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MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, April 19th 2025 - 01:12 UTC

Tag: Nicaragua

  • Saturday, June 2nd 2018 - 08:09 UTC

    Nicaragua's husband-wife team ready to fall: end of the road for the Ortegas

    The protests by now have left 90 people dead and almost a thousand injured. The great majority of victims are students, and others shot by the police

    By Gwynne Dyer (*) - From the Ceausescus in Romania (overthrown and shot 1989) to the Mugabes (removed in a non-violent military coup 2017), husband-and-wife teams running authoritarian regimes seem to have a particularly high casualty rate. And now it may be the turn of the Nicaraguan team: President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo.

  • Friday, May 25th 2018 - 09:00 UTC

    Nicaragua peace talks collapse and clashes resume : two dead and 50 injured

    Since protests began on 18 April, 76 people have been killed and more than 800 wounded, according to a preliminary report of the IACHR

    At least two people were killed and 50 wounded as clashes flared in Nicaragua after peace talks between the government and opposition collapsed, the Red Cross and victims' relatives said on Thursday.

  • Monday, May 21st 2018 - 08:42 UTC

    Nicaraguan truce on the cliff after claims police attacked and shot students

    In Managua, protesters carried Nicaraguan flags, banged pots and blew whistles to call on Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, to resign. (EFE/Bienvenido Velasco)

    Nicaraguans were back on the streets in their thousands on Sunday to protest what they called a government breach of a two-day truce agreed during Church-mediated peace talks. Students at a university in northeastern Managua claim police attacked them during a demonstration outside the campus on Saturday night in which four students were shot and injured.

  • Thursday, May 17th 2018 - 08:59 UTC

    Angry Nicaraguan students call Ortega “murderer” and demand his resignation

    “This is not a forum of dialogue; this is a forum to negotiate your exit,” one student told Ortega at the start of the event, organized by Roman Catholic bishops.

    Angry Nicaraguan students taunted President Daniel Ortega with shouts of “murderer” as he spoke on Wednesday at a Catholic church-organized event aimed at negotiating a solution to weeks of deadly protests that have challenged his rule.

  • Monday, May 14th 2018 - 08:34 UTC

    Nicarguan army sides with protests, calls for an end to violence

    The protests have expanded to at least eight departments, including clashes over the weekend between protesters, police and pro-government civilian groups.

    Nicaragua's military called for a halt to violence that has rocked the country during weeks of protests and a deadly crackdown by police and supporters of President Daniel Ortega's government. In a statement late Saturday, the army also expressed solidarity with families of those who have died — more than 60, according to a human rights group.

  • Tuesday, May 8th 2018 - 08:54 UTC

    NRA elects ex Reagan aide involved in the Iran-Contra scandal

    During the 1980s North created a network which secretly sold weapons to Iran and diverted the proceeds to fund armed Nicaraguan anti-communist groups.

    The influential US gun lobby the National Rifle Association (NRA) has elected a former aide to President Ronald Reagan as its new president. Oliver North, a retired US Marine Colonel, played a major role in the so-called Iran-Contra scandal.

  • Monday, April 30th 2018 - 09:00 UTC

    Massive peaceful turnout in Nicaragua, with a month mediation of the Church

    The rally took place just hours after university students at the forefront of anti-government unrest issued conditions for talks with President Daniel Ortega.

    Thousands of Nicaraguans marched peacefully through the capital Managua on Saturday in a mass demonstration to demand justice following the violent suppression of a wave of protests that left at least 43 people dead. During the rally, which was called by the Catholic church, Managua's bishop issued a deadline of one month to see if there was a serious intention to achieve change through a national dialogue aimed at resolving issues that triggered the country's worst unrest in 11 years.

  • Friday, April 27th 2018 - 13:34 UTC

    The Washington Post: The political rot in Nicaragua

    By the thousands, Nicaraguans have taken to the streets in protest, and Ortega has responded with demonizing propaganda, media censorship and police gunfire.

    Nicaragua is a volcanic nation, geologically and politically. Forty years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, a series of popular eruptions shook the entrenched regime of Anastasio Somoza, who fell from power on 19 July, 1979. Today, one of the revolutionary architects of that dictator’s ouster, Sandinista party chief Daniel Ortega, rules the country of 6.1 million as high-handedly and corruptly as Somoza ever did.

  • Wednesday, April 25th 2018 - 15:17 UTC

    Repression and protests in Nicaragua do not mitigate: Daniel Ortega as Nicolás Maduro?

    “Damn the soldier who points his gun to his own people” is a phrase of Simón Bolívar used by Nicaraguans and Venezuelans demonstrators. RODRIGO ARANGUA / AFP

    “Ortega and Somoza are the same thing” protesters in Nicaragua yelled last week against the government of Daniel Ortega, after the announcement of a Social Security's reform that unleashed a wave of protests marked by repression and excessive use of force by the authorities. Human rights organizations have announced that at least 30 people have died in the demonstrations, including students, police and a journalist. This surprise wave of civil protests suggests comparing the crisis in the Central American country with the lived in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro for years.

  • Monday, April 23rd 2018 - 09:49 UTC

    Nicaragua's Ortega cancels social security reform following riots and death of 26 killed by police

    Human rights groups said at least 26 people were killed in several days of clashes. Dozens of shops in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua were looted

    Nicaragua's president on Sunday withdrew changes to the social security system that had triggered several days of deadly protests and looting. President Daniel Ortega said in a message to the nation late Sunday that the National Social Security Institute's board of directors had canceled the changes that were implemented April 16.