AA
Share
On January 3, 2026, twelve hours after U.S. intervention forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in Caracas, “co-president” Rosario Murillo convened an emergency meeting in the El Carmen bunker in Managua with a select group of senior military officers, police officials, and Sandinista Front political operatives to declare a state of alert.
Murillo ordered an intensification of the surveillance already imposed under the police state against potential opponents and deportees from the United States, in order to prevent celebrations supporting Maduro’s downfall, and unleashed a new wave of arbitrary arrests.
Nearly five months later, following the tightening of the U.S. oil embargo against Cuba, the accusations against Raúl Castro, and the negotiations between Cuba and the United States, including a meeting between CIA director John Ratcliffe and senior Cuban officials, fear and paranoia within the Ortega-Murillo family leadership have become increasingly evident, as a kind of countdown appears to be underway.
“They cannot escape that image of the intervention in Venezuela, which has created a sort of protectorate, nor what may happen in Cuba, where Raúl Castro could end up being prosecuted by a federal court,” writer Sergio Ramírez says.
In an interview with CONFIDENCIAL conducted during the Centroamérica Cuenta literary festival in Panama, Sergio Ramírez analyzed possible scenarios for resolving Nicaragua’s dictatorship crisis through the lens of U.S. intervention in Venezuela and Cuba.
“The Ortega family will disappear one way or another. They do not fit into the equation. Just as Raúl Castro did not fit into the equation, and Maduro did not fit into the equation of U.S. power, Ortega does not fit into it either. The United States will come to an understanding, as it did in Venezuela and Cuba, with those who can guarantee stability. All military officers in the Army will become suspects,” Ramírez warns.
How do you view Nicaragua’s co-dictatorship, its two-headed dictatorship, in light of what is happening in Venezuela and now also in Cuba under pressure and intervention from the United States?
I think they are in the picture. They cannot get themselves out of that picture. There is no Photoshop that can remove them from the image of the intervention in Venezuela, which has created a kind of protectorate, and of what may happen in Cuba, where Raúl Castro could end up being prosecuted by a federal court in order to remove him from the scene and facilitate the agreement that must be reached with the Cuban regime.
The method that is now visible, under Trump’s corollary to the renewed Monroe Doctrine, is that the United States has created, within its foreign policy, a zone called Greater North America, which includes Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and Colombia. The U.S. considers this its exclusive sphere of influence: no China, no Russia, nothing else. It is their zone of determination. Under that framework, they intervened in Venezuela. What is the principle? Very simple: remove the leadership figures who cause irritation, Maduro and his wife, while leaving the rest of the regime intact, as they have done with Delcy Rodríguez.
It is striking how Secretary of State Rubio says: tomorrow President Delcy Rodríguez is leaving for Hungary on an official visit. The fact that he is the one making the announcement shows that what exists there is a true protectorate.
That is the movie Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are watching in El Carmen, but all the Army and Police generals, as well as the political operatives and technocrats around them, are watching it too.
And they are watching how the pressure is tightening around Cuba. Venezuela did not have an economic and social crisis on the scale Cuba is experiencing. In Cuba there is no food, no medicine, no oil, no electricity. Therefore, this is accelerating the crisis, and they are applying maximum pressure to force an arrangement that will mean pushing Raúl Castro aside. Even if he is prosecuted at the age of 94, it is doubtful they would actually take him to stand trial in a U.S. court, but they will remove him from the scene.
They are going to push Díaz-Canel aside and come to an understanding with the structure that is already in place there: the Army, which owns all the businesses. Because I also heard Secretary of State Rubio say that the United States will not allow, ninety miles from its shores, a failed state that generates disorder, renewed migration toward the United States, and instability. And they do not believe they will achieve that with Cubans in exile in Miami, but rather with the institutional apparatus already in place there: the Army, the Police, the security forces, just as in Venezuela.
Once the picture clears in Cuba, and Venezuela has already been dealt with, then obviously Nicaragua comes into view, because until now it has not.
This situation you have pointed to before, that Nicaragua is being ignored by the international community, will that inevitably change?
Yes, because it will be left alone. All the trees that obstructed the view of that other tree standing there will be gone, and only the bare plain will remain. And there will stand a corrupt family government that believes it can stay forever. So once it is exposed to world opinion and to the attention of the United States, they will look there for its replacement.
We are going to see a situation even more critical than Venezuela’s, because in Venezuela the United States ended up setting aside a very large opposition force led by María Corina Machado, as well as a president who was legitimately elected by an overwhelming majority of votes and then robbed of the election, Edmundo González. They could very well have installed him as the legitimate president, but that did not happen. They set him aside, and they also set aside the enormous political force represented by María Corina Machado.
In Nicaragua it is worse, because there is no organized opposition force. There are competing small groups that claim, in my opinion, a vastly exaggerated level of representation. Those who are abroad, in Miami, do not have a real basis for saying: “We represent the country and we are going to guarantee stability once the Ortega family disappears.”
Because the Ortega family will disappear, one way or another. They do not fit into the equation. Just as Raúl Castro did not fit into the equation, and Maduro did not fit into the equation, Ortega does not fit into it either. And it is not that they are going to come to an understanding with the children by removing the father and the mother. They are not going to come to an understanding with any of them, because they are part of the image problem. Just as they could have left Maduro’s wife in place, but instead included her in the picture because she too was part of the image problem.
Are they entering a countdown phase, even if for now it is moving in slow motion?
It is inevitable, and it is going to accelerate. What is going to happen? The same thing happening in these other two situations: the United States will come to an understanding with the forces already in place there, with those who can say, “We are going to guarantee stability here.” But in the meantime, out with China, out with Russia, because that is part of the United States’ framework.
But that puts the ball in the hands of Nicaraguans.
And it puts the ball in the Army’s court. Who is going to lead this transition? Everyone who is there now is going to become suspect.
