Nicolás Maduro saw how his relationship with Lula in Brazil and Gustavo Petro in Colombia was eroded in 2024, among others, due to the results of the July elections, in which he was declared the winner even though the official voting records were never shown. .
However, a faithful ally did not fail him: Daniel Ortega.
“There is no turning back, there is no step back, Nicolás is the legitimate president,” said the Nicaraguan president, whose international legitimacy is as disputed as Maduro’s.
The year that ends deepened the relationship between both countries and at the same time the similarities in how both governments reinforce their power and confront dissent.
Venezuela and Nicaragua, ideological allies along with Cuba with so-called left-wing revolutionary governments, are considered authoritarian regimes by international organizations and Western countries and have been important sources of political and social crisis in Latin America in recent years.
“Both are among the most repressive governments in the region and they use similar practices and policies of repressionincluding arbitrary detentions without due process, torture, and generalized censorship,” the deputy director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Juan Pappier, tells BBC Mundo.
Ortega He has just promoted a reform of the Constitution to concentrate all the powers of the State in his figure and that of his wife, the vice president. Rosario Murillowho will become “co-president.”
Maduro, for his part, renewed his mandate after the July 28 elections, considered fraudulent by many of the world’s democracies.
The official minutes published by the opposition showed a clear victory of Edmundo Gonzálezthe unknown diplomat who replaced the popular leader Maria Corina Machadodisqualified from running.
The instability resulting from the process was followed by reports of arbitrary arrests, irregular trials, torture, and the annulment of passports of government critics, among other measures.
González, accused by the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office – close to the government – of “instigation of insurrection”, had to go into exile in Spain, while Machado has been accused of “treason to the country” and remains in hiding within Venezuela.
Something similar happened in Nicaragua in 2023, when the Executive expelled 316 opponents that it was imprisoned to the United States and withdrew their nationality.
Before, in 2021, Ortega He had been elected for the fifth time as president with 75% of the votes in elections in which he had practically no rivals, after Justice – controlled by the ruling party – ordered the imprisonment of seven pre-candidates in addition to 32 opposition leaders and businessmen.
They accused them, as is now happening in Venezuela, of “conspiracy and treason to the country.”
Both countries are also suffering from a pronounced migratory exodus, especially to the United States, which offers special protection to its asylum seekers.
Experts point out that, from the way they confront dissent to how their electoral processes operate, Nicaragua and Venezuela They exhibit numerous parallels that have been reinforced in 2024.
Although elections are held in both Venezuela and Nicaragua, “the two governments managed to similarly dismantle the checks and balances of democracy, co-opting the judicial power and in practice nullifying the free exercise of the right to vote“says Pappier.
International standards are not met, analysts explain, which has served to consolidate both governments.
“Maduro probably asked Ortega about the procedures that he has used and continues to use to suppress or inhibit, on the one hand, the formation of a majority will for change that threatens his political regime, and on the other hand, how to guarantee the stability of his government,” says the Venezuelan political scientist. John Magdaleno.
According to him, “the disqualifications and restrictions on political parties have become part of the repertoire of procedures that 21st century autocracies implement to avoid any political change.”
The governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua assure that these measures are legal decisions taken by bodies independent of the presidency and obey rules supposedly broken by the opponents.
Exile and cancellation of passports
Other measures used by both administrations to neutralize political opponents. They are exile and the cancellation of passports.
Although They have done it differently and the case of Nicaragua is more extreme.
In 2023, Managua banished 316 opponents in two waves, including opposition political leaders such as Félix Maradiaga or Cristiana Chamorro, historical Sandinistas such as Dora María Téllez and intellectuals such as the writer Gioconda Belli or Sergio Ramírez.
They were stripped of their property, their passports and their Nicaraguan nationality after a judicial resolution that condemned them “for committing acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the people; for inciting violence, terrorism and economic destabilization.”
In Venezuelacomplaints about the cancellation of passports have multiplied in recent months after the July 28 elections.
Some of those affected, such as the political leader Andrés Caleca, reside in the country, so the measure prevents them from leaving legallywhile others are in exile and, in that case, are prohibited from returning.
According to analysts, by blocking the mobility of dissidents inside and outside the country, the government seeks, on the one hand, to prevent the internal opposition from participating in international events and, on the other, to prevent exiles from returning to agitate the internal opposition.
The most notable case now is that of Edmundo Gonzálezrefugee in Spain after receiving an arrest warrant for usurpation of functions, instigation of disobedience and conspiracy, among other alleged crimes.
“The exile of opposition figures in Nicaragua was the result of an agreement with the US and served to relieve pressure on the Ortega government by neutralizing the troublemakers. González’s forced exile in Venezuela served a similar purpose,” Michael Paarlberg, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies think tank and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States, explains to BBC Mundo.
However, it highlights a fundamental difference between the two: while in Venezuela there is still significant and organized internal opposition, in Nicaragua any hint of resistance has been eliminated.
“Ortega’s government follows a more totalitarian approach by repressing all civil society, religious organizations and the opposition, while demobilizing the population through the promise of a certain degree of economic stability, something that Maduro cannot offer,” he points out.
“Repression” and “betrayal of the homeland”
Both Venezuela and Nicaragua have been accused of using their judicial systems and Armed Forces to persecute opponents and dissidents.
“The two regimes use parapolice and paramilitary apparatuses to repress dissidence and opposition,” political scientist John Magdaleno tells BBC Mundo.
Both governments defend the impartiality of their judicial system and allege that their actions against opponents seek to combat alleged subversive campaigns financed by the United States and allies.
After the July 28 elections in Venezuela there have been hundreds of arrests, many of them classified as arbitrary by local and international organizations that defend due process.
Disappearances, torture and several deaths of dissidents who were in police custody have also been reported.
For Amnesty International, the control of the Executive power over the Judicial system and the Prosecutor’s Office translates into arbitrary or preventive arrestsexpedited trials with few guarantees for the defense and sentences determined in advance.
Other organizations such as HRW (Human Rights Watch) point out that in both countries national security and anti-terrorism laws have been exploited to combat protests.
These laws, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), are used as tools to justify arrests and prosecutions that, otherwise, would not have clear legal support.
The Ortega government has prosecuted numerous opposition figures and social leaders on charges of terrorism and conspiracy.
The cases of Cristiana Chamorro and Félix Maradiagapre-candidates for the presidency in 2021, who were charged with conspiracy in judicial processes that, according to Amnesty International, were plagued by irregularities, such as the absence of an adequate defense or the veto of international observers.
Under the excuse of protecting national sovereignty, “both governments use forced exile, judicial persecution, usually by Vague and abstract crimes such as ‘treason’ or ‘terrorism’to intimidate critics,” says the regional representative of HRW, Juan Pappier.
In Venezuela, treason is based on article 130 of the Constitutionwhich obliges its citizens to “honor and defend the country, its symbols and cultural values; safeguard and protect sovereignty, nationality, territorial integrity, self-determination and the interests of the nation.”
The Venezuelan government often uses it to accuse political opponents, whom it sometimes attributes to conspiracies to overthrow or assassinate Maduro.
Among those who have been affected are Juan Guaidó, Leopoldo López, and María Corina Machadoin addition to the former ministers of the ruling party, Rafael Ramírez and Andrés Izarra.
This legal figure has been even more recurrent in Nicaragua.
The Law for the Defense of People’s Rights, approved in December 2020, allows arrest anyone who requests foreign sanctions or “incites foreign interference in the affairs of Nicaragua.”
The government used this figure to sentence the 316 political prisoners exiled in 2023, whom it considered agents at the service of foreign interests.
More recently, Ortega accused of “ treason to the country” to his younger brother Humbertowho died in September 2024 after months of house arrest for describing the government led by his brother and sister-in-law, Rosario Murillo, as “dictatorial.”
Experts agree that the parallels between Nicaragua and Venezuela converge in its greatest political and ideological ally: Cuba.
“Cuban intelligence still has a lot of influence and, at least in Venezuela, is credited with having discouraged, disarmed and infiltrated any type of mobilization or strategic disagreement within public institutions, including the public administration, the Armed Forces and police forces,” says John Magdaleno.
The expert highlights that “the autocratic advance in Nicaragua is much more pronounced than in Venezuela, and is closer to a closed autocracy.”
However, he warns, “in Venezuela we are also beginning to see signs of progress in that direction”.
The deputy director of the Americas of HRW, Juan Pappier, expresses himself in similar terms.
“While the Maduro government alternates between harsher and more generalized repression strategies and more selective ones, at least since 2021, Ortega’s government has repressed criticism in a generalized, brutal and constant manner,” he says.
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