Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega gestures after delivering a speech with Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in front of Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Jan. 10, 2025.FEDERICO PARRA/AFP/Getty Images
Venezuela had only just announced the release of political prisoners earlier this month when Nicaragua, its ally and anti-imperial fellow traveller, promised to free “dozens of persons in the prison system.”
The announcement may have been prompted by something else: The day before, the U.S. embassy in Nicaragua jawboned the ruling Sandinista regime with an X post stating, “In Nicaragua, more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly. Peace is only possible with freedom!”
The embassy then highlighted Nicaragua’s crushing censorship with another X post reading, “Detaining Nicaraguans for ‘liking’ posts online shows how paranoid the illegitimate Murillo and Ortega regime is,” referring to Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. “Freedom means ending the regime’s cycle of repression.”
After U.S. special forces ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a daring Jan. 3 raid and bundled him and his wife to New York to face drug charges, President Donald Trump spoke of reasserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. He threatened Colombia’s left-wing president, mused about “ground action” to combat Mexican drug cartels and put long-time U.S. antagonist Cuba on notice.
Mr. Trump has not directly mentioned Nicaragua, though his first administration accused the Central American country of forming “a troika of tyranny” alongside Venezuela and Cuba.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, right, welcomes Mr. Ortega at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, in April, 2024.JUAN BARRETO
The country has descended into dictatorship under Mr. Ortega and the ruling Sandinistas, which captured international attention by overthrowing strongman Anastasio Somoza in 1979, fighting U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s and returning to power democratically in 2006 after 16 years in opposition. Analysts now describe Nicaragua as North Korea in the Americas, where even minimal dissent is suppressed.
Police in Nicaragua arrested at least 60 people celebrating Mr. Maduro’s capture, according to Blue and White Monitoring, which monitors human-rights abuses in the country.
But Mr. Ortega and Ms. Murillo have subsequently kept a low profile amid the U.S. embassy’s scrutiny by releasing political prisoners, co-operating on drug enforcement and toning down any often hyperbolic discourse. Analysts say the Co-Presidents heard Mr. Trump’s message loud and clear.
“The image of Maduro handcuffed and escorted by security is a nightmare come true for Latin American dictatorships,” said Arturo McFields, a former Nicaraguan diplomat. “It has had a devastating effect on the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua, but especially on the Nicaraguan regime.”
Some analysts questioned whether the released prisoners would have freedom of movement or be confined to their homes. They also said the release follows an old pattern of detaining opponents of the regime, then freeing them in goodwill gestures amid international pressure – such as the February, 2023, liberation of 222 political prisoners, who were sent to the U.S. and stripped of their citizenship, and the exile of 19 Catholic clergymen in January, 2024, after a Christmas purge.
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“Political prisoners are a kind of bargaining chip – they release some and imprison others,” said Father Edwin Roman, a Nicaraguan priest exiled in Miami. “It’s a way of maintaining fear, as if to say, ‘This could happen to you’ if you rebel. It is also a way to ‘eliminate’ political rivals without the need for competitive elections – even to silence the prophetic voice of the Catholic Church.”
Independent Nicaraguan media now operate from neighbouring Costa Rica. Businesses continue to operate freely so long as they stay out of politics, according to observers. At least 5,000 non-governmental organizations have had their legal status revoked.
But the regime has come down especially hard on the Catholic Church, which criticized Mr. Ortega’s persecution of protesters after 2018 demonstrations demanding his ouster.
Priests speak carefully and report police spying during mass. Religious processions are prohibited outside church premises. The Co-Presidents have branded bishops “terrorists” and “coup-mongers.” And religious orders have been expelled, including the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa.
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At least 300 priests, including four bishops, have fled the country, been exiled or denied re-entry after travelling abroad, according to Martha Patricia Molina, an exiled lawyer who tracks Catholic persecution in Nicaragua.
Ms. Molina posited the the Co-Presidents are pushing for regime-friendly clergy to replace exiled bishops – who have been publicly backed by Pope Leo XIV – explaining, “They aspire to have absolute control, to appoint bishops and to decide who can be a priest and who cannot.”
Just how long the regime can placate the U.S. and keep its attention elsewhere, though, is the big question.
“It’s a matter of time,” said Ryan Berg, head of the Americas program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s an opportunity to change Venezuela permanently. Cuba is clearly on the radar and in the crosshairs now. And after something is done on Cuba, Nicaragua is the logical next step from there.”
Special to The Globe and Mail