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CENTRALAMERICANEWS
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Friday 13
August 2010 |
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Nicaragua's
President
Stealing
Limelight
From
Revolutionaries,
Critics
Say
By Tracy
Wilkinson,
Los
Angeles
Times
MANAGUA
- Go to
the
Museum
of the
Sandinista
Victory,
and
Nicaraguan
President
Daniel
Ortega
is
everywhere.
There he
is on
the
northern
front of
the
revolutionary
war —
and the
southern
front,
and the
western
front.
Ortega
has
Forrest
Gumped
himself
onto all
the
major
battle
lines of
the
struggle
that
dethroned
dictator
Anastasio
Somoza
in 1979,
carried
the
Sandinista
movement
to power
and
changed
Nicaraguan
history.
As for
all the
other
comandantes
and
major
figures
who
shared
in those
events
with
similar
or even
more
important
roles?
"We have
been
erased,"
said
Sergio
Ramirez,
a
renowned
writer
and
member
of the
Sandinista
government
who
served
as vice
president
during
Ortega's
first
term as
president,
from
1985 to
1990.
Ortega
lost in
1990 —
the
first
post-revolution
democratic
election
— and
lost
three
more
times
before
returning
to power
by
winning
in 2006.
The
museum,
a
government-run
project
about a
year
old, is
an
open-air
display
that
purports
to
illustrate
the
historic
fight of
the
Nicaraguan
people
to rid
their
nation
of
decades
of
"gringo
invasions"
and
other
onerous
shackles
(as the
young
tour
guide
put it).
It is
also but
one
example
more of
what
many in
the
nation
see as
the cult
of
personality
surrounding
Ortega.
In the
age-old
tradition
of
dictators
including
Kim Jong
Il and
Saddam
Hussein
(not to
mention
Somoza,
whom
Ortega
did help
depose),
the
Nicaraguan
president
has
built a
national
homage
to
himself.
Billboards
dot the
sprawling,
haphazard
capital
of
Managua
with a
larger-than-life
picture
of him
alongside
national
heroes
Ruben
Dario
and
Augusto
Sandino.
Nicaraguans
speak
less of
Sandinismo
and more
of
Danielismo.
"You
invest
enough
in a
myth,
and you
begin to
believe
it is
true,"
Ramirez
said of
Ortega,
with
whom he
had a
falling-out
years
ago.
Dora
María
Téllez,
a
Sandinista
revolution
leader
who
famously
helped
command
a
guerrilla
takeover
of the
National
Palace
in 1978,
where
Congress
was in
session,
scolded
Ortega
and his
supporters
for
minimizing
the many
fighters
who lost
their
lives.
She,
too, was
left out
of the
museum.
"Soon,
Ortega
will be
the only
leader
of his
faction,
the only
combatant,
the only
revolutionary,
the only
governor,
the only
liberator
— the
one
indispensable,"
she told
El Nuevo
Diario
soon
after
the
museum
opened
last
year.
Critics
accuse
Ortega
of
sidelining
what was
a
collective
movement,
the
Sandinista
Front,
to
replace
it with
glorification
of his
role and
current
virtual
omnipresence.
This
comes as
Ortega
is
attempting
to
rewrite
the
Nicaraguan
Constitution
so he
can
succeed
himself
in the
presidency
and,
many
suspect,
hang on
to an
enriching
and
increasingly
autocratic
power
indefinitely.
It is
part of
a trend
across
Latin
America,
where
several
elected
presidents,
mostly
on the
left but
also the
right,
have
attempted
to use
democratic
institutions
to
essentially
undermine
democracy
and
cement
their
position
in
office.
Ortega's
actions
horrify
many in
Nicaragua,
especially
his
erstwhile
allies
and
compañeros.
But most
of the
population
hadn't
been
born
during
the
pivotal
events
in the
Sandinista
revolution.
Many
young
people
have
been
drawn to
today's
incarnation
of a
populist
leader
who
incongruously
portrays
himself
as a
revolutionary
and
born-again
Christian.
Ortega
generally
does not
speak to
the
international
media
but has
defended
his
presidency
as one
that
works on
behalf
of the
poor.
Nicaragua
remains
the
hemisphere's
second-most
impoverished
country.
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