The Ortega-Murillo crusade to eliminate civil society
The massive closure has a generalized impact on society. Not even the Sandinista-allied organizations have escaped the dictatorship’s push to gain control over all projects undertaken in the country.
HAVANA TIMES – The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has eliminated over 70% of the non-profit organizations that previously existed in Nicaragua, according to Confidencial’s tally. Of the 7,227 NGOs that were in existence up until 2017, 5,232 have been shuttered – 162 because they requested “voluntary dissolution,” and the rest forcibly annulled by the government.
Following this massive closure of NGOs, there are only some 2,000 left in Nicaragua, and possibly not all of these are even active, estimates Ana Quiros, former director of the Center for Health Information and Consulting Services (CISAS), the very first of the organizations to be cancelled and confiscated in 2018.
In the latest attack on August 19, 2024, 1,500 organizations were eliminated in one blow. The Ministry of the Interior accused all of them of “not reporting” their financial statements for periods ranging from one to thirty-five years. The massive and indiscriminate closure included associations of Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, social organizations, equestrians, entrepreneurs, educators, health workers, indigenous people, athletes, Sandinista veterans, lawyers and animal rescue.
This massive closure of social organizations in Nicaragua has “a large political and social impact,” states Silvio Prado, a Nicaraguan sociologist and researcher on topics of citizen participation and civil society. “The disappearance of that network of associations in our country, brings with it the disappearance of the fundamental element that makes up the fabric of civil society, which is the fabric of as
