Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has incrementally consolidated power through the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional), virtually making it his personal party. At the start, Nicaragua’s Revolution was characterized by its unique attempt to pursue social justice, equality, liberty and democracy through a synthesis of catholic liberation theology, Marxism, and socialism.[i] Sandinismo and post-Vatican II Latin American Catholicism shared many teleological, ontological and eschatological themes. In fact, many early Sandinistas were Christian activists, whose goals were “secular and spiritual alike, [and whose] involvement in the war of liberation and the revolution was consistent with their traditional Christian upbringing.”[ii] Since before his successful re-election in 2006, Ortega has been deviating from the values originally characteristic of the FSLN. Instead, he has coopted its language and rhetoric to support his “model that has nothing of socialism, nor of solidarity, nor of Christianity” that according to Enrique Sáenz of El Confidencial, has enriched the Ortega family and maintained their power. By comparing and contrasting the spiritual, ideological and political beliefs of the FSLN during the revolution with those practiced by the current regime, one sees how Ortega represents a de-conversion from and a betrayal of ambitious, justice-oriented revolutionary values.

The FSLN of the 1970’s and 1980’s attempted a unique style of “democratic socialism.” Their goals for a mixed economy, non-alignment within the cold war, and the rejection of economic dependence on the United States were guided by a combination of  “contemporary Marxism and Christianity.”[iii] Many of its ideologues and revolutionaries embraced liberation theology, which pursues “liberation as a human-based process that plays a role in both the transformation and constitution of alternate social orders.”[iv] For an adherent to liberation theology, working to construct a society that allows for more human flourishing is as important as retaining spiritual truths. Christ’s eschatological return, which promises a righting of all wrongs, is not something simply waited for but actively pursued through social and political change. Sandinista revolutionaries such as Ernesto Cardenal pursued this through revolutionary socialism, seeing it as harmonious with Christian values. For some figures like Gioconda Belli, revolution has an element self transformation that takes on a deep internal meaning; one that for the revolutionary has a certain aspect of spiritual transformation, much like the gospel had for St. Paul.[v]

If the spiritual legacy of the Sandinismo during the revolution is one of social justice, optimism and striving for human flourishing, then only the opposite can be said of the Sandinismo of Daniel Ortega’s FSLN of today. Despite maintaining leftist rhetoric and close ties to other leftist leaders, Ortega’s party now leans authoritarian and neo-liberal.[vi] Ortega and his family have built a “business empire with assets in energy, security and other sectors” and have secured control over much of the country’s media.

It is speculated that the FSLN began to change when it lost popular support as it cut needed social programs, having to divert resources to fight the bloody, U.S. Contra War.[vii] While popular exhaustion and disillusionment prevented Ortega from being re-elected in 1990, it was his appeal to Catholics and Evangelical Christians in later campaigns (in addition to making corrupt deals with the Alemán administration[viii]) that helped him win the election in 2006. He presented himself as a “new man,”[ix] genuflecting to the Catholic Church and appealing to the growing population of evangelical voters. In doing so he sacrificed the party’s progressive and feminist stances, such as when he worked to ban abortions even to protect the life of the mother.[x]

This isn’t to say Ortega has done nothing for Nicaragua: He has presided over incremental economic expansion through his openness to the private sector. However, he has also severely deteriorated the country’s democratic institutions. Since 2007, he has stacked the supreme court of justice with allies, ended presidential term limits, placed family members in key public and private sector positions, and presided over the harassment of the media and the unlawful arrests of dissenters. The violent crackdown against the popular protests of 2018, and his behavior approaching the 2021 election indicate that he is not planning on stepping down anytime soon. The FSLN of today is sinister at worst and oblivious at best: the tacky, metal “trees of life” that now adorn Managua’s streets, the gaudy pink campaign posters, the mishandling of the pandemic, and the creation of a National Ministry of Extraterrestrial Space Affairs evidence a government detached from the needs of its citizens.

The contemporary FSLN represents a re-prioritization of principles. Ortega has inverted the spiritual focus of the party to the detriment of its original iterations: rather than supporting democracy and social justice through Christian liberation theology and Socialism, he has appealed to orthodox Christian principles to gain popular support in elections. In doing so he has cemented himself in power and rendered the FSLN ideologically unrecognizable from its revolutionary past, tragically eradicating the feminism, liberation, democracy, and revolutionary potential that used to characterize it.

[i] Reed, Jean-Pierre. “Elective Affinities between Sandinismo (as Socialist Idea) and Liberation Theology in the Nicaraguan Revolution.” Critical Research on Religion 8, no. 2 (August 2020): 153–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050303220924110.

[ii] Reed, Jean-Pierre. “Elective Affinities between Sandinismo (as Socialist Idea) and Liberation Theology in the Nicaraguan Revolution.” Critical Research on Religion 8, no. 2 (August 2020): 153–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050303220924110.

[iii] Paszyn, Danuta Maria Sylwia. 1996. “The Soviet Attitude to Political and Social Change in Central America (1979-1990), Case Studies: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.” Order No. 10016707, University of London, University College London (United Kingdom). http://proxyau.wrlc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxyau.wrlc.org/dissertations-theses/soviet-attitude-political-social-change-central/docview/1778950243/se-2?accountid=8285.

[iv] Reed, Jean-Pierre. “Elective Affinities between Sandinismo (as Socialist Idea) and Liberation Theology in the Nicaraguan Revolution.” Critical Research on Religion 8, no. 2 (August 2020): 153–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050303220924110.

[v] Reed, Jean-Pierre. “Elective Affinities between Sandinismo (as Socialist Idea) and Liberation Theology in the Nicaraguan Revolution.” Critical Research on Religion 8, no.

[vi] Gooren, Henri. “Ortega for President: The Religious Rebirth of Sandinismo in Nicaragua.” Revista Europea De Estudios Latinoamericanos Y Del Caribe / European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 89 (2010): 47-63. Accessed March 4, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575.

[vii] Leogrande, William M. “Making the Economy Scream: US Economic Sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua.” Third World Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1996): 329-48. Accessed March 4, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993096.

[viii] Gooren, Henri. “Ortega for President: The Religious Rebirth of Sandinismo in Nicaragua.” Revista Europea De Estudios Latinoamericanos Y Del Caribe / European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 89 (2010): 47-63. Accessed March 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575.

[ix] Gooren, Henri. “Ortega for President: The Religious Rebirth of Sandinismo in Nicaragua.” Revista Europea De Estudios Latinoamericanos Y Del Caribe / European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 89 (2010): 47-63. Accessed March 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575.

[x] Kampwirth, Karen. “Abortion, Antifeminism, and the Return of Daniel Ortega: In Nicaragua, Leftist Politics?” Latin American Perspectives 35, no. 6 (2008): 122-36. Accessed March 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27648142.