It took my wife Marcy Rein and me two independent searches to find out what happened to Victor Hugo Tinoco. We came at the search independently because neither of us knew the other had such a deep interest in understanding what happened to this remarkable person, especially after he’d been imprisoned in 2021 along with other Sandinista dissenters for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” under a law passed by the dictator Daniel Ortega’s FSLN-dominated National Assembly.
The arrests of opposition leaders and an assortment of dissidents of the Ortega regime followed years of protests, including the dramatic demonstrations across the country in 2018. Throughout that year thousands of demonstrators were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and others were murdered. That wave of protests followed the massive nationwide “anti-canal” protests of 2014 when Ortega pledged to work with Chinese capitalists to build a canal through the country. The upheaval in the country continued into 2020 and led to the eventual mass arrests and the imprisonment of opposition leaders in 2021.
For these reasons, and many others, it’s hard for me to say the word “Sandinista” without a deep sense of betrayal. “Betraying the homeland”? All Tinoco had ever done was serve his homeland. Read his Wikipedia entry: He entered the FSLN in 1973 when he was still a student. He fought in the Revolution and served in the Sandinista Government of National Reconstruction as ambassador to the UN and as vice Foreign Minister and remained a party loyalist until the authoritarian turn in the 1990s. In 2001 he made the “mistake” of challenging Daniel Ortega in the presidential primaries, then backing Herty Lewites, who ran against Ortega, for president in 2005. He went on to represent the Movement for Sandinista Renewal, a social democratic alternative to the increasingly authoritarian FSLN.
The real traitors, of course, are Daniel Ortega, his brother Humberto and the coterie of lackeys who surround them. They’ve shamelessly stolen the name and heritage of a great Nicaraguan patriot, Augusto C. Sandino, and turned a revolutionary organization for which thousands gave their lives into the corruption machine that now runs the country.
This should be obvious to everyone, and it is obvious to anyone interested in a simple review of the history of Nicaragua over the past century. The Sandinistas who remained true to the ideals of Sandino and the values he inculcated during his years-long struggle have all long ago left the party. Now only the criminals, scoundrels, thieving pedophiles like Daniel Ortega himself, and of course his sycophants, remain in the FSLN.
As we looked for news about Mr. Tinoco, Marcy picked up our book again and turned to the chapter on Nicaragua. She complimented me on the opening sentence to my introduction to that chapter: “In the 1980s, hope had a name and an address for the worldwide Left: Sandinista Nicaragua.” Yes, that was true. And it’s just as true that much of that Left continues to celebrate dictators, repressive and authoritarian governments and a polarizing rhetoric that incites class hate, “revolutionary” violence and impoverished closed societies that proclaim themselves “socialist.” That Left continues to support the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships, decrepit and discredited Leninist parties (even when, as in the case of Venezuela, they no longer claim inspiration from Lenin) and anything “anti-capitalist” and “anti-bourgeois.”
But there is another Left, defined and defended by heroes like Victor Hugo Tinoco and the 221 other Nicaraguans freed on February 9th. This is the left, as Tinoco told me in that 2010 interview, that believes “social justice can only be attained through a process that profoundly respects civil social and individual freedoms, and furthermore that social transformations are only sustainable over time if they are built and sustained on the basis of respect for civil rights and liberties.”
It is ironic that in all likelihood these political prisoners were released only due to the pressure the US put on the Ortega regime. The “great imperialist enemy” has once again intervened in Nicaragua, but this time on behalf of human rights, civil liberties, due process, freedom for political prisoners, including for those who oppose all US intervention, which would undoubtedly include many of those imprisoned by the Ortega dictatorship.
And it worked. Victor Hugo Tinoco, according to AFP, was among those who were flown out of the country with the “Empire” as their destination. And from the reports and images, they were quite relieved to enter the “belly of the Beast” (as José Martí so famously dubbed life in the United States) to escape the more dangerous threat of the Ortega government: a slow, miserable death in a Nicaraguan prison under what many call “horrific” conditions.
At least 38 prisoners remain in Nicaraguan jails and it’s not at all clear that these lesser-known dissidents have any possibilities of early release. In all likelihood they will be joined by future waves of dissidents protesting the Ortega regime, which now can only be compared to the Somocista dictatorship against which Ortega and his comrades fought so hard in their youth. Ultimately the winning prize of Somoza’s throne went to Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo alone. All the others who fought for freedom at their side have been silenced, killed or sent into exile in the USA. Ironically, it was only they, and the United States, who remained faithful to a vision of a democratic Nicaragua. Ortega and Murillo and their followers went the way of the dictator.