On Monday, Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) initiated an overhaul of the country’s constitution that will codify the rule of longtime dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-presidents.” The reform follows an escalating campaign of persecution against the Catholic Church, the last bastion of opposition against the Ortegas, who nonetheless claim that their regime is a beacon of “Christian socialism.” Days prior, they had celebrated the New Year by expelling all Catholic nuns from the country. Nicaragua’s attacks on the Church and broader descent into tyranny culminates the stunning fall from grace of an erstwhile icon of revolutionary politics.
The rise of the FSLN, much like that of the Castro regime in Cuba, was largely the byproduct of decades of heavy-handed US intervention. Between 1912 and 1933, the US military occupied the country as a quasi-protectorate. Peasant leader Augusto Sandino, from whom the Sandinistas take their name, led an insurgency against the occupation. The Marines and the US-trained Nicaraguan National Guard crushed the uprising, after which the head of the latter, Anastasio Somoza García, installed one of the most brutal familial dictatorships in Latin American history. An estimated 50,000 Nicaraguans perished during the 42-year rule of Somoza and his progeny, largely from aerial bombardments of cities during the war against the FSLN.
During this period, a rift emerged within the Catholic Church, with anti-communist priests siding with the Somoza regime despite its crimes against the Church itself. Conversely, adherents of liberation theology—most notably, the priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal—supported the FSLN.
In 1979, the Sandinistas overthrew the Somozas. The revolutionary junta that took power enacted reforms in favor of the rural poor such as a mass literacy campaign and agrarian reform. The Sandinistas also committed their own abuses against indigenous peoples and the Church, although priests like Cardenal served in the revolutionary government.
Ironically, it was the FSLN that brought democracy to Nicaragua. The party agreed to hold regular elections, and then-junta leader Daniel Ortega was elected in 1984. Six years later, an opposition alliance led by Violeta Chamorro defeated the FSLN, and Ortega handed power over peacefully. Out of office, Ortega evidently resolved to never again heed his own prior example. There has been no free election in Nicaragua since he returned to office in 2006.
As part of his return to power, Ortega—likely influenced by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez—embraced Christianity and promoted socially conservative causes. In a stunning reversal, a Marxist party that had once championed women’s rights sided with the Liberal Party and Catholic Church to ban abortion without exceptions in 2006. Nine years later, the FSLN one-party state passed a family code making same-sex marriage and civil unions illegal. Prominent former supporters became alienated from the FSLN; in 2011, Cardenal denounced his former comrades as a cult of personality around Ortega.
“The former guerrilla was hell-bent on installing his own familial autocracy.”
By 2016, little doubt remained that the former guerrilla was hell-bent on installing his own familial autocracy. That year, Ortega claimed to have won a preposterous 72 percent of the vote amid accusations of fraud, voter intimidation, and the expulsion of 16 opposition members of congress. Harking back to the family dictatorship of the Somozas, the FSLN also nominated Ortega’s wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president. Since the mid-2010s, the now 79-year-old Ortega has grown increasingly reclusive, with Murillo assuming public duties.
For a time, the regime’s successful social programs—most notably, medical care for the poor—kept it popular among the FSLN’s traditional base. By 2018, however, economic growth slowed and opposition to a proposed pension reform swelled into mass protests. Security and paramilitary forces opened fire on unarmed protestors, killing more than 500. Victims with bullet wounds sought refuge in churches, with priests offering assistance after hospitals were ordered not to attend to injured demonstrators.
When I visited Nicaragua in 2022, a culture of fear was palpable throughout the country. One 20-something in Granada told me that discussing politics was off-limits for him and explained that his sister had been shot by security forces. The regime has even jailed, exiled, and stripped citizenship from prominent figures of the 1979 Revolution, including Ortega’s own brother Humberto, who died under house arrest in 2024, and the novelist Sergio Ramírez, who served as Ortega’s vice president from 1985 to 1990. In Managua, an older Sandinista told me: “Those of us who fought in the revolution know to keep our mouths shut. They’re no different from the Somozas now.” In 2020, during Ernesto Cardenal’s funeral, regime loyalists stormed the Managua Cathedral, shouting “traitor” at the deceased’s casket.
Elections in 2021 saw around a dozen opposition candidates jailed, exiled, or suspended by the government. With the opposition virtually destroyed, the regime began actively persecuting the Church. In 2022, 11 priests were detained, culminating in the arrest of Rolando Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa and a prominent Ortega critic. Although Nicaragua has severed relations with the Holy See, Álvarez was later exiled to the Vatican in 2024 following negotiations with Pope Francis. In the lead up to Holy Week, the regime banned public processions of faith. It then ordered all nuns to leave the country by Dec. 31.
Like their ally President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Ortega and particularly Murillo still claim adherence to “Christian Socialism.” In a radio address on Christmas Eve, the vice president gave thanks that “Christ’s love had prevailed in Nicaragua.” When I visited the country, I encountered widespread propaganda promoting the FSLN’s “Christian, Socialist, Solidarity” model, particularly in Sandinista strongholds in the rural north.
The explanation of this seeming contradiction is that the regime claims to act above and beyond the Catholic Church as the rightful socialist agent of God. Never mind the recent reversal of limited gains against poverty after 18 years in power. Never mind the attacks on the Church. Like the Somozas before them, the Ortegas have now established a constitution that renders all political institutions legally subservient to the ruling family, as the presidential son Laureano is groomed for power.
Nicaragua’s descent into tyranny offers lessons for observers from across the political spectrum. Neoconservatives should recognize that the military campaigns they support at times have helped to empower the very people they seek to destroy. It should give social conservatives pause that a vigorous promotion of “family values” has provided cover for a regime opposed to justice and truth. Finally, the “anti-imperialists” who continue to celebrate the Nicaraguan regime should heed the late Cardenal and other former Sandinistas’ counsel against Ortega’s “false revolution.” Until the Ortegas suffer the same fate as the Somozas, Nicaraguans—and what remains of the nation’s Catholic Church—will have to endure another familial dictatorship.