While Venezuela is currently a country in a socialist death spiral, nearby Nicaragua may not be far behind.

Daniel Ortega is basically a power-hungry dictator, cast from the same mold as Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolas Maduro. Driven by greed, systematically undermining Nicaragua’s democratic institutions, he pretty much primed the country for an implosion.
 
In his May 24th article, Otto Reich discussed how Ortega’s recent actions have been taken right out of Chávez’s playbook ~

… manipulating electoral laws and eliminating checks and balances by controlling the national police; co-opting the Supreme Court and legislature; curtailing freedom of expression and repressing independent media; and harassing and hounding opposition forces and other critics.

 
So the sudden eruption of nationwide protests a few months ago didn’t come as a huge surprise to those who have watched that growing authoritarianism ~

(I)t would only take a spark to upset his carefully laid plans to establish a family dynasty in Nicaragua along the lines of the Somozas, ironically the family dictatorship that Ortega’s guerrillas once overthrew but which it now closely resembles.
 
That spark came with the sudden announcement of a Social Security reform requiring workers to pay more while receiving fewer benefits. When peaceful protesters demonstrated against the changes, security forces and regime militants (known as turbas divinas, or “divine mobs”) descended on the unarmed civilians, mostly students and younger Nicaraguans, with a fury that shocked the country and only enflamed the situation.

According to the latest reports ~

The government says 197 people have been killed since the protests first flared in mid-April. But rights groups say the death toll is actually over 300, and that 2,000 people have been wounded and more than 130 opposition figures detained.

 
 
Fox News describes the Ortega regime’s harsh response to the uprising ~

At least 400 people are believed to still be held in jails, prisons and police stations across the country and some consider them to be political prisoners, according to the non-governmental Nicaraguan Human Rights Center.
 
Others are held for days or weeks incommunicado, brutally interrogated to give names and threatened with terrorism charges before being released without explanation as Ortega’s government seeks to extinguish the resistance.

Although the country is in disarray, it’s far from the dire straits Venezuelans find themselves in. This unrest is fairly recent, and the Nicaraguans aren’t yet starving or demoralized; they remember the relatively prosperous times they were enjoying just a few short months ago. According to Reich, several circumstances may prevent the country from complete collapse ~

(E)ven the best authoritarian plans can quickly unravel. Notably, the military has signaled its displeasure with the deadly crackdown by Ortega’s police and regime militants, calling for an end to the violence — a strong indication that they might not tolerate further wanton violence directed at civilians. Most of the private sector, which was not consulted on the Social Security reform, has also distanced itself from Ortega, as has the Catholic Church. In fact, the government has become so unpopular that it has had to transport supporters into Managua to stage pro-regime counter demonstrations.
 
Moreover, the specter of Venezuela’s collapse haunts Nicaragua. The country benefited in recent years from regular subsidies of well over half a billion dollars in oil annually from Caracas, allowing it to pay off cronies and fund unsustainable social programs for the country’s poor. But now the Venezuela gusher has gone almost dry, placing increased economic pressure on the Ortega regime.
 
Nicaraguans are also aware of the disastrous denouement of chavismo in Venezuela —repression, corruption, societal conflict, shortages of basic goods and collapse of services — and have no desire to follow the same path.

 
Yet Venezuela is the future that Bernie Sanders, and the latest Democrat Socialist darling – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – are peddling. They’re trying to dupe the electorate into believing that capitalism is the enemy of the people ~

Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.
Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn’t happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.

 
On the other hand, as David Harsanyi pointed out last month ~

(S)ocialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity and a destroyer of individual rights.

 
Nicaragua’s chaos today was inevitable. Ortega’s socialist policies – fueled by his ambitions – grew to unsustainable levels. Something had to give.
 
Whether it comes in the form of a greedy despot – or an insatiable federal leviathan (Washington D.C.) – whenever the government continues to throw up barriers to free trade, and gradually assumes control of the private sector, collectivism never ends well.

 
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Related:
The Man Who Impoverishes Nicaragua ~ Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Cuban exile, knows a thing or two about tyrants ~

(M)urderous dictatorships, based on repression, can last as long as their respective tyrants are willing to defend them, but what they will never achieve is to bring prosperity and happiness to their people. This can only be achieved with democratic institutions, alternation of power, circulation of government elites, transparency, social mobility, the rule of law and the rest of the attributes of civilized and mature nations.

20 Photos of the Crisis in Nicaragua ~
 
 
Arbitrary arrests, abuse the new norm in Nicaragua ~ Details are gruesome ~

A 20-year-old business administration student from the national university said he was punched in the stomach and kicked in the testicles.
 
“They made me spit blood,” he said.
 
When he nervously fumbled trying to remove a piercing from his eyebrow, a police officer ripped it out. A cigarette was put out on a tattoo on his shoulder.
 
“They said they were going to rape us. They said they were going to rape the girls,” he said.
 
The interrogations were carried out by police and masked civilians they called paramilitaries.

Nicaraguans flood migration offices in bid to flee crisis

 
About “Las Turbas”, Ortega’s armed thugs ~ Nicaragua’s president pays paramilitaries, including foreigners, to suppress protests ~

Venezuelans, trained by the Cubans, are joining their Havana counterparts in the torture and killing in Nicaragua to preserve the communist revolutionary project in the Central American country.

 
Nicaragua’s economy laid low by months of unrest ~

Managua (AFP) – Tourist spots are empty, shopping centers and hotels are shuttered, loans for farming have dried up, and unemployment is accelerating. Such is the economic impact of months of unrest in Nicaragua — despite President Daniel Ortega’s insistence the situation is returning to “normality.”
 
The country has been in turmoil since the 72-year-old leader, a former guerrilla who has ruled Nicaragua for 22 out of the past 39 years, responded to rising anti-government protests with a brutal crackdown by his security forces and loyal paramilitaries.