The Lesther Factor: Ortega’s Offensive Against Universities

Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has closed eight private universities. Along with the recent conviction of student Lesther Aleman (who has become a symbol of the 2018 protests), the government is showing that silencing critical thinking and putting an end to free education are among its main objectives.

By Leo Oliva

Lesther Aleman walks slowly into the room where he stands to be tried, his stare seems lost. Even though he has just turned 24, his health appears to be weak and fragile. He has just been informed that he must face trial for the charges of “undermining the national integrity”, plausible only in the law that Nicaragua’s ruling regime hurriedly passed in May last year, before expediting the arrest of its main opponents. Lesther, incarcerated and uncommunicated for more than 200 days in the prison of El Nuevo Chipote, manages to mutter “I’m innocent!” before judge Nadia Camila Tardencilla commands him to remain silent, at the request (more like the order) of the prosecutor, a judicial official who is reportedly a zealous supporter of Sandinismo.

On Thursday, February 3rd, almost seven months after being dragged away from his mother, Lesbia Alfaro, in a police car, the leader of Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN, for its Spanish acronym), who had dared confront president Daniel Ortega in April 2018, is predictably declared guilty. Days later, judge Tardencilla rules her inevitable sentence: thirteen years in jail. In other words, Lesther Aleman will stay in prison until the age of 37, the same age as Ortega when he first ruled the country back in the 80’s. 

Today, aged 76, the former member of the Sandinista guerrilla is far from his dream of youth. Almost as far as to accept that young people such as Lesther are entitled to talk to him and dissent with his ideas. Even to confront him and call him a “murderer” in a discussion, just as he did in April 2018. Closing eight private universities has the clear purpose of controlling voices in the educational centers even further. For Ortega and his authoritarian views, the Lesther Factor represents a dissenting voice that must be quieted to carry on controlling the government, power and lives of Nicaraguan citizens.

For Sandinistas that remain loyal to Ortega, which are not few, the young social communication student is a “traitor of the homeland” who deserves jail time and the multiple disgraces that have occurred to him there, such as psychological torture, intense questioning and almost no communication with his family and lawyers, human rights organizations and the AUN. 

The laws dictated by Orteguismo bury him under pompous and imprecise accusations (“conspiracy to undermine the national integrity”). But the crime committed by Lesther, his partner Max Jerez (also convicted to thirteen years in jail on February 21st) and the entire university movement that led the 2018 protests, was speaking up, flooding the streets to protest against a man who has been in power for fifteen years and who is still deciding over the fate of more than 6,6 million Nicaraguans.

Almost four years ago, during the protests and subsequent repression, students managed to twist the will of Ortega, a leader who seldom backs down. The president had to withdraw his attempted reform to the social security system and to summon the discussion in which the 20-year-old student with a black t-shirt and the colors of the flag of Nicaragua in his neckwear, crossed his path and showed him a face of the country that the president is not willing to welcome: opposition to his dictatorial ways. Ever since, his answer has been to chase and silence the student movement and its dwellings: universities. This is what explains his latest swap: seizing eight of them.

The Great Seizure

“Obedient universities or nothing,” asserted Sergio Ramirez, former vice president of Ortega in the 80’s. The writer who is exiled in Spain, thus criticized the Decree of February 2nd, which made fourteen organizations illegal, including five private universities. The measure generated helplessness, indignation and uncertainty among thousands of students who were set to begin their academic term that week, and can be considered  as the final stroke of the Sandinista government against private universities. The first five universities that were closed were: Universidad Politecnica de Nicaragua (Upoli), Universidad Catolica del Tropico Seco (Ucatse), Universidad Pablo Freire (UPF), Universidad Nicaraguense de Estudios Humanisticos (Uneh) and Universidad Popular Nicaraguense (Uponic). Other three followed: Universidad Hispanoamericana (Uhispam), closed in December; Tecnologica Nicaraguense (UTN) and Santo Tomas de Oriente y Mediodia (Uston), whose closures were approved on February 23rd by the National Assembly (controlled with an overwhelming majority by Ortega followers). Out of the aforementioned, Upoli is the most significant for those who resist the regime: it was the hotbed of the 2018 protests.

The official explanation is that universities’ legal persons were rescinded for having “shady management of funds,” since the Ministry of Government (Migob in Spanish) is unaware “of the way in which funds were executed and if it complied with the objectives and goals granted by the National Assembly.” But aside from the versions of the regime, almost everyone agrees that this is an act of seizure, which is forbidden by the country’s Political Constitution. To give more “legality” to this abuse, the National Assembly created four state universities under control by Ortega’s regime, in the facilities of some of the universities that were closed. In other words, the new universities lack the autonomy enshrined in the Constitution, as reported by the guild of universities in Latin America and the Caribbean (Union de Universidades de America Latina y el Caribe – Udual, in Spanish), the largest and oldest university network in the region.

According to the calculations of the digital outlet Confidencial, based on the scant figures in Nicaragua on university tuition, 18,000 students have been affected by Ortega’s measure, taking a new blow after many were expelled from public universities in 2018 for having engaged in protests against the government.

A sepia-toned photograph is all that remains of the moment captured at Upoli in May 2018, it portrays 500 students barricading to resist the “dialogue” summoned by Ortega. Now, many believe this image will turn into other young people patrolling the building, albeit waving a very different flag: that of the National Union of Students from Nicaragua (UNEN, for its Spanish acronym), the university branch of the Sandinista Front.

“The actions by the Nicaraguan state, led by the Ortega-Murillo regime, intend to annul citizens’ participation in public affairs and eradicate critical thinking, which is why we urge the solidarity of the national and international educational community in defending academic liberty, university autonomy human rights and democracy,” the University Coordinator for Democracy and Justice (CUDJ), a youth organization that has fought Ortega’s offensive with universities, condemned in a release. 

Presidents of the universities are also victims of university nationalization, they carry the load of Sandinismo’s accusatory fingers, always open to prosecute and incarcerate its opponents. That is why Paulo Freire went to exile in Costa Rica, he has spoken to the independent Nicaraguan press and accused Ortega’s government of wanting to manage the country’s education with political criteria, as he stated to Confidencial: “These are not academic nor educational criteria, this is about applying a political grip”. 

Ernesto Medina, former president of Universidad Americana (UAM) stated something similar  to that outlet: “Right now, those steering the education are political commissaries, political agents. People who only worry about obeying orders of the government in each stage of the (educational) system”.

Implementing a single thinking instead of critical thinking seems to be the last stroke of the regime against universities. There is a background in Nicaragua, contributing to the  historical parallel that Ortega has grown accustomed to trace with the Somoza dictatorship. In 1946, as La Prensa has recalled, Anastasio Somoza Garcia decided to close Universidad Central in revenge for the opposition his reelection had gotten from the institution.

Students have always inconvenienced Latin American autocrats. The Massacre of Tlatelolco in Mexico (1968) and the Night of the Pencils in Argentina (1976) are two examples that illustrate that Ortega’s actions repeat what the worst dictatorships have done. The figure of Lesther Aleman, the young man who is now defeated by his Sandinista tormenter, may become the flag of a new generation of Nicaraguans to fight against the abuses of a power-driven family. Daniel Ortega himself did it once with the symbol of another victim of the harshest oppression in Nicaragua: Augusto Cesar Sandino.