Washington/Managua: In a land where volcanoes hum and revolution’s echo endures, Nicaragua stands unbowed, its spirit a quiet blaze against a sharpened U.S. thrust. On April 18, 2025, Washington struck, barring over 250 Nicaraguan officials from its shores, a move Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast as a stand against the Ortega-Murillo regime’s iron grip. “The United States will not stand for Ortega and Murillo’s continued assault on Nicaragua,” Rubio declared, his words cutting through the seventh anniversary of the 2018 protests that set this feud alight. From Managua’s defiant core, President Daniel Ortega answers with revolutionary zeal, decrying U.S. sanctions as fetters on a sovereign soul. With Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela as steadfast allies, Nicaragua’s social security system—a frayed lifeline for the poor—struggles under mismanagement and pressure, yet the nation’s heart beats fiercely.
This latest U.S. action, targeting officials and non-governmental actors accused of throttling democratic roots, pushes the tally of sanctioned Nicaraguans past 2,000 since 2018, under Presidential Proclamation 10309. Rubio, speaking in San José, Costa Rica, on February 4, 2025, branded Nicaragua a “family dynasty with a co-presidency” that seeks to “eliminate the Catholic Church and everything religious,” jailing dissenters and scattering thousands into exile. Washington also eyes Nicaragua’s migration policies, with a May 15, 2024, White House briefing exposing a “96-hour visa scheme” profiting from migrants bound for the U.S. border, prompting an aviation alert to choke smuggling networks. Rubio, in an April 18, 2025, statement reported by Reuters, mourned the “brutal wave of repression against protesters,” saluting those who dared dream of a free Nicaragua.
In Managua, Ortega’s voice soars like a battle hymn. On September 15, 2024, marking Nicaragua’s Independence Day, he proclaimed, “We grew up in a situation where we didn’t know what freedom or justice were, and therefore we didn’t know what democracy was,” framing his regime as a shield against foreign dominion. His 2018 Fox News interview, where he charged, “The United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans,” anchors his narrative, casting the 2018 protests as a U.S.-fueled plot. These quotes echo Ortega’s enduring stance. The 2018 crackdown, which Amnesty International reported claimed over 300 lives and wounded thousands, was, in his view, a bulwark against chaos.
The 2018 protests, sparked by reforms to the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS), form the crucible of this saga. Founded in 1956 and active since 1957, the INSS governs pensions, disability, and healthcare, funded by contributions equating to 5% of GDP in 2016. By 2017, only 32% of the workforce were members, limited by informal employment, with pensions granted at age 60 (55 for miners and teachers) after 750 weeks of contributions. A 2006 actuarial study under President Enrique Bolaños (President of Nicaragua from 10 January 2002 to 10 January 2007) warned of deficits despite the then-solvency. By 2016, the INSS bled losses for four years, prompting the International Monetary Fund in 2018 to urge raising the retirement age to 65. Ortega’s April 2018 decree, cutting benefits by 5% and hiking payroll taxes, set the streets aflame. Exiled economist Enrique Saenz, in 2019, noted the INSS held a $60 million surplus in 2007 when Ortega returned, but by 2018, administrative costs had doubled, the payroll tripled to over 4,000, and executive posts swelled from 10 to 136. The reforms were scrapped on April 22, 2018, amid bloodshed, but a 2019 overhaul slashed pensions by 30-40% and raised taxes, deepening the recession, as former Central Bank president Mario Arana warned. A 2024 State Department report cited Nicaragua’s $5 billion in foreign reserves and 3.5% GDP growth projection, yet the $540 monthly cost of a basic consumer basket dwarfs the $240 minimum wage, dimming the glow of free healthcare and education programs.
Nicaragua’s economy, tethered to trade yet strained by sanctions, leans heavily on exports to the United States, its largest partner. In 2023, Nicaragua’s trade deficit reached $3.54 billion, with exports of $7.36 billion—over half to the U.S. at $3.7 billion, led by gold, T-shirts, and coffee—outpaced by $11.25 billion in imports, including $3.03 billion from the U.S., per World Trade Organization data. The U.S. accounted for $6.4 billion in total trade, underscoring Nicaragua’s reliance. A World Trade Organization (WTO) forecast warns of a 0.2% global trade decline in 2025, with North American exports, including Nicaragua’s U.S.-bound goods, facing a 12.6% drop, threatening growth. Remittances, reaching $3.2 billion in 2022, or 20% of GDP, fuel consumption but cannot mask the loss of 200,000 formal jobs since 2018, as authoritarian policies deter investment.
Nicaragua’s defiance finds kinship in distant capitals. Russia, a stalwart ally, has deepened military ties, with a March 2024 police training centre and nearly 3,500 personnel rotating through over the past decade. China, embraced by Managua in 2021 over Taiwan, sealed a January 2024 free trade agreement and pledged projects like the Punta Huete International Airport. Cuba offers diplomatic and medical aid, its doctors bolstering Nicaragua’s hospitals. Venezuela, a fellow outcast, rallies with fiery rhetoric, its Foreign Minister Yván Gil in February 2025 scorning Rubio’s “pathetic and sick obsession” with their nations. The Indian Council of World Affairs, in September 2024, noted Ortega’s “personality cult” holds sway among Sandinista loyalists, despite a fractured opposition. These alliances, verified through U.N. and State Department reports, fortify Nicaragua’s stand.
Washington’s strategy melds sanctions with diplomatic estrangement. Rubio’s April 2025 talks with Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein rallied regional allies against Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, which he dubbed “enemies of humanity” in a February 6, 2025, SIN News interview. Yet, regional unity frays, as the 2022 Summit of the Americas showed, when excluding these nations stirred discord. Nicaragua’s March 2025 exit from the U.N. Human Rights Council, after a report decried its “systematic repression,” won Russia’s backing, dismissing the findings as biased. The U.S. has eased some pain, freeing 492 political prisoners since 2024, including 135 on humanitarian grounds, many now in Guatemala. Costa Rica, its population swollen by 20% with Nicaraguan migrants, groans under the strain, a burden Rubio saluted in February 2025.
The 2018 social security crisis lingers like a mournful chord. The regime’s response—shuttering over 5,660 NGOs, seizing the Matagalpa Diocese’s headquarters in April 2025, and earning Pope Francis’s 2023 label of a “grotesque dictatorship”—has dulled Nicaragua’s light. A September 2024 U.N. report charted a “widespread deterioration of human rights,” with constitutional reforms erasing checks. Rubio’s April 2025 vow, “Politics works well when we speak clearly, and I am not confused,” signals unyielding resolve. Ortega, rooted in revolutionary lore, stands firm, and his allies are a shield against the gale.
As Nicaragua’s economy stumbles and its people flee, the region beholds a clash of wills. The U.S., with its sanction trap and lofty rhetoric, seeks to bend Managua to democratic tides, but Ortega’s plucky pulse, sustained by loyalists and far-off friends, resounds. In this duel of sovereignty and censure, the notes of strife linger, offering neither peace nor pause.
– global bihari bureau
