NEWS & LETTERS, December 2008 - January 2009
Feminists oppose Nicaragua's Ortega
Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has reacted to his critics on the Left in an increasingly bizarre and authoritarian manner. Recently his government tried to revive an old and dismissed court case against the distinguished poet and former Sandinista Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal. Cardenal's only "crime" was one he shares with many in Nicaragua, his criticism of Ortega's failure to address the needs of Nicaragua's poor and of his rapprochement with the most reactionary forces in Nicaraguan society.
Cardenal called Ortega "a thief" who runs "a monarchy made up of a few families in alliance with the old Somoza interests." He was attending the inauguration of Paraguay's new president, Fernando Lugo. Ortega did not attend, and was told by Paraguayan feminists that he is unwelcome in the country. Gloria Rubin, Paraguay's minister of women's affairs, cited Ortega's history of abusing his stepdaughter, Zoilamerica.
Women in Nicaragua also cite the imposition of the strictest abortion laws in Latin America, including the 2006 outlawing of therapeutic abortion. About 110 women are known to have died as a result. This affects poor women most, as the wealthier can travel to Costa Rica or Cuba to receive abortions. The repeal of this law is a goal of Nicaraguan women's rights groups.
Ortega responded by attacking the women's movement in Nicaragua with all the resources of the state, including criminal charges as "accomplices" in abortion, harassment, and slandering them as "CIA agents." The offices of the Autonomous Women's Movement were raided by police and files and computers were seized.
Again bizarrely, Ortega's wife, Rosario Murillo, has attempted to found an alternative women's movement that denounces feminists as those who "dress in the clothing of women, but have never known the sensibility of a woman's heart." It hasn't been accepted by other women's groups.
Earlier this year, the revolutionary heroine Dora Maria Tellez, now a member of the Sandinista Renovation Movement along with Cardenal, Sergio Ramirez, Carlos Mejia Godoy and other well-known Sandinistas, pledged "a new stage of struggle" against her former comrade Ortega. That appears to be coming to pass now.
In the words of Nicaraguan feminist Sofia Montenegro, "The case of Nicaragua has become super emblematic in Latin America because there was a revolution here and it was supposed to bring social change. If this was Pinochet's Chile, no one would expect differently, but with Ortega, it's doubly hard." Or as Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago wrote, "Once more a revolution has been betrayed from within."
--Gerry Emmett
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