Hatred: Ortega’s Horrendous Legacy

One of the worst inheritances that Daniel Ortega is leaving Nicaraguans with is hate.

He’s planted hatred, first of all, in his repressive forces.  In the last few days, a video’s been circulating on social media of some police with a young man on the ground – handcuffed, defenseless. They begin kicking him in the head and body, and one of them even stands on his head.  Another pulls him by the arms, with his arms tied behind his back. This is an old torture used in the middle ages.

The clear goal is to cause suffering to a defenseless victim. This scene is similar to what we saw when they captured a pair of young professionals, and, in the middle of the Masaya highway, in full daylight, and in front of all those around them on this very busy roadway, they began kicking the young woman in the head.

These are only a few examples, amid many. If these things happen on the street, it’s easy to imagine the barbarities they commit in the jails. When I commented on this in a conversation, one of those present let drop a phrase that flattened me: for an assassin, he said, there’s no difference between killing and torturing. It also doesn’t matter if it’s day or night.

One wonders: How could these beings incubate so much evil, so much cruelty, so much hate?

And not only those in uniform. The dances of the masked figures after the massacre they perpetrated also reveal the same inhumane behaviors. Dances of death; dances of hate; Satanic dances.

The same thing happens with the fanatical mobs that still back the Ortega regime. Their wild looks, their frenetic gestures, their violent yells. They’re pregnant with hate. And that hate brings them to insult, strike, attack, threaten, make martyrs of others.

The profaning of graves. The profaning of churches. The aggression against mothers. The aggression towards religious figures. Despicable actions like cutting off water and electricity, then impeding the entry of medicine or medical attention. And then to go to the extreme of jailing young people for the sole act of bringing water and aid to mothers demanding freedom for their jailed children.

However, we Nicaraguans reached a peak of brutality with the aggression recently suffered by the Alonso family in Leon. Brutality in every sense of the word. Brutality for the way they ransacked the house, with a sledgehammer. Of course, to speak of a legal warrant would be a mockery. Brutality for the cruel viciousness exercised against defenseless victims. This episode was truly out of the pages of Hitler’s Germany.

According to the perpetrators, this act will undermine the population’s will to resist. They don’t understand. In their bestiality, they can’t understand that instead of subduing them, indignation, repudiation and the people’s will to resist redoubles instead. Repudiation. And also hatred.

It’s impossible not to feel outraged by the brutality of these actions, actions that only evoke the fascist hordes of the Nazis. Or to feel equally indignant in the face of the shameless discourse of the leaders who promote and ordered this barbarity.

Here’s where the greater problem resides. The brutality of the repressive actions, the pitiless malice towards the victims, and the arrogance of those who feel themselves immune to punishment are a propitious stewpot for fermenting hatred and vengeance. This is the worst inheritance that the regime could leave us.

Ortega is leaving us with multiple perverse inheritances. A perverse economic legacy, like the companies of all sizes going bankrupt; the crisis in social security; the internal and external debt; a perverse social legacy, with poverty, unemployment; a perverse political legacy of the destruction of democracy; in the administration of justice; of the laws; a perverse moral inheritance of corruption; the irresponsibility and malice of his followers; a perverse human legacy of pain and mourning in the families.

The most perverse legacy is hatred

On different occasions, I’ve pointed out that as a people we are under pressure to raise ourselves above adversity. However, defeating Ortega and the Ortega methodology, also means defeating the venom of hate that he’s trying to inoculate our hearts with.

After observing so many outrages, I feel that the words ring hollow to a surviving victim or to the family members of the victims of these behaviors. Only justice, true justice, that punishes the criminals can perhaps rinse away in the future, the disastrous legacy that Ortega’s rule is leaving us.