The co-presidents of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, at the official event for the commemoration of the 46th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, July 19, 2025. Photo: Jairo Cajina/CCC.
By Stephen Sefton – Jul 25, 2025
Last weekend’s celebration of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Popular Revolution on its 46th anniversary was an inspiring vindication of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation and the Co-Presidency of Comandante Daniel Ortega and Compañera Rosario Murillo. For anyone of good faith who has followed the development of the Nicaraguan revolutionary process since the Triumph of 1979, its enduring motifs have always been democratization and modernization. Since the Sandinista Front published its historic program in 1969, it has prioritized the social and economic inclusion of peasant families and workers, women and indigenous peoples, people with disability, as well as free quality universal health care, free quality education and vocational training, radical agrarian reform, support for cooperatives, subsidized public transport and accessible housing.
Nicaragua’s extraordinary success since January 2007 rebuilding the country from the economic ruin, extreme poverty and social deprivation of the 17 neoliberal years is a great embarrassment for the American and European ruling elites, on a par with the strategic failures they have suffered against China, Cuba, Iran, Democratic Korea, Russia and Venezuela among others. Just as the Western media have deliberately and completely misinformed their populations about these irremediable failures of Western foreign policy, they also completely misrepresent or else simply omit the unprecedented success of Nicaragua’s revolutionary government in transforming the country’s society and economy. The intertwined motifs of democratization and modernization have been fundamental to achieving that success.
It is natural to point out the self-evident modernization of Nicaragua’s infrastructure, which places it ahead of all its neighboring countries, with numerous new hospitals, the unprecedented renovation of school and university infrastructure and improvements to the country’s seaports and airports. Most visitors are rightly impressed by the well-maintained road system and modern bridges that have made possible new all-weather year-round highways to both autonomous regions of the Caribbean Coast, thus transforming the connectivity between the country’s Pacific and Caribbean regions. All this is obvious to anyone visiting the country, especially those returning after not having visited for many years.
But the modernization and democratization of the country have taken place on more fundamental levels too, thanks to the Sandinista Revolution’s focus on the needs and aspirations of the human person in the form of its commitment to Nicaraguan families. This process actually began in the deeply demoralizing seventeen years of the reactionary neoliberal governments supported by the United States and the European Union between 1990 and 2006. Extreme impoverishment, the decline of the public sector, chronic corruption and the absolute dysfunctionality of those governments allowed the Sandinista Front to steadily gain support in successive local municipal elections until it was able to exploit the divisions of the right wing political parties, win the 2006 national elections and take office under Comandante Daniel Ortega in January 2007.
President Ortega immediately declared that the provision of public health care and education would be free and at the same time joined what was then the Bolivarian Alternative for Our Americas, now the ALBA-TCP Alliance led by Cuba and Venezuela. That agreement allowed ready access to fuel and other petroleum derivatives on concessional terms and also to immediate additional electricity generation plants to put an end to the 10-hour-a-day national power outages inherited from the previous neoliberal administration. Joining ALBA also gave Comandante Ortega’s government access to much-needed unconditional financing, freeing the government from impotent dependence on the onerous conditionalities of the IMF and the World Bank
In that first Sandinista government, from 2007 to 2011, of the second phase of the Sandinista Revolution, the administration of Comandante Ortega set out to implement its program of reconciliation and national reconstruction despite not having a majority in the National Assembly. By 2008, President Ortega’s support nationwide had grown enough to win an electoral majority for the first time since 1984 against the combined right-wing opposition and its allies among the small group of ex-Sandinistas, all dependent on US and European patronage. With the leadership of President Ortega and Rosario Murillo highly focused and totally committed to poverty reduction, the Sandinista government gained the trust and support of the private business sector, reactivating the national economy, even despite the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Thus, in the 2011 elections, the Sandinista Front managed to obtain a strong majority in the National Assembly in order to freely implement its legislative program. During the period between 2011 and 2018, the economy grew by around 4% or 5% annually thanks to solid social, commercial and financial stability, complemented by obvious improvements in health care and education, heavy investment in public infrastructure and high levels of citizen security. The Sandinista government’s policy of seeking consensus satisfied the private business sector at the same time that it promoted economic democratization for peasant families, worker protection, support for cooperatives and the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as an ambitious national program to finance women’s micro businesses and also important subsidies for electricity and urban public transport fares for low-income families.
In the Struggle Against US Imperialism, Nicaragua Is a Model of Sovereignty
This context set the stage for the categorical electoral victory of Comandante Ortega in 2016, which made clear to the US and European ruling elites that they would never defeat the Sandinista Front electorally. That understanding led the United States and its European partners to organize the extremely violent failed coup attempt of 2018, which involved important sectors of private enterprise, the reactionary hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the social democrat NGO sector and extremist ex-Sandinistas, along with support from regional organized crime. Even so, immediately after that failed coup attempt, the government of Comandante Ortega acted with tremendous restraint, again prioritizing social reconciliation and economic stability.
This policy allowed the Nicaraguan economy to recover from the serious losses caused by the failed coup attempt and also to successfully overcome the social and economic effects of Covid-19 and the devastating twin hurricanes of November 2020. The recovery was clear from the exceptional export performance in 2021 and meant that the Sandinista government had sufficient political authority to be able to defeat renewed efforts by the coup promoters to destabilize the 2021 electoral process. Looking back, between 2018 and 2021, the government acted decisively enacting laws to eliminate opportunities for foreign intervention. Those laws included strict regulation of foreign agents, a law in defense of national sovereignty, updated legislation on financial crimes to comply with international standards, and also a law to address the threat of online cybercrime.
This legislative program deepened the revolutionary democratization of Nicaragua because it finally put an end to the endless reactionary interference by proxies of the US and European governments inside Nicaragua who had always acted to promote conflict and hold up the country’s human development. This latest stage of the country’s modernization has seen a dramatic decline in the influence of the Catholic Church hierarchy and politically sectarian private enterprise. And these incidental internal developments have coincided with various decisively important political events, namely the 2024 constitutional reforms and several important foreign policy decisions.
The partial reform of the Constitution approved in November last year strengthened the State’s commitment to poverty reduction, social and economic justice, equality and inclusion. It explicitly eliminates all forms of discrimination, emphasizes the absolute equality of women and all ethnic groups, emphasizes the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of Nicaragua and prioritizes direct democracy and the development of the human person. Sovereignty in the Nicaraguan Constitution is not an empty shibboleth, but really does mean Sovereignty in its broadest sense.
It means, for example, sovereign control over the country’s history, sovereignty over the supply of food and energy resources, as well as fundamental sovereignty also in its international relations. Nicaragua demonstrated this determined defense of its sovereignty by permanently withdrawing from the Organization of American States in 2022, after reactivating its diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China at the end of 2021. In addition to this steadfast defense of national sovereignty, Nicaragua’s foreign policy has also always been based on two other principled positions, solidarity with peoples in struggle, such as Palestine and the Saharawi Arab Republic, and commitment to Central American unity.
The amended Constitution also states: “We Nicaraguans are striving for a new multipolar world order of brother and sisterhood, solidarity, complementarity, cooperation, equality and respect among States.” This new constitutional principle marks the commitment of the country’s Co-Presidency to ensure Nicaragua’s full participation in the democratization and modernization of international relations. The presence at the celebration of the 46/19 Anniversary of very high-level authorities from the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation demonstrates the extremely high esteem that the governments of those countries have for the Sandinista Popular Revolution.
Anna Kuznetsova, Deputy Head of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, looking at the tens of thousands in Managua’s Faith Square last Saturday, said from the heart: “We have something to fight for. We have to fight for our future and for the future of these beautiful young people, our daughters and sons who are with us here.” Vice Minister Ma Hui, of the international department of the Communist Party of China, commented: “Every day there are deeper signs of our relations as comrades-in-arms fighting from the same trench as two countries moving forward together with ever closer solidarity.”
And Nicaragua’s adopted son, Hero of Peace, Brian Willson also sent a message to the Anniversary Celebration through a video saying:
Greetings to the Nicaraguan People, to the Revolutionary People of Nicaragua, a Light of Hope for the whole world.
I have been traveling to Nicaragua since 1986 and I loved it so much that I tried to slow down a train full of ammunition bound for Nicaragua. And the train didn’t stop. I was going to spend a year in jail, but they decided to kill me.
I consider that this Revolution is incredibly unique and a Reference to follow, for everyone.
I am grateful for the honor of the invitation for a few words from me. You did all the work, and I, as an older man, 84 years old, can enjoy the fruits of the Revolution.
I hope other Americans will come here to learn from the Revolution. The Gringos are unaware of these Struggles, just as I was unaware of them when I went to Vietnam.
It is amazing how you have withstood the pressure of the United States, the interference against your sovereignty. Congratulations on your tenacity.
Long live the Revolution!
Viva, Viva, Viva!
