Nicaraguan city chooses to govern itself as crisis intensifies
Published 8:47 pm, Monday, June 18, 2018
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA - Amid the deepening political crisis in Nicaragua, opposition leaders from a key city that had once cradled President Daniel Ortega's socialist revolution on Monday announced that they do not recognize Ortega's leadership and that they would create a commission to self-govern the city.
The town of Masaya, about 15 miles south of the capital city of Managua, was a bastion of support for Ortega and his Sandinista rebels who overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979. For the past few weeks, Masaya has been controlled by protesters, a warren of citizen-manned roadblocks and barricades, with city hall abandoned and police hunkered down in their barracks.
Those protest leaders now say they don't recognize Ortega's government, which they blame for the deaths of more than 200 people over the past two months. Instead, a five-member "junta of national salvation" will govern Masaya, seeking to administer a city, including cleaning up trash and restocking food in a city of blocked streets.
"What we are doing is making it official," Yubrank Suazo, a coordinator of the protest movement in Masaya, said of the new governing commission. "In fact, Masaya has not recognized this government for weeks."
The events in Masaya represent the ever-growing divide between Ortega, in his third consecutive term, and vast swaths of Nicaragua, as violence spreads. Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, have held near-total power for years but protests in April over changes to social security quickly morphed into a nationwide movement demanding democracy and justice, and grew more emphatic after police and pro-government militias responded with violence against protesters.
On Saturday, in one of the deadliest incidents since the unrest began, gunmen set fire to a building in the Carlos Marx neighborhood of Managua and burned alive a family of six, including two young children, who were trapped inside, according to neighbors and witnesses.
"I managed to get out of the room and from a balcony on the second floor, I threw myself into the street," said Cinthia Velasquez, one member of the family, who survived the fire.
Velasquez said she woke to noises early Saturday morning and looked outside to see masked gunmen accompanied by police. The men broke down a gate, locked the family inside, and started firing and hurling Molotov cocktails inside, she said.
Her father, Oscar Velasquez, a 47-year-old Protestant pastor who made a living selling mattresses, died in the blaze, along with his wife, Maritza Lopez, and their son, his wife, and two children, ages 3 years old and 3 months old.
"We couldn't save them because when people began to leave their houses to help, police shot at us," said Nahun Doña, a neighbor who saw the fire.
Relatives and neighbors said they do not know why government forces attacked the family. The neighborhood is a stronghold of protesters and filled with barricades. Some speculated that police wanted the building as a sniper post and the family refused to move.
Foreign Minister Denis Moncada Colindres denied that security forces were involved in the fire and attributed the crime to "criminal groups that are prowling the neighborhood."
But such ongoing violence, and roving bands of pro-government militiamen accused of other killings and kidnappings, has frustrated attempts at dialogue.
On Monday, leaders of student protesters and civil society groups in Managua said they were walking away from the negotiating table with Ortega's government, because Ortega had not invited the United Nations, European Union and human rights groups into the discussion.
"We cannot keep talking with this government, which does not have political will in terms of human rights," said Azahalea Solis, a civil society member involved in the talks, according to the La Prensa newspaper.
Last week, protesters across Nicaragua held a one-day national strike. In some places, such as the city of Leon, protesters have said they would remain on strike indefinitely until Ortega and Murillo step down.
In Masaya, which has been the scene of street battles between police, militiamen and protesters, some 20 people have been killed in recent weeks, according human rights groups. A public hospital in the city has been wrested from government control. Each night, residents using bullhorns call on a top police commander and his men to surrender and leave town, according to residents.
"Masaya is on strike, there is no presence of the central government, nor of the municipal government, and it's logical that facing so much repression and death the population does not feel represented," said Alvaro Leiva, director of the Nicaraguan Association for the Defense of Human Rights.
At a Monday afternoon press conference, a group of protest leaders in Masaya announced the creation of the five-member municipal governing commission, but did not name the members. They blamed Ortega's government for the violence and said that security forces have the city surrounded.
"We proclaim to the world, we are partisans for peace," said Cristian Fajardo, one of the protest leaders. "We don't want war."
The crowd that had gathered chanted "for our martyrs, justice!" and "long live the capital of the resistance!"
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