the candidate for President, and his men were the ones who counted the votes.
So we had a Yankee president, a filibuster, a slave owner, who, when he became president, the first thing he did was to impose slavery again in Nicaragua, because there was no slavery here; but he imposed slavery again.
And then under those conditions the State Department recognized President William Walker; President William Walker chose a local Priest who had his family ties with people in the US and appointed him his Ambassador, and there in the United States they accepted his Credentials .
But, the resistance of the Nicaraguan People is always constant, as all Peoples know how to resist; and really, Indigenous Blood that runs through all our veins, no matter how the Spanish, may have had families with local indigenous people and here the Indigenous Blood was expressed, and resistance took shape, for the war against the Yankee invaders. And so it began, so it started, it started, and Walker asking for more filibusters, he was calling there to the United States for more ships with filibusters to come and land.
Thousands of Americans passed along that route, from one Coast to the other Coast, via that Natural Canal made up of the Lake, the River and the small belt of land in the Isthmus of Rivas, where those shipping companies had stagecoaches, so the larger ships would arrived at the port where they disembarked their passengers, put them on stagecoaches and from the stagecoaches they would leave in a very short time to board another large ship waiting to take them on up to the West Coast.
Here in Nicaragua, that struggle has been left for history, of how mestizos joined up with indigenous people to confront the invaders. And in the end they defeated them, in the end the United States had to send ships to rescue them and take them back to the United States.
I don't know of another country that was invaded by the United States in those particular years. I don't know really. Of course, the Europeans had already invaded the United States, after all, they had invaded and were taking over the whole of the United States.
I was telling you that Peace is fundamental, Peace is fundamental, and in Central America, Central American Unity, this is very important and I didn't mention it, when Nicaragua’s Indigenous people got together with Nicaragua’s mestizos and began fighting to defeat the invading Yankees.
They realized, our Brother and Sister Peoples, that if the Yankees took over Nicaragua, then they would take over Honduras, take over El Salvador, take over Guatemala, they had even wanted to take over Mexico, because those were the policies at that time in the United States, to want to expand to Mexico, such that Mexico in the end was devoured, and a good part of its territory stolen.
Now let me greet and welcome to Nicaragua, Rear Admiral Luis Reyes López, Head of the Cubas Revolutionary Naval Forces, and we also welcome his wife, Ivis García Castro.
Fidel turns 99 today... Congratulations to the Cuban people!
To the Frigate Captain Meykel Alexis Fonseca Rodríguez, Aide-de-camp to the Head of the Cuban Navy as well.
To Admiral Ashraf Abdel Hadi Suleiman Gutierrez, Commander General of the Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela, and to Compañera Rita Marcela Piere, wife of the Commander General of the Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela.
We also welcome Frigate Captain Ángel José Acosta Pérez, Aide-de-camp to the Commander General of the Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela.
From the Sister Republic of Honduras, all our Respect, our Affection, to the People of Honduras, to the People of Morazán. Sandino and Morazán... how they fought for Central American Unity; Rear Admiral Austacil Hagarín Tomé Flores, General Commander of the Honduran Naval Force, and his Wife María Guadalupe Lizardo Chávez.
To Frigate Lieutenant Nicolle Mendoza Gómez, Aide-de-camp to the Commander General of the Naval Force of Honduras, and Manuel de Jesús José Álvarez, Driver of the Commander General of the Naval Force of Honduras. Welcome, everyone.
Similarly, how glad we are that we have with us the Delegation of the Sister Republic of El Salvador, Captain Omar Iván Hernández Martínez, Commander-in-Chief of the Salvadoran Navy. Likewise, Frigate Captain Mario Alberto Orellana Cabrera, Aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief. Welcome.
We have to defend Sovereignty in order to have Peace. If we defend Sovereignty, all of us Central Americans, we will have Peace, and if there is Peace, there will be Progress and Well-being, for Everyone. Because at the end of the day, we are Children of the same Mother, all Central Americans are Children of the same Mother, of the same Father.
And well, in the end, I am convinced that Central American Unity will take place, and here we have the Naval Commanders of four Central American Countries, five with Nicaragua. This is a very clear message: We want peace, we want Unity, we want to be respected, we want the Principle of Sovereignty to be respected for all of us.
I wanted to make these reflections, these reminders, because just imagine, if you ask around in which year the Yankees invaded and appointed President in Nicaragua, hardly anyone knows, hardly anyone. But for us to truly be free, we have to unite, and that will give us the conditions to achieve Peace and Development.
And to the Brothers and Sisters of Nicaragua’s Naval Force, our Embrace, our Affection, for you, for your Families, and for the Commander of the Nicaraguan Army
We Are One! We Are One! Yes... People, Army, Unity, the Guarantee of Victory... We Are One!
Long live the Army of Nicaragua!
Long live the Armies of Central America!
Long live the Central American Unity!