‘Live From Nicaragua’: What Media Didn’t Say About the 2018 Coup Attempt

As images and reports came out of Nicaragua in 2018, the public was fed a narrative created by the United States, its international proxies, and the Central American nation’s elite. The fabrication envisioned a peaceful, progressive and young protest movement crushed by a leftist dictatorial regime. 

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Yet as it is often the case, narratives about Latin America hide imperialistic interests and Nicaragua is no exception. In the new ebook, ‘Live from Nicaragua: An Uprising or a Coup,’ authors expose and refute these biased and false reports presented in corporate media and by international non-governmental organizations. 

“Live from Nicaragua is the kind of accessible, rigorously researched, politically relevant and timely reader that is needed in order to understand the kind of “fourth-generation” conflicts that have been imported from Eastern Europe and the Middle East regions to Latin America in the last few years,” Gabriela Luna, a Nicaraguan researcher with the Institute of Research and Training for Territorial Development in Matagalpa writes in the foreword. 

The free 270-page reader, as editors call it, was produced by the Alliance for Global Justice, an anti-imperialist solidarity organization in the U.S. It includes essays, investigative journalism articles, original interviews and first-hand accounts of the war. 

“It is a thoughtful and multifaceted collection covering a highly significant event in modern revolutionary and anti-imperialist history,” activist Roger Stoll wrote in Popular Resistance.

Nicaragua is one of the few left-wing progressive governments in the region. It is for this very reason that the U.S. government has systematically targeted President Daniel Ortega’s administration. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton even identified the country as part of the “Troika of Tyranny,” in order to justify interventions paralleled in Venezuela and Cuba.

The book centers on one of these interventions against the Sandinista government. On April 18, 2018, Nicaragua’s ten years of peace and growing prosperity were shattered as agents of the U.S. and national elites launched a war against the Nicaraguan state and the people's government.

It was all started as rumors spread across the country that national police fired live ammunition at student protesters and that two students were dead. The story was false and before the truth could get out, dozens of Nicaraguans were pouring into the streets to protest the following day. Three people died: a policeman, a Sandinista supporter, and a bystander. 

The conflict became violent and finally ended mid-July with the removal of the opposition roadblocks. Over 250 people were killed and many more injured. More than 250 buildings were burned down or ransacked, with public sector property losses of over US$230 million and GDP fell nearly four percent. 

In the new ebook, 25 contributors tell the real version of what happened, how U.S.-financed NGO’s warped the narrative and political parties confused the population with false stories. In more than one essay, authors explain how the violent model used by protestors is an export from other right-wing organizations, reminiscent of the “guarimbas” in Venezuela. 

The book first places the Central American nation in its historical context, dating back to U.S. intervention mid-20th century and the triumph of the Sandinistas, taking the reader to an analysis that discredits false claims and reports made against Ortega's administration, to then recounting week by week events of the confrontations. 

Other chapters include interviews and essays about all those actors that played a key role in constructing the lies and those who fought it. 

A journalism piece follows the deaths and reccounts how most belong to Sandinistas or regular people that supported the government. As the regime-changing operation was portrayed internationally as a heroic struggle for “democracy,” media failed to tell of the private interests behind ousting President Ortega. 

In 2018, Nicaragua got US$1.3 million from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. However, for this country, Washington needed to engage the funding one by one as it built a network to overthrow the government. The imperialistic nature of this intervention is described in articles by internationally recognized authors such as Max Blumenthal and others. 

“No organization or individual involved with this project received any financial or other remuneration from the government of Nicaragua or any other government or government-controlled entity for our role in producing this book,” Chuck Kaufman, National Co-Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice explained. 

More than a year after the events portrayed in this book, Nicaragua now tries to heal its wounds with dialogue and a government-led amnesty law that aims to bring peace.