Caribbean & Central America - June 2023

On 6 May Nicaraguan investigative media outlet Confidencial published the findings of an investigation into how President Daniel Ortega has secured the support of the military, which is essential to the continuance of his authoritarian government.

According to Confidencial, which now operates from Costa Rica, where its director, Carlos Chamorro, is in exile, President Ortega has handed out a total of 435 plots of land since taking office in 2007, of which 42% went to the military. According to Confidencial, the 184 plots donated to the army comprise some 97 properties, totaling over 41m sq² or 4,127 hectares. It notes that donations have been constant for 16 years and in 2018, the year in which social unrest erupted which led the Ortega government to begin its crackdown on dissent, 100% of the donated land went to the armed forces.

Confidencial highlights other ways in which Ortega has ensured the military’s support. It claims that since 2007, the Ortega government has massively inflated the military budget, from C717m (US$19.6m) to over C3.46bn in 2023. According to Confidencial, the largest budget increases began in 2010, a year after Ortega appointed General Julio César Avilés as general commander of Nicaragua’s armed forces, who remains in the post today. Confidencial also underlines the significant growth in military personnel with the number of troops expanding from 10,553 in 2006, the year Ortega won the presidency, to 15,705 by 2023.

Aside from these efforts to keep the military on board, an earlier report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published in October 2021, analysing the concentration of power in Nicaragua, traced the transformation of the military under Ortega - from a professional and independent institution to one subordinated to the executive branch. As well as a 2007 presidential initiative, which sought to co-opt the military, the IACHR report lists various reforms to the military institution’s normative framework implemented in 2010, which significantly increased the role of the military in administering the State and provided for more direct coordination with the executive. Examples of these reforms included the national defence act, the borders legal regime act, and the democratic security act. These were followed by further reforms implemented in 2014 and 2015 such as a sovereign security law approved in December 2015, which created a “national system of sovereign security” to be coordinated by the president, with the military to serve as its executive secretary, and at the time fanned concerns about the military’s growing influence over state institutions.

2007 presidential initiative

The IACHR identifies as key to the transformation of the military, a 2007 presidential initiative (290) which aimed to subordinate the army to the executive branch, through a “co-optation strategy (...) based on: reiteration of the government rhetoric that constantly reminded the army and police of their political origins and former party ties; the expansion of military autonomy, enabling it to create companies and perform different types of economic activities; and the designation of officers, active or retired, to key public offices, such as social security, construction and diplomacy”.

Sanctions

Avilés and other military officials have featured among those sanctioned by the US government as part of efforts to pressure the Ortega government to improve the democracy and human rights situation in the country, particularly following the crackdown on its opponents which began in April 2018. In May 2020 Avilés was sanctioned on the grounds that the army has provided “support to the police and paramilitary gangs that carried out crimes against the Nicaraguan people, including attacks on protesters during the unrest that began in April 2018”. In January 2022 Major General Bayardo Ramón Rodríguez Ruiz, the chief of the general staff of the Nicaraguan army, was sanctioned. As of March 2023, the US Department of the Treasury had imposed asset blocking sanctions on 43 individuals and 11 entities, according to an April 2023 report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS). The same report notes that additionally, the US State Department had imposed visa restrictions on over 800 Nicaraguan individuals and their family members.