MEXICO CITY — President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua is the longest-serving leader in the Americas, having abolished term limits shortly after taking office nearly two decades ago.
The former guerrilla fighter has violently crushed protests and closed churches, universities, nonprofits and newsrooms. Ahead of the most recent presidential vote, in 2021, he eliminated the competition by throwing his most credible challengers in jail.
So when Ortega, 80, marked the 47th anniversary of his leftist movement’s revolution last week by declaring that “there will never be elections here again,” few Nicaraguans were surprised. If anything, some hoped that Ortega’s brazen decree might draw renewed attention to a country that many feel has been forgotten even as it sinks deeper into authoritarianism.
Nicaraguans “live in a state of terror,” said Dora María Tellez, a prominent Ortega critic who was imprisoned for nearly two years before she was stripped of her nationality and forced into exile in 2023. Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, whom Ortega named co-president last year, have such a strong grip on power, Tellez said, “that true democratic transition will require intense external pressure.”
Many Nicaraguans have long hoped that Washington would help apply that pressure. Some cheered the stunning U.S. capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, and support the ongoing White House campaign against Cuba’s communist leadership.
But even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio strongly condemned Ortega’s election decree last week, saying that “the Trump administration and the international community will not stand by as the … dictatorship deepens,” there is little evidence that the White House is ready to intervene directly in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the hemisphere after Haiti, lacks the reserves of oil and rare earth minerals that made Venezuela an attractive target for President Trump, said Kai Thaler, professor of global studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Then there’s the fact that Nicaraguan migrants in the United States are a smaller and less powerful force than Cuban Americans, many of whom have lobbied Washington for decades to isolate and overthrow Havana’s leaders.
“Regime change in Cuba is a much bigger priority for the U.S. government because of people like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are themselves part of Cuban diaspora,” Thaler said.
Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue, said another reason is the perception that Nicaragua, despite widespread political repression and poverty, is relatively stable.
Remittances from abroad help anchor the economy, accounting for nearly a third of the gross domestic product. The last major pro-democracy movement was squelched in 2018, when police and pro-government paramilitary groups killed 362 protesters in what the United Nations said amounted to crimes against humanity.
“In general, foreign policy is reactive, not proactive,” said Orozco, who noted that Trump has his hands full with Venezuela, where a democratic transition remains uncertain, and Iran, where the U.S. war has cost more than $37 billion and shows no sign of ending.
Ortega has forged close ties with Iran and China and has long criticized the U.S. for intervening in Nicaragua’s affairs. In his speech last week, he said the days of “parties backed by the Yankees” were over.
He has been a prominent figure in Nicaragua since the 1970s, when his army of Sandinista revolutionaries helped topple Anastasio Somoza, a right-wing dictator backed by the U.S. whose family controlled the country for four decades, enriching itself even as most Nicaraguans lived in poverty.
Ortega first served as president in the 1980s during a bloody civil war that pitted the Sandinistas against U.S.-funded Contra rebels. He was voted out in 1990 and returned to power in 2007.
But support for Ortega and his anti-American rallying cry has eroded as he and Murillo, 75, who has largely become the face of the nation as Ortega’s health has declined, dismantled all checks and balances on their power, packed the judiciary with their acolytes and built a system of state surveillance that keeps many Nicaraguans from speaking out.
“We cannot raise our voices or express our opinions,” said one woman in Nicaragua who spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity because she fears government reprisals, and who said she would welcome a Venezuela-style intervention by the U.S.
“We live with constant dread that at any moment they could seize the property we spent a lifetime working to acquire, or throw us in prison, where we might not make it out alive.”
Some people, including Tellez, believe a diplomatic solution is still possible, in which a coalition of countries negotiates with Nicaragua’s leaders for a transition to democracy. She believes Ortega’s decision to scrap elections may be a sign that support for the government may be eroding even among hard-line Sandinistas.
Others, including Thaler, said the country’s leaders could use elections as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the U.S. Shortly after Ortega’s incendiary statement, Murillo took to the radio and suggested that the country may in fact hold future elections but that they will be “our elections.”
For some time, Nicaragua’s leaders have largely avoided provoking Trump.
After the U.S. action in Venezuela, Nicaragua announced measures to appease Washington — freeing dozens of prisoners and reinstating a visa requirement for Cubans to make it harder for migrants to reach the U.S. border.
But in recent months, Ortega has been more outspoken, declaring in April that Trump must be suffering “mental derangement” for waging war against Iran.
On the streets of Nicaragua, uncertainty reigns. One woman who spoke on condition on anonymity said she quietly prays for a U.S. intervention. “I’d consider it a blessing,” she said.
But even behind closed doors, it can be dangerous to voice such views.
Marvin Martínez, the national president of the Conservative Party, which was stripped of its legal status in 2021, said government spies lurk “even within families.”
Many of Ortega’s allies from the revolution turned on him long ago, saying he betrayed their dreams of a socialist utopia and resembles the dictator they helped overthrow.
Giaconda Belli, a writer and former guerrilla who left the Sandinista party in 1990 and now lives in exile, said she knows firsthand that removing an authoritarian leader is possible.
“I am confident that we are going to rid ourselves of this one,” Belli said. But, she said, with elections now banned and protest movements stifled, “we are going to have to find a way to get rid of the tyranny of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo through an alternative path.”
Times staff writer Linthicum reported from Mexico City and special correspondent López from Jacksonville, Fla.
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