Orozco: “Nicaragua has become the most remittance dependent country in the Western Hemisphere”

The LatinNews Podcast

Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development program at the Inter-American Dialogue sat down with Richard McColl of The LatinNews Podcast on October 24, 2023 to provide his analysis on Nicaragua and the Ortega-Murillo regime.  

COMMENTS FROM OROZCO:

"I think fundamentally the obstacle is that the situation in Nicaragua is getting worse. The main issue is not so much, in my perspective, what the government is doing vis-à-vis concrete actions like the expropriation of academic centers, of personal property, of businesses, or the incarceration of individuals whether they are activists or not. More fundamental is the reason why [the Ortega-Murillo regime] is taking these kinds of actions. Any dictatorships, and even democratic governments sometimes transgress the rule of law and execute these types of things."

"[The Ortega-Murillo regime] has crafted a political management system based on four or five different pillars. One is the repressive pillar, the second is mediatic one - very much similar to the Taliban. The Ministry of [inaudible] in Nicaragua is led by the Ministry of Communications by Rosario Murillo. The third pillar is the economic infrastructure led by the head of the Central Bank and a few private sector operators. The fourth one is the institutional makeup - within the repressive regime, the police are the ones that lead the main repressive apparatus. The military is taking a sideline position that they are not going to become directing both. The hierarchy of the military is in full support of Ortega because they don't see an alternative to rebel. They are afraid that the breaking up of the army would cause a civil war in the country. That moral hazard has basically kept them in a [stand-off] position. In that regard they turn to support Ortega - at least from a transactional perspective..."

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE