ABSTRACT
Since the victory of the Sandinista revolution in 1979, the military played a key role in Nicaraguan politics: as a victorious guerrilla army; then, as the main logistical support for presidential elections of 1990 and as a key factor in the negotiations that sealed the accorded post-revolutionary transition. After 1990 the army was subordinated to the civil authorities, supporting the successive democratically elected governments of the period, including the Sandinista party led by Ortega, back in power since 2007. Ortega has reminded the military of ‘their Sandinista origins’, but not as one of the values of their initial identity, but to ensure their loyalty to his political project. In less than half a century, the military have converted Sandino into a vague memory and his ethical legacy lies concealed under the opulence in which those who once claimed to be his children, his heirs, currently live. The political crisis provoked by the Ortega regime after the brutal suppression of the unarmed civil uprising in 2018 has placed the army in a dilemma. Even though they had not been involved in the bloodshed, their silence as regards the bloody repression gradually became collusion and the army began to lose the little social legitimacy that it still possessed. Amid this unresolved crisis, Ortega emerged ‘victorious’ from the November 2021 presidential elections. With this outcome, the military might feel comfortable and safer; however, that comfort and safety will be at stake if the international community refuses to recognise the results of those elections which would keep him in power for another five years.
