The internal strife in Nicaragua continues. The army is
still mainly on the sidelines as hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens,
unarmed and determinedly peaceful, march to demonstrate their complete disgust
with the Ortega government. The huge Mothers’ Day (this week in Nicaragua)
crowd was estimated at 700,000, or one tenth the country’s population!
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| Uncredited photo from Facebook group. |
Daily, I peruse the opposition newspaper La Prensa online. Its
coverage, along with posts by Nicaraguans on a Facebook group site (Expats in Nicaragua) is my primary source of information about the
protests.
I learned a new word on La Prensa’s front page recently:
francotirador. It means sniper. Which, in turn, neatly defines the government’s
response to the public demonstrations. Hired Sandinista youth and, some say,
Cuban mercenaries, well-equipped with Russian sharpshooter Dragunov rifles,
fire both rubber bullets and live ammunition into the crowds, killing
indiscriminately. The death toll reached 100 this week, with more than a
thousand injured.
Imagine the U.S. or Canadian government hiring snipers to “discourage”
public demonstrations.
Please take a moment and watch this short clip from the
Mothers’ Day demonstrations. Then play it again with closed eyes. Then, try to
measure the courage and determination of a people trying desperately to rid
their country of its voracious power wielders, for the second time in less than
forty years.
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