Discover the plot behind the coup in Nicaragua: millions of dollars in favor of the 'insurrection'.
In the article titled "US Administration's Interventionist Machine Boasts of Preparing the Ground for Uprising in Nicaragua," recently published by American journalist Max Blumenthal in The Gray Zone Project, theories about the preparation of the coup with American support – to which the Sandinista government has drawn attention – gain substance.
247, with April "While some mainstream media outlets have sought to portray the violent protest movement in Nicaragua as a grassroots progressive movement, the country's student leaders suggest otherwise," the text states, recalling how, earlier this month, Nicaraguan student leaders, who play a prominent role in the opposition movement against Daniel Ortega's government, traveled to Washington, where they were hosted by Freedom House, a right-wing NGO that funded their trip, to seek support from within the US administration and the elite of the interventionist far-right – see Ted Cruz or Mark Rubio – with whom they met and posed for photographs.
They were also received by senior officials from the State Department and by Mark Green, president of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which Blumenthal characterized as the soft power organization of the American administration.
Maradiaga at the OAS
At the same time, while protesting against the "Ortega dictatorship," a delegation from the opposition led by Félix Maradiaga, president of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policies (IEEPP) of Managua, was represented at the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington. According to Blumenthal, Maradiaga had received at least $260 from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) since 2014.
The grants were intended to support IEEPP's work in the area of activist education, with a view to "fostering debate and generating information on security and violence." The funding was also intended to cover efforts to monitor the "growing presence of Russia and China in the region," the text states.
Regarding Maradiaga, Max Blumenthal states that his agenda came to light as soon as the violent protests against Ortega began in Nicaragua. "Former leader of the Young World Forum, educated at Yale and Harvard, was praised by La Prensa for 'sweating, bleeding and crying alongside the young students who led the protests in Nicaragua'", which, according to information released on Tuesday (26) by the Truth, Justice and Peace Commission, have already caused 194 deaths.
Dialogue resumes.
While Maradiaga was in Washington, Nicaraguan police accused him of overseeing an organized criminal network that murdered several people during violent attacks in the Central American country. Maradiaga claimed to be a victim of "political persecution" and called the accusations "ridiculous," but postponed his return to Nicaragua, receiving full support from the U.S. State Department.
The group Hagamos Democracia receives the most funding from NED – $525 since 2014. According to Blumenthal, the group's president, Luciano Garcia, who oversees a network of reporters and activists, declared that Ortega had turned Nicaragua into a "failed state," demanding "his immediate resignation."
The author states that the NED (National Defense Organization) sought to conceal the identity of the organizations it funded to fuel opposition to Daniel Ortega, but these organizations were well-known in Nicaragua. However, the organization that "invests" the most money against "socialist-oriented governments in Latin America" is USAID. In Nicaragua alone, the budget of this agency, focused on interference, interventionism, and destabilization, "exceeded $5,2 million in 2018," mostly allocated to "training civil society and the media."
Interference, put bluntly.
On May 1st, about a month before the rightward shift in Washington, Benjamin Waddell, academic director of the School for International Training in Nicaragua, bluntly stated in a publication funded by the NED that "NED-backed organizations spent years and millions of dollars 'laying the groundwork for insurrection' in Nicaragua."
Published in Global Americans – a news portal focused on Latin America – Waddell's article "openly boasts of US interference," states Blumenthal, who emphasizes the "frankly sincere nature of the assessment of the impact of investments made by the NED" on Nicaraguan society.
"Inadvertently," the author's conclusions echo those of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega and his supporters, who "framed the protests within the context of a carefully orchestrated coup, backed to the teeth by Washington," Blumenthal emphasizes.
Wave of violence
In a publication funded by the NED, Benjamin Waddell highlights the "mistake" of the international press in describing the "rapid escalation of unrest" in Nicaragua "as a spontaneous explosion of collective discontent," triggered, among other factors, by government changes to the Social Security system. Waddell clarifies: "While it is true that there were underlying causes of the unrest rooted in government mismanagement and corruption, it is increasingly clear that US support played a role in fueling the current uprisings."
In another equally enlightening and straightforward passage highlighted by Blumenthal, Waddell states that "the current involvement of the NED in funding civil society groups in Nicaragua sheds light on the power of transnational financing to influence political outcomes in the 21st century."
Waddell defends the NED's findings and doesn't even forget its role in the Arab Spring... Still regarding Nicaragua, he claims that the US interventionist agency spent $4,1 million between 2014 and 2017, funding 54 "projects" to "create the basis for insurrection" – the "change," in a later, altered version of the text.