After a soccer-filled month, the 2018 World Cup came to an end last Sunday when France notched a 4-2 victory against Croatia. Now that the World Cup is over, the world must turn back to reality and this week’s string of events offered a bleak picture of the global order, especially in Nicaragua.
In the last three months, close to 300 protestors have been killed across major cities at the hands of law enforcement and pro-government paramilitary forces. Earlier this week, paramilitary forces overtook the rebel stronghold in the city of Masaya and killed two people during a 15-hour siege on a Catholic Church in Managua.
Ironically, July 19 marked the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista’s revolutionary movement, led by Daniel Ortega against the U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Samoza and sparked by the kind of actions that are being committed by Ortega’s government today.
Hopefully the Organization of American States’ recently passed resolution condemning the violence and calling for early elections, and the nomination of Kevin Sullivan as U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua will push the Ortega government in the right direction. But watching the performance of Nicaraguan ambassador to the OAS, Denis Moncada, during the discussion of the resolution at the Permanent Council—who denounced the statement as “illegal, illegitimate and unfair”—doesn’t give much hope.
