United States flag with the word democracy written on it. File photo.
By Edwin Sánchez – Jun 23, 2022
[Nicaragua journalist Edwin Sánchez writes a heartfelt comparison between what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, in the United States and the US-supported coup attempt of April to July 2018 in Nicaragua.]
Now that the AP reports that members of the House Committee investigating the assault on the US Capitol have “additional evidence to be exposed this week that shows that Donald Trump and his advisers conducted a ‘large-scale effort’ to spread disinformation and pressured the Justice Department to accept the then-president’s false assertions,” why does the White House not accept that Trump, at the head of the US Government, also made “large-scale efforts” to “spread disinformation” against the Constitutional Government of Nicaragua, and pressured his related agencies, human rights commissions, OAS, the media, think tanks, and other “institutes,” “foundations,” “commissions,” etc., subordinated under facades of “independent” bodies, to also accept the then president’s false assertions about Nicaragua?
Now that President Joe Biden has denounced that the shadow “forces” behind the assault on the Capitol in 2021 remain a threat to his country’s democracy, why is Nicaragua being harassed, accused, sanctioned and economically blockaded for dismantling the sinister plans of the “forces” that former President Donald Trump himself sponsored to attack peace, stability, development and democracy in Nicaragua?
Now that a special committee of the US Congress has concluded that the events on Capitol Hill, which lasted a few hours and not even the whole day, were a failed coup d’état, why is the armed and fascist barbarism of three long months in 2018, financed by the US against Nicaragua, being covered up at this point with the cynical narrative of “civic demonstrations?”
Now that the President of the United States is sounding the unanimous warning bells about the dangers to democracy in his country and, with one voice, Congress, the police and security organs, the judiciary, and the executive branch itself are coordinating to defend the voting results and the legitimacy of the Electoral College, and therefore its American democratic system, why is it that Nicaragua, while complying with the legal system of the Republic to defend democracy, the legitimacy of the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council and the Constitution, is accused of “not having a division of powers?”
Now that Mr. Biden warns: “It is important for the American people to understand what really happened and to understand that the same forces that led [to the insurrection on Capitol Hill] on January 6th are still active today,” why is it difficult for Mr. Biden to understand what, with evidence in hand, Nicaragua has shown happened: that millions of dollars of the budget of the noble American people were squandered on the thwarted coup, and that the same forces that bled [the country with the attempted coup of April to July] 2018 are still active today, even demanding the expulsion of Nicaragua from the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)?
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Now that President Biden dramatically states that “The insurrection of January 6th is one of the darkest chapters in the history of our nation. A brutal assault on our democracy, a brutal attack on law enforcement, with some losing their lives,” … why does the United States want the … the people of Nicaragua, and especially the families of the victims to glorify the atrocities committed by Trump’s coup plotters in 2018 as one of the brightest chapters in our nation’s history?
How will Washington dictate Nicaragua’s national sentiments and translate those months of savagery, mourning and pain provoked by demonic sociopaths in 2018 into “a cultured and pious defence of democracy?”
How is Nicaragua going to celebrate, praise and describe as “a Christian shelter of protection and mercy to the forces of law and order and overflowing love for the homeland,” the merciless onslaught against the authorities during the attempted 2018 coup, which resulted in the murder of 22 policemen, a considerable number of seriously wounded [more than 900 police wounded], harassment of defenceless relatives of officers, and the burning of many houses with children and elderly mothers inside?
Where in God’s name is humanism?
If January 6th was a terrible, dark and brutal chapter for the American Union…
Without an artillery barrage of gun-toting, heartless men or gleeful arsonists.
Without a single block of the District of Columbia taken.
Without drivers and truckloads of food and goods hijacked and held up at the gunpoint of violence along endless miles of highways.
Without a single metre of interstate highways obstructed.
Without a single TV channel stoking hatred and confrontation.
Without a literal medieval bonfire burning people alive, as in the sector of Mebasa, Masaya.
No “democratic” kidnappers and executioners.
Without a single American who lived through the horrendous torture of citizen Bismark Martínez, recorded on videotape by his captors, who later dismembered and murdered him at the roadblock of San José de Jinotepe, 45 kilometres south of Managua.
Without a prevaricating Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) at the service of “the Capitol insurrection.”
Without an Organization of American States appeasing the “peaceful demonstrators” of 6 January.
Without a single building set on fire and not a single state property destroyed outside the perimeter of Congress.
Without the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington attacking the national security of the United States.
What does Mr. President think Nicaragua suffered with those abominable volumes of infamy, iniquity and unconscionable wickedness against human life?
Must we, because we are Nicaragua, endure interventions, occupations, interference, coups d’état, destabilisation, blockades, economic sanctions… and even “peaceful protests” not from admirers of Mahatma Gandhi, but from Heinrich Himmler, the maximum chief of the Schutzstaffel (SS), in charge of the Nazi concentration camps?
Is it our role in life to be the target of the smoking Knox Note 1909 calibre historical repeating rifle, loaded with incessant ammunition of pretexts, justifications and Manifest Destiny?
Now that Bennie Thompson, head of the legislative committee dedicated to investigating the events in Washington, has stated in no uncertain terms that ….
“Donald Trump was at the centre of this conspiracy,” why should the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua, why should the people, why should the bereaved of the mortal victims of the 2018 coup attempt say that it was angels, archangels and cherubim who were at the centre of the conspiracy against Nicaragua in 2018, and not who it really was?
Now that all the constitutional powers of the United States are going all out against the 6 January coup d’état, wouldn’t it be fair that the TV networks, written and electronic press, the OAS and Ms. Bachelet of the UN, the Human Rights organizations, etc., in every “fake news” launched as a news dispatch, in every “honourable” tribune, in every misguided pulpit, in every manipulation written as a “report”…, denigrate the United States and label it a “dictatorship”, which “violates democracy,” persecutes the “defenders of liberties” and holds as “political prisoners” the “patriots” who took over the Capitol?
Recall that the then US national security adviser John Bolton of the Trump era called Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny”. What was the reason for these labels? Who gave Bolton and Co. the power to designate the status of nations?
It is in this context that Trump’s hands typed his lavishly paid narrative to overthrow a constitutional government, elected by the population of Nicaragua. And by population they mean real people, flesh and blood and Nicaraguan souls, not juridical ones, not empty acronyms; not uninhabited parties and boards of directors of foreign-born NGOs that no one elected and no one even remembers their names, let alone knows if they are solvent and honest representatives of anything but their own vested interests.
In the ecstasy of their fury, such “democrats,” masquerading as civil society organizations “committed to democracy, civil liberties, human rights,” etc., and bypassing the laws of the Republic, went so far as to demand “the surrender of the government.” And, after prefabricating their “civic alliance,” a sector of the Catholic hierarchy delivered the “primer” on the outcome of the coup d’état, under the sibylline name of “road map.”
If January 6, 2021, the day of the assault on the Capitol, “is not in the past: it is present every day,” as The New York Times wrote on 5 January 2022, how much more so three months of cruelty and bloodshed inflicted on Nicaragua in 2018?
If it is not in the past, “It is in Donald Trump,” the paper asserted, “who continues to fan the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and whose distorted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.”
The strange thing is that the former administration’s “rampant lies and distorted version of reality” are maintained against Nicaragua by President Joe Biden, who has been challenged by his predecessor for “illegitimately” occupying the White House.
What the NYT editorial illustrates and warns about their country also looms over Nicaragua: “Simply put, the republic [not just the US, we add Nicaragua as well] faces an existential threat from a movement that openly disdains democracy and has demonstrated its willingness to use violence to achieve its ends. No autonomous society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking to the past and to the future at the same time.”
The newspaper can give no better advice: “To truly face the looming threat means to fully understand the terror of that day a year ago.”
It is the obligation of a sovereign country. Nicaragua has done so.
To dismantle any threat to Democracy and Constitutional Order is also to fully understand the terror of three months, four years ago….
President Biden and members of Congress with democratic values should break once and for all with the Trump legacy, and open the way for dialogue and cooperation between the United States and Nicaragua.
To promote…
Relations of concord and understanding between two sovereign states and not between the Monroe Doctrine, its Roosevelt Corollary and the Big Stick versus the battered nation.
Friendly relations and not Metropolis to Subaltern.
Civilised relations between the Homeland of Walt Whitman and the Homeland of Rubén Darío.
Dignified and mutually beneficial relations between the Homeland of George Washington and the Homeland of Augusto César Sandino.
In short, moving from the senseless Monroe Doctrine to peace and reciprocal respect between the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean would give more meaning on Earth to Neil Armstrong’s stellar phrase than wasting it on the fathomless solitude of the Moon: “One small step for a man, but one giant leap for mankind”.
It would be to feel, at last, the first breezes of the Sea of Tranquillity in our Hemisphere.
