Caribbean & Central America - March 2026

Following the US military action in Venezuela to remove former president Nicolás Maduro (2013-2026), and amid extreme US pressure against Managua’s other key ally in the region, Cuba, there are signs that Nicaragua’s authoritarian government led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has been making concessions to the US administration of President Donald Trump.

After Washington announced plans to impose phased-in tariffs on Nicaragua in December [EB-26-01], the Ortega-Murillo administration, which since 2018 has been carrying out a brutal crackdown on dissent, released some political prisoners in January, in one sign that it is feeling the heat. A brief interior ministry statement released on 10 January said that “dozens of people who were in the national penitentiary system have now gone home to their families.” A 9 February statement by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) put the number of released prisoners at 24 while pointing out that at least 62 political prisoners remained behind bars.

Also widely considered indicative of the impact of US pressure, the Ortega-Murillo government has ended visa exemptions for various countries, including Cuba, which had served as a further point of contention with Washington. On 8 February it announced, without providing any explanation, that it was ending visa-free entry for Cubans. This was then followed on 13 February with new visa requirements for a further 127 countries. The exemption for Cuba had been in place since 2021, purportedly to boost trade and tourism, as well as for “humanitarian” reasons. This was then extended in 2023 to other nationalities, including Haitians, other Latin American countries, as well as several Asian and African nations – a policy which previously led Washington to accuse Managua of indirectly promoting illegal migration. Indeed US-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue has previously described the Nicaraguan government’s “weaponisation of migration” as a foreign policy intended to “damage the US” [SSR-24-08].

More generally, on 18 February regional think tank Centro de Estudios Transdisciplinarios de Centroamérica (Cetcam) released a report analysing the impact on Nicaragua of Maduro’s capture which identifies three different possible scenarios. The first is that the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship “entrenches itself”, with the 2027 general elections serving “once again as a farce without guarantees”. Cetcam describes this as the “least likely” due to “national rejection, the regime’s political isolation, US pressure, and current international conditions”. At the other extreme, Cetcam posits another scenario whereby progress could be made towards a democratic transition due to international pressure, forcing the restoration of fundamental rights and freedoms and the holding of transparent, observed elections in 2027.

The other possibility is what Cetcam dubs a “controlled transition” within the regime, whether by Ortega and Murillo themselves or other members of their inner circle, whereby repression would be adapted to “less brutal forms”, a sector of the opposition would adapt to these conditions, and 2027 elections would take place with cosmetic changes to electoral legislation and the participation of political forces previously tolerated by the dictatorship.

According to Cetcam, the foreign community would be willing to overlook the absence of structural transformation – a scenario which would imply negotiations with interlocutors from the regime who are not direct members of the Ortega-Murillo family. However, it considers that Managua has little to offer beyond “reversing concessions granted to Chinese companies, removing Russian espionage devices or hypothetically granting strategic concessions to US companies, such as the right to construct an inter-oceanic canal”. The think tank considers events in Venezuela to have shown that Washington is not necessarily seeking to promote a democratic transformation or ideologically aligned governments. Rather, it is seeking stability and the security of its interests with “functional administrators,” which could come from established structures. Thus, Cetcam suggests, one possibility is Ortega and Murillo are replaced by others useful to US interests.

Ending dual citizenship

Amid the concessions offered to the US, civil society groups such as Unión Democrática Renovadora nonetheless highlight ongoing authoritarianism under the Ortega-Murillo government, pointing to changes to the constitution ratified on 14 January by the unicameral legislature which eliminate the right to dual nationality, in most cases. This represents a further blow to exiles who still have family ties in Nicaragua and are relied upon to send money home.

The move was first approved by the legislature in May 2025, in the first of two necessary sessions, and again on 14 January as per rules determining constitutional changes. In response to the reform’s preliminary approval, the IACHR issued a statement on 10 July warning that, if implemented, the reform “could result in Nicaraguan citizens who acquire a second nationality – including in contexts of exile, forced displacement, or family reunification – automatically losing their Nicaraguan nationality without due process or consideration of broader consequences.” It also highlighted the danger of those attempting to acquire a second nationality becoming stateless, in the case of their Nicaraguan citizenship being stripped before their new one is confirmed.

The latest change follows amendments to the constitution approved in January 2025 which significantly concentrated power in the hands of Ortega and Murillo [SSR-25-01], and which included a provision allowing authorities to revoke the Nicaraguan nationality of people deemed responsible for “treason”. In its latest annual report on the state of human rights, released on 4 February, US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes this provision “provides domestic legal cover for a practice that began in 2023”. HRW estimates at least 452 Nicaraguans have been “arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, leaving many stateless” while “authorities have also seized their assets” [SSR-23-04].

More officials blacklisted

On 26 February the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) announced sanctions on five Nicaraguan officials: Labour Minister Johana Vanessa Flores Jiménez; Ret. Major General Denis Membreño Rivas, the director of the financial analysis unit (UAF), and his deputy Aldo Martín Sáenz Ulloa; Major General Leonel José Gutiérrez López, the head of the army’s directorate of military intelligence and counterintelligence (Dicim); and Celia Reyes Ochoa, the deputy director of the national telecoms institute (Telcor). Reyes’ boss, Nahima Janett Díaz Flores, was blacklisted by Washington in January 2022. On 18 February the US Department of State blacklisted Roberto Clemente Guevara Gómez, the director of the notorious La Modelo prison, on the outskirts of Managua. Multiple Nicaraguan individuals and institutions have been blacklisted by successive US governments in response to human rights and democracy concerns.

Asylum seekers

According to Human Rights Watch, between 2018 and mid-2025, over 342,000 Nicaraguans sought asylum abroad, primarily in Costa Rica, the US, Mexico and Spain, while an additional 31,000 had been formally recognised as refugees. In a major blow for Nicaraguans in the US, in July last year President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS), for Nicaragua, among other countries. TPS is a benefit blocking the deportation of people from countries experiencing “ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or extraordinary and temporary conditions [that] prevent its nationals from returning safely”. It affects some 4,000 Nicaraguans.

Boosting ties with China

On 10 December the Nicaraguan government marked the four-year anniversary of the country’s establishment of bilateral relations with China which took place after Managua severed ties with Taiwan. In a speech marking the event, the presidential couple’s son, Laureano Ortega Murillo, the presidential adviser on investment, trade, and international cooperation, underlined as the fruit of this alliance, “major projects and plans spanning infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, housing, transport, logistics and trade”. He also noted a free trade agreement signed in 2023 which took effect in 2024, which he said had resulted in “exponential growth” of Nicaragua’s exports to China, which totalled US$82m in 2024, doubling the figure posted the previous year.

However, on 8 January Evan Ellis, a research professor of Latin American studies at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, stated that Chinese imports to Nicaragua were US$1.65bn, almost 20 times greater. He noted that since December 2021, Managua has given out “at least 43 concessions” to eight separate China-based mining firms to operate in Nicaragua, “representing almost 5% of the national territory” while between 2023 and 2025 it signed commitments with China-based institutions for “11 major loans for work to be done and products to be supplied principally by Chinese companies”, the terms of which were “highly questionable”.