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<h1 class="reader-title">US Body 'Laid Groundwork For
Insurrection' In Nicaragua<br>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">21 June 2018 </div>
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<p>While some corporate media outlets have portrayed the
violent protest movement gripping Nicaragua as a
progressive grassroots upswell, the country's own
student leaders have suggested otherwise.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>RELATED: <br>
<a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Nicaraguas-Crisis---the-Latest-Stage-in-a-Permanent-War-20180617-0021.html">Nicaragua's
Crisis - The Latest Stage In A Permanent War</a></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In early June, Nicaragua's leading young activists went
on a junket to Washington, D.C., on the dime of the U.S.
government-funded right-wing advocacy group Freedom
House. The Nicaraguan student leaders were there to
beseech President Donald Trump and other right-wing U.S.
government officials to help in their fight against
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.</p>
<p>On the excursion to the U.S. capital, the young
activists posed for photo-ops with some of the most
notorious neoconservatives in the U.S. Congress:
Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen.</p>
<p>The Nicaraguan student leaders were also shepherded to
meetings with top officials from the State Department
and the U.S. government soft-power, organization USAID.
There, they were reassured that they would have
Washington's full-throated support.</p>
<p>A month before the student protesters' meetings with
ultra-conservative lawmakers in Washington, a
publication funded by the U.S. government's
regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), bluntly asserted that organizations backed by the
NED have spent years and millions of dollars "laying the
groundwork for insurrection" in Nicaragua.</p>
<p><strong>Innocuous Words</strong></p>
<p>This article openly boasting of U.S. meddling was
published in the Latin America-focused news website
Global Americans, and was authored by U.S. academic
Benjamin Waddell, the academic director of the School
for International Training in Nicaragua. Following
publication of this piece, Global Americans replaced the
term "insurrection" with the more innocuous word
"change." The original headline can, however, still be
seen in the article's URL.</p>
<p>Despite the cosmetic alteration, Waddell's article
offers a remarkably candid assessment of the impact of
the NED's sustained investments in Nicaraguan civil
society. The author's conclusions inadvertently echoed
those of President Ortega and his supporters, who have
framed the protests as a carefully staged plot backed to
the hilt by Washington.</p>
<p>"International press has depicted the rapid escalation
of civil unrest in Nicaragua as a spontaneous explosion
of collective discontent, triggered by the government's
changes to its insolvent social security system and
rooted in more than a decade of authoritarian rule by
the Ortega-Murillo family," Waddell wrote. </p>
<p>"And while the underlying causes of the turmoil are
rooted in government mismanagement and corruption, it's
becoming more and more clear that U.S. support has
helped play a role in nurturing the current uprisings."</p>
<p>In another striking passage, Waddell concluded: "The
NED's current involvement in nurturing civil society
groups in Nicaragua sheds light on the power of
transnational funding to influence political outcomes in
the 21st century."</p>
<p><strong>A History Of Meddling</strong></p>
<p>The NED is a leading agent of U.S. soft power that has
meddled in other countries' affairs since its founding
at the height of the Cold War, in 1983. Its first
success took place in Nicaragua, where it incubated
anti-Sandinista media outfits such as La Prensa
newspaper through a cut-out, Prodemca, that was also
covertly funded by allies of Oliver North.</p>
<p>In 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated at the polls by
the right-wing candidate Violeta Chamorro, whose family
happened to own La Prensa. Chamorro's victory
represented the culmination of nearly US$16 million in
NED grants to anti-Sandinista political parties and
media outlets.</p>
<p>"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years
ago by the CIA," Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED,
commented in 1991.<br>
In the years that followed, the NED and its partners
have helped swing elections for right-wing neoliberal
candidates in Russia and Mongolia in 1996; fomented a
coup that drove Haiti's democratically elected president
Jean Bertrand Aristide from power; and directed millions
towards dismantling Venezuela's socialist government, an
ongoing effort complemented by crushing U.S. sanctions.</p>
<p>The protests that have erupted in Nicaragua have
brought the NED's influence back into focus all over
again. According to Waddell, the NED has spent US$4.1
million in the country since 2014, helping grow 54
groups into major players on the political scene and
"laying the groundwork for insurrection."</p>
<p><strong>The US-Backed Network Behind The Protests</strong></p>
<p>The unrest that has paralyzed Nicaragua was triggered
by the announcement by President Ortega of reforms to
the nearly bankrupt social security system. The
International Monetary Fund and a local business
umbrella group had insisted on changes that would have
raised the retirement age and gradually privatized
health clinics, threatening some of the most significant
gains of the Sandinista revolution.</p>
<p>When Ortega countered with a proposal that would have
demanded a greater contribution into the system from
businesses and retirees, with business owners paying the
lion's share, a sector of the public exploded with
outrage. The angry reaction to Ortega's plan, reinforced
with intensive coverage by opposition media sources,
became the spark for rolling protests that have set the
country on fire — literally, in many cases.</p>
<p>The most visible faces of the anti-Ortega movement have
not been retirees impacted by the social security
reforms, but urban, politically unaffiliated students
seeking a total victory. They have forged an alliance
with the traditional right-wing, pro-business opponents
of Sandinismo, along with a marginal sector of former
Sandinistas alienated by Ortega's rapid consolidation of
power.</p>
<p><strong>Masked Men And Mortars</strong></p>
<p>Meanwhile, masked men toting homemade mortars and
firearms have formed the front line of the tranque road
blocks that have already drained Nicaragua's economy of
some US$250 million in revenue. To date, at least 170
people have been killed in the chaos. As the death toll
mounts on both sides, talk of a new civil war seems like
a more than remote possibility.</p>
<p>Since the unrest began, the NED has taken measures to
conceal the names of the groups it funds in Nicaragua on
the grounds that they could face reprisals from the
government. But the main recipients of backing from
Washington were already well known in the country.</p>
<p>Hagamos Democracia ('Let's Make Democracy') is the
largest recipient of NED funding, reaping over
US$525,000 in grants since 2014. The group's president,
Luciano Garcia, who oversees a network of reporters and
activists, has declared that Ortega has turned Nicaragua
into a "failed state" and demanded his immediate
resignation.</p>
<p>The Managua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and
Public Policy (Ieepp) has received at least US$260,000
from the NED since 2014. The grants have been earmarked
to support the Ieepp's work training activists in
"encouraging debate and generating information on
security and violence." The funding has also covered
efforts to monitor the "increased presence of Russia and
China in the region," an obvious priority for
Washington.</p>
<p><strong>Open Agendas</strong></p>
<p>As soon as the violent protests against Ortega were
ignited, Ieepp director Felix Mariadiaga brought his
agenda out into the open. A former World Economic Forum
Young Global Leader educated at Yale and Harvard,
Mariadaga was hailed by La Prensa for having "sweated,
bled and cried alongside the young students who have led
the protests in Nicaragua that continue from April until
the end of May."</p>
<p>Asked by La Prensa if there was any way out of the
violence without regime change, Mariadaga was blunt: "I
cannot imagine a way out at this moment that does not
include a transition to democracy without Daniel
Ortega."</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Mariadaga led an opposition
delegation to Washington to denounce Ortega's rule
before the General Assembly of the Organization for
American States (OAS). He was joined by Anibal Toruno,
director of Radio Dario — another longtime recipient of
support from NED, and one of the key hubs of anti-Ortega
media in the Nicaraguan city of Leon.</p>
<p>While Mariadaga was in Washington, he was charged by
the Nicaraguan police with overseeing an organized
criminal network that has murdered several people during
the violent unrest that has gripped the country.
Mariadaga slammed the allegations as a "political
persecution" and a "ridiculous accusation," but
postponed his return to Nicaragua. The U.S. State
Department backed him up with a statement of vehement
support.</p>
<p>At the same time, a group of Nicaraguan student leaders
of the anti-Ortega protests were in Washington to lobby
the Trump administration for help in bringing their
country's leader down.</p>
<p><strong>'Things We Need To Believe In'</strong></p>
<p>Among the U.S. officials to receive the students was
USAID director Mark Green. "We need to stand with those
who are standing up for things that we need to believe
in," Green said of the students, in an interview with
McClatchy.</p>
<p>Aside from NED, USAID has been the most active promoter
of regime change against socialist-oriented governments
in Latin America. In Nicaragua, USAID's budget topped
US$5.2 million in 2018, with most of the funding
directed towards training civil society and media
organizations.</p>
<p>The Nicaraguan students' junket to Washington was paid
for by Freedom House, a U.S. government-funded NED
partner whose agenda typically aligns with the
neoconservative wing of the American foreign policy
establishment.</p>
<p>Freedom House crafted an itinerary for the students
that culminated with a photo-op with some of the most
hawkish Republicans in Washington: Senators Ted Cruz and
Marco Rubio, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.</p>
<p>Back in Managua, another prominent student leader,
Harley Morales, reeled in disgust at his peers'
appearance on Capitol Hill. "It was terrible," Morales
told the newspaper El Faro. "They (Cruz, Rubio, and
Ros-Lehtinen) are the extreme Republican right. We are
very unhappy with this trip; they were paid for by the
United States and an agenda was imposed on them. We have
given ourselves a terrible image."</p>
<p>Though he hoped for "an error correction plan," Morales
conceded that the grip of powerful outside interests on
the student protesters was tightening. "All movements
now have advisors," he lamented. "Movers and shakers.
Children of politicians, businessmen… They have a very
clear political line."</p>
<p><em>Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and
the author of best-selling books 'Republican Gomorrah:
Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party,'
'Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,' and
'The Fifty One Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza,
and The Management of Savagery,' which will be
published later this year by Verso. Blumenthal founded
<a href="http://grayzoneproject.com/">the Grayzone
Project</a> in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on
America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous
domestic repercussions.</em></p>
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415 863.9977
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