1. ‘We didn’t want to be like Somoza’s Guardia’: policing, crime and Nicaraguan exceptionalism

Robert Sierakowski

In late April 2018, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, political violence in Nicaragua made international headlines. Thanks to smartphones and social media, people all over the world could watch in real time as the country’s police forces and armed paramilitaries worked together to crush a wave of popular protest against the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega. Livestreamed videos showed killers with their faces covered by bandanas and balaclavas, firing weapons of war while storming neighbourhoods, universities and even a church. Often the masked groups were filmed riding aboard government-owned Toyota Hilux trucks which travelled in large convoys protected by police vehicles.

Peaceful student demonstrations, which began as protests against cuts to social security, soon expanded to calls for Ortega’s resignation due to the government’s heavy-handed response to the protests. With the police and paramilitaries firing live ammunition at barricades, outgunned youths fought back with the weapons at their disposal, largely rocks and homemade morteros (mortars), an artisanal ‘weapon’ traditionally used in Nicaraguan social movements. In this David and Goliath struggle, youthful demonstrators sometimes had only slingshots with which to respond to government bullets. Over the coming months, Sandinista agents – both police and allied civilian militias – killed hundreds of Nicaraguans, wounded thousands and chased thousands more into exile. Most of the victims were young men in their twenties, while others among the dead included teenagers and even young children shot down by the police and paramilitaries. In addition to an estimated 300 civilians murdered by Ortega loyalists, approximately 22 police officers were killed by violent elements of the opposition. The three months of repression marked the deadliest wave of mass killing outside of wartime in the history of the republic. For outside observers, the events fit comfortably in their view of Latin American instability and human rights violations. Many commented on the irony that history seemed to be repeating itself: a political party that had first come to power in a youth-led uprising against a repressive dictatorship was now carrying out eerily similar violence to keep itself in power. Ortega, it was repeated, had betrayed the 1979 Revolution.

For those familiar with Nicaraguan history, the widespread police violence and state backing for death squad attacks proved perhaps even more shocking. Until April 2018, Nicaragua was seen as an exceptional ‘island of peace’ in Central America, a region in which criminal violence carried out by street gangs and drug traffickers are an ever-present part of daily life. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, but its police force has consistently been recognised as a regional leader in the areas of public safety, human rights and community policing. Whereas the ‘Northern Triangle’ of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras registered homicide rates of 26.1, 60 and 42.8 murders per 100,000 people respectively in 2017, in Nicaragua, the figure dropped to a record-breaking low of 7 per 100,000. Even the far more economically developed Central American country of Costa Rica had a higher homicide rate at 12.1 per 100,000.¹ While the Nicaraguan police force was considered the ‘most efficient and least corrupt’ in the region, that of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras competed for first place in hemispheric rankings of corruption.² Opinion polls from 2014 suggest that crime was a distinctly secondary problem for the vast majority of Nicaraguans. Whereas 53.4 per cent of Salvadorans, 46.2 per cent of Hondurans, 37.6 per cent of Guatemalans and 18.7 per cent of Costa Ricans chose ‘crime’ as their most pressing concern, an infinitesimal 3.5 per cent of Nicaraguans did so.³ In 2015, The Economist went so far as to write that Nicaragua’s police force, with its community policing and success against organised crime and gangs, was ‘in danger of giving socialism a good name’.⁴

In this chapter, I argue that the outrageous scale of repression in 2018, as well as the decades-long reputation for low levels of crime, can be traced to the emergence of the country’s law enforcement structures in the aftermath of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution. After coming to power, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) replaced the Somoza dictatorship’s corrupt and repressive Guardia Nacional (National Guard, GN) with the country’s first national police force, Policía Sandinista (Sandinista Police, PS). Former guerrilleros motivated by revolutionary enthusiasm – including, importantly, many young women – took on leadership positions in the new force. This pivotal moment, I argue, helped to establish a new mística (a self-sacrificing morale of service and voluntarism) within the police force, with a socialist vision of community policing, as well as an aversion to bribery.⁵ At the same time, the revolutionary police force was deeply politicised and drew on dense networks of informants for intelligence gathering and maintaining order, established on the model of Cuba and other communist countries. Today’s Nicaraguan Policía Nacional (National Police, PN) is the direct institutional successor of the Sandinista Police of the 1980s and heir to its legacies.

1 T. Clavel. ‘Insight Crime’s 2017 homicide round-up’, InSight Crime, 19 Jan. 2018. For earlier data, see World Bank, Crime and Violence in Central America: 1–2.

2 W. Grigsby, ‘¿Tenemos la Policía que nos merecemos?’, Envío, no. 290, May 2006.

3 M.F.T. Malone, ‘Why do the children flee? Public security and policing practices in Central America’, 3. Drawing on AmericasBarometer data from 2014, Malone shows that trust in the police and belief that their rights will be respected is also greatest among Nicaraguans.

4 The Economist, ‘A broken system: crime in Latin America’, 12 July 2014.

Having lived through the dramatic violence and repression of the dictatorship against young people in the late 1970s, the Sandinista Police sought to become ‘the antithesis of Somoza’s Guardia’. While for many years the institution proved widely successful in this endeavour, the police’s role in repression during the summer of 2018 revealed an organisation that closely mirrored Somoza’s GN in its utter loyalty to a political party and a ruling family. Formerly a capable, professional body with a reputation for community policing, the PN degenerated into a personal police force willing to countenance the most heinous abuses in defence of Daniel Ortega and his government. Just as Ortega had transformed Sandinismo from its revolutionary roots into a corrupt, clientelistic and personalistic political machine, so the PN itself became an arm of the repressive regime.

Crime and policing before the revolution

Prior to the Sandinista Revolution, Nicaragua was dominated for more than four decades by the Somoza family’s dictatorship. The ruling dynasty began under the regime of General Anastasio Somoza García, the head of the National Guard created by the United States during its last military occupation of the country (1927–33).⁶ After the withdrawal of the United States, Somoza converted the National Guard into his own personal army, carried out a military coup and established a dictatorship. Following Somoza García’s assassination in 1956, he was succeeded as president by his sons Luis and Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Over their many decades of rule, the Somoza family used extensive official corruption to gain control over much of the country’s economy, accruing fabulous wealth.

The GN was not loyal to the Nicaraguan nation or people, instead it operated as the Somoza family’s praetorian army. Given its reputation for violence, many foreign observers assumed that the GN ‘maintained law and order’ and effectively repressed crime through harsh policing.⁷ However, such characterisations are profoundly inaccurate. One of the reasons for this substantial misinterpretation is the fact that, as one legal scholar put it, there has been ‘remarkably little written about criminal justice in pre-revolutionary Nicaragua, particularly in the decades of control by the Somoza family’.⁸

5 As José Miguel Cruz puts it in his comparative study, Nicaragua ‘insulated’ its police force ‘to some extent from criminal organisations and enabled it to construct a different relationship with the population’: ‘Criminal violence and democratization in Central America, 7.

6 R. Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty.

7 W.R. Duncan, Latin American Politics, 49.

During those long years of dictatorship, Nicaragua was, in fact, exceptional for its high homicide rate. The country consistently ranked in the top three most violent nations in the world – alongside Colombia and Mexico – and, for several years during the 1960s, had the single highest homicide rate recorded by the United Nations. Between 1961 and 1967, the country’s murder rate rose from 23.1 to 30.9 per 100,000 people.⁹ Nearly all of this bloodshed was not political but ‘social’ in nature, often alcohol-fuelled and the result of fighting between young and middle-aged men, whether as individuals, family groups or members of pandillas (gangs).

Ironically, given its reputation for iron-fisted abuse of political opponents, Somoza’s National Guard proved utterly ineffective at crime control. On the contrary, GN officers fostered an entire ‘illegal’ economy of vices run by regime loyalists, including prostitution, drug trafficking, gambling and bootlegging. The Guard tolerated these purportedly illegal activities, profiting greatly from kickbacks and netting thousands of córdobas in bribes each month.¹⁰ Though officially ‘apolitical’ and prevented from voting in Somoza’s faux elections, in practice all GN members were required to identify with Somocismo and support the dictator’s Liberal Party.

Rather than imposing regimentation on Nicaraguan society, the Somoza regime fostered disorder by enabling regime loyalists to act with impunity, as the country’s growing poverty, unemployment and inequality gave impetus to criminality. In 1965, the US ambassador identified an inability to control crime as the GN’s greatest failing, writing that gangs ‘operated with ease in Managua and some of the other larger towns’.¹¹ Another Embassy employee asserted two years later, ‘Law and order is non-existent in Nicaragua … it is officially recommended that one carry a gun if one [goes] out of the city of Managua … the Guardia Nacional were never really trained for police work [and] are no good at all as policemen.’¹² American experts sent in 1970 to report on the situation of the GN were likewise shocked by the rising levels of violence:

8 R.J. Wilson, ‘Criminal justice in revolutionary Nicaragua, 317–18.

9 United Nations and Statistical Office, Demographic Yearbook, 1960, Table 19; 1966, Table 20; 1967, Table 24; S. Hunter Palmer, The Violent Society, 28–9; La Prensa, ‘Atribuyen a Nicaragua primer lugar violento’, 11 May 1968.

10 J. Pérez, Semper fidelis: el secuestro de la Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua, 46.

11 M.D. Gambone, Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua, 1961–1972, 140.

12 Patrick Nicholas Theros, interview by Robert J. Alexander, Managua, 26 June 1967, in Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection, 1947–1994. Microfilm (Leiden, Netherlands: IDC, 2002), Reel 10, Frame 841.

Faced with this scourge of criminal violence and homicide, the military-based GN proved unable to respond.

Particularly in the wake of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, US interest in the GN was focused on the promotion of counter-insurgency tactics and Cold War anti-communist ideology. Rather than law and order, and criminal justice, police and intelligence efforts were targeted at the growing revolutionary threat posed by the FSLN, a left-wing guerrilla group seeking to topple Somoza. The FSLN formed only the tip of the iceberg of a mass movement for political and social change, encapsulated in a vision of moral regeneration and an end to extreme poverty. Leading protests against the Somoza regime were student groups, radical labour unions and Christian organisations inspired by Catholic liberation theology and its ‘preferential option for the poor’. Among their proposals, the FSLN promised that, with the revolution, ‘Organised Crime Will Disappear Forever: sex trafficking, prostitution, dice tables, “illegal” gaming, the red light districts and all those businesses controlled by the military and the accomplices of Somocismo … will be swept away by the FRENTE SANDINISTA.’¹⁴

In the face of growing popular protests and clandestine guerrilla activity during the late 1970s, the GN responded with ever-increasing state-sponsored repression and violence, ranging from tear gas to bullets and bombs. In Managua, the highly repressive Colonel Alesio Gutiérrez served as chief of police and was responsible for the systematic torture of political prisoners. In the wake of the September 1978 armed insurrection led by the Sandinistas, the Guardia began carrying out large-scale massacres of the youth of the cities in so-called Operaciones de Limpieza (clean-up operations). As many who lived through this period recall, it soon became ‘a crime to be young’.¹⁵ In the countryside, the Guardia similarly committed mass killings in those areas where the FSLN was operating. This indiscriminate and chaotic terror, however, generated a countervailing force as the urban youth threw in their lot with the guerrilla army in an open civil war against the GN. Guardia units and paramilitary death squads murdered thousands of Nicaraguans over the coming months. On 17 July 1979, a cornered Anastasio Somoza Debayle finally fled the country. Without the dictator at the helm, his Guardia collapsed, as members of its units fled for the borders to escape the FSLN and popular indignation.

13 D.R. Powell and K.B. Youngs, Report of the Public Safety Program and the Nicaragua National Guard, 20–1.

14 Lucha Sandinista, ‘¿Por qué lucha el FSLN junto al pueblo?’, June 1978.

15 M. Solaún, ‘Atrocity Summary’, US Embassy Cable 4541, 22 Sept. 1978; M. Solaún, ‘n/a’, US Embassy Cable 5053, 13 Oct. 1978; M. Solaún ‘Draft Nicaragua Human Rights Report’, US Embassy Cable 5871, 15 Nov. 1978, Wikileaks PlusD Database; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Nicaragua: Findings of the ‘On-Site’ Observation in the Republic of Nicaragua, October 3–12, 1978, 43; G. Black, Triumph of the People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, 132–3; J.A. Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution, 173.

‘Guardians of the people’s happiness’: revolution and policing, 1979–1990

In the wake of the revolutionary upheaval, the Sandinistas took control of a country in great turmoil with an economy largely in ruins. During this early period, the triumphant guerrillas – mostly in their teens and early twenties – were incapable of stemming criminality and maintaining public order. Managua and other large towns were rocked by ‘armed robberies of houses and businesses by those who took advantage of the material limitations and lack of experience in police work … in the wake of Somoza’s departure’.¹⁶ During 1980 alone, 38,781 crimes were recorded, a rate of 106 per day. The vast majority of these offences went unpunished.¹⁷

With the National Guard gone, the Sandinistas were uniquely positioned to start from scratch and completely reimagine what a Central American police force could be. To meet the threat of social chaos head-on, the FSLN established the new Sandinista Police mainly made up of former guerrilla fighters in September 1979. ‘We didn’t know how to be police,’ national Chief Aminta Granera recalled two decades later. ‘We only knew that we didn’t want to be like the Somozan Guard.’¹⁸ Importantly, the Sandinista leadership made an early decision to split the police and army into separate bodies – one military, one civilian – rather than continuing the constabulary model of the Somoza period. On 9 August 1980, Decree 485 officially instituted the Sandinista Police, declaring the institution responsible for the prevention, neutralisation and solution of crime.¹⁹ Placed under the control of the Ministerio del Interior (interior ministry, MINT) and led by FSLN Comandante Tomás Borge, the PS created new divisions in areas such as traffic control, public safety, surveillance and prisons. Former guerrilla commander René Vivas Lugo was named the first national police chief.²⁰

Given the GN’s lack of efficacy at police work or controlling common crime, the PS found almost no material legacy on which to build. Digging through the paperwork of the GN’s police stations across the country, they found few detailed police records, no systematic archives of criminals nor even a single study of basic crime statistics.²¹ The PS needed to quickly educate a thousand women and men in order to carry out these basic tasks. During its first months of existence, the new force was trained and equipped by the Panamanian government of General Omar Torrijos.²² However, rather quickly the PS came under the influence of the FSLN’s closest regional ally, Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Since their own revolution two decades earlier, Cuba had established a model of community policing and surveillance that the Sandinistas now adopted in developing their new police academy.²³

16 La Prensa, ‘Empeora la ola de delincuencia’, 7 Dec. 1979.

17 V. Núñez de Escorcia, ‘Justice and the control of crime in the Sandinista popular revolution’, 11.

18 Economist, ‘A surprising safe haven: crime in Nicaragua’, 28 Jan. 2012.

19 Corte Suprema de Justica, Nicaragua, La justicia en la revolución: memoria del seminario jurídico Silvio Mayorga, May 1981,196–7.

20 Barricada, ‘Reestructuran Policía Nacional Sandinista’, 28 Oct. 1980.

21 Barricada, ‘Batalla contra la delincuencia’, 24 Dec. 1980.

Though increasingly professional in orientation, the PS was highly politicised and inspired by the era’s revolutionary fervour. Shortly after its foundation, Comandante Borge referred to the PS as the centinelas de la felicidad del pueblo (guardians of the people’s happiness) and declared, ‘love and good relations with the people is what should distinguish the Sandinista Police’.²⁴ Members were taught to see themselves as ‘new men’ and ‘new women’ who were to serve as the vanguard of the emerging socialist society. Police officers conceived of themselves as possessed of la mística revolucionaria, characterised as a transcendent mission that emphasised sacrifice, solidarity, humanism and human rights.²⁵ Police chief René Vivas declared in 1980, ‘the fundamental work that we face is to politically and morally prepare each of our members and turn them into true servants of the Nicaraguan people’.²⁶ A remarkable institutional culture developed which celebrated service and scorned self-interest, from petty bribery to large-scale enrichment. The new PS, the ruling party proudly stated, ‘will be an example for the world’.²⁷

Most of those who joined the new force during the 1980s were enthusiastic young people who had participated in the struggle against Somoza and were passionate about achieving social transformation. Notably, a large number of young female revolutionaries now enlisted as police officers, while their male counterparts gravitated in larger numbers to the newly formed army (Ejército Popular Sandinista, EPS). By 1985, fully 45 per cent of PS members were female. Between 1985 and 1988, former FSLN guerrilla leader Doris Tijerino Haslam – who had been tortured by Somoza’s GN – served as the first female national police chief in the world.²⁸ With women representing a significant proportion of the new police force, the contrast with neighbouring nations, where the police corps continued to be almost universally male, was remarkable. Of course, for a society steeped in centuries of machismo and decades of military dictatorship under the GN, interacting with young female police officers was a paradigm shift. Visitors to Nicaragua after the revolution remarked on the ‘night and day’ change they found, with the police no longer being feared as threatening who expected bribes.²⁹ Police chief Doris Tijerino boasted in 1986 that, ‘bribes have been completely eliminated whereas before, for example, no one was ever fined for a traffic infraction’.³⁰ The PS dramatically curtailed human rights abuses and the use of violence in everyday interactions with the public.

22 La Prensa, ‘Nueva Policía’, 11 Aug. 1980; F.J. Bautista Lara, Policía, seguridad ciudadana y violencia en Nicaragua: breves ensayos y un testimonio, 19; Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, Una historia que merece ser contada: Modernización institucional con equidad de género en la Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, 1996–2005, 15–16.

23 Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, Sistematización del Modelo Policial Comunitario Proactivo de Nicaragua, 13–14. The Police Academy was later named after Walter Mendoza Martinez, a Sandinista guerrilla killed shortly before the fall of Somoza.

24 La Prensa, ‘Nueva Policía’, 11 Aug. 1979.

25 B. van de Velde, ‘Revolutionary policing: a case study about the role of La Mística and El Espíritu in the Nicaraguan police institution and in the lives of its fundadores’, Master’s diss., Utrecht University, 2011.

26 Patria Libre, ‘La Policía Sandinista cumple con la revolución: entrevista con el Comandante René Vivas’, May 1980, 32.

27 Barricada, ‘Policía Sandinista será un ejemplo para el mundo’, 15 Aug. 1980.

Neighbourhood watch groups known as Comités de Defensa Sandinista (Sandinista Defence Committees, CDS) participated actively in the fight against crime. These had emerged during the revolution itself, as neighbours organised to support the guerrillas with food, water, information and medical supplies. Now they began patrolling their communities 24 hours a day in vigilancia revolucionaria (revolutionary guard duty) to bring crime under control and keep a watch out for ‘counterrevolutionary sabotage’.³¹ In May 1980, the PS launched Operation Death to Criminality with the aim of eradicating gangs, closing illegal brothels and shuttering the cantinas that had been focal points of violence since the Somoza era. In Managua, 140 cantinas were shut down for ‘constant scandals and not following liquor laws or standards of hygiene and morality’.³² More than 30 brothels located in the Mercado Oriental, the city’s primary market, were shut down and many were burnt to the ground.³³ ‘El Palo de Gato’, for instance, an infamous Managua brothel formerly controlled by the GN and a scene of violence for decades, was among those publicly demolished. The FSLN newspaper Barricada announced plans to use the remains of ‘El Palo’ to construct a school for literacy classes.³⁴ The government tackled prostitution and alcoholism as social ills and provided many former prostitutes with new training and employment opportunities.³⁵

28 Barricada, ‘Doris: primera jefa de policía del mundo’, 3 Apr. 1985. She would pay particular attention to crimes of sexual violence, with the PS allegedly solving 23 out of 25 rape cases that took place between Sept. and Dec. 1985, La Prensa. ‘Declaraciones de la Comandante Tijerino, acerca de abusos sexuales’, 11 Dec. 1985.

29 L.A. Mansilla, ‘Nicaragua: la insurrección y la guerra victoriosa. Entrevista a Octavio Cortés’, 38. A 1,000 córdoba fine and a punishment were imposed on anyone who attempted to bribe a police officer. Those officers who did accept bribes faced removal from the force. Barricada, ‘Multa y arresto a quien intente a sobornar policia’, 16 Jan. 1980; Barricada, ‘Policía ejemplar rechazó soborno’, 1 Sept. 1980.

30 G. Beretta, ‘Nicaragua: una mujer en un puesto de decisión. Entrevista a Doris Tijerino’, 22.

31 W.G. West, ‘Vigilancia revolucionaria: a Nicaraguan resolution to public and private policing’, 147–71; Barricada, ‘Fuerzas auxiliaries ayudarán a la Policía’, 17 Aug. 1980.

32 Barricada, ‘Cierran 140 cantinas’, 6 June 1980; Barricada, ‘Cierran cantinas en un operativo’, 5 Sept. 1980.

33 La Prensa, ‘Policía desata guerra a la prostitución’, 21 June 1980.

34 Barricada, ‘De centros de vicios a locales escolares; se acabó el Palo de Gato’, 14 May 1980.

Figure 1.1. ‘Courtesy and respect for the law are inseparable’. ‘A man who does not respect a woman is a coward. A man who does not respect a young female police officer ( una muchacha policía ) and does not follow her instructions is twice as cowardly and also an enemy of the law.’ (Tomás Borge) (Image: Barricada, 14 Sept. 1980)

These community-based policing campaigns worked in tandem with the social reforms instigated to dramatically improve the crime situation. In 1981, there were 26,624 volunteer vigilantes in 84 different Managua neighbourhoods, helping to reduce crime by more than half compared to the previous year.³⁶ Between 1981 and 1982, the crime rate halved again, to a rate even lower than pre-revolutionary figures.³⁷ By November of the following year, according to the FSLN’s official organ, the Defence Committees had more than 60,000 vigilantes revolucionarios in Managua volunteering to patrol the streets.³⁸ Between 1980 and 1983, the number of crimes committed per 100,000 people fell from 106 to just 29.³⁹ As part of these operations, La Prensa reported that the police had broken up powerful street gangs in the Managua barrios of San Judas and Altagracia.⁴⁰ This success coincided with the FSLN’s similar use of mass mobilisation to carry out improvements in healthcare and education for poor Nicaraguans, such as the 1980 National Literacy Crusade which considerably increased literacy rates in the country.

35 T. Borge, ‘Intervención ante los CDS de Managua, 26 de febrero de 1981’, in his Los primeros pasos: la revolución popular sandinista (Siglo XXI, 1988), 129.

36 Barricada, ‘Las masas han reducido a la mitad a la delincuencia’, 29 Nov. 1981.

37 Barricada, ‘Disminuyeron delitos por la vigilancia revolucionaria’, 7 Apr. 1981. Barricada, ‘Recuento de la lucha contra la delincuencia’, 3 Dec. 1982; Núñez de Escorcia, ‘Justice and the control of crime in the Sandinista popular revolution’, 11.

38 Barricada, ‘Ya tenemos 60 mil vigilantes en Managua’, 21 Nov. 1982.

39 A. Granera Sacasa and S. Cuarezma Terán, Evolución del delito en Nicaragua, 1980–1995, 24.

The darker side of this community-centred approach was the PS’s adoption of illiberal surveillance and intelligence-gathering methods. Nicaraguan police officers were regularly sent to communist countries such as the Soviet Union, East Germany and Bulgaria to receive training.⁴¹ The security forces of those governments, like that of Cuba, were infamous for heavy-handed monitoring and spying on their populations. These techniques included widespread tapping of phone lines, the opening of mail and the use of thousands of government loyalists and paid informants to spy for the state. While this approach was effective in controlling the activities of organised crime and counter-revolutionary groups in Nicaragua, the government regularly infringed the civil liberties and privacy of dissidents and other citizens. At times, the PS and Defence Committees worked hand-in-glove with the government’s Dirección General de Seguridad del Estado (secret police, DGSE), operating as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the ruling party and targeting opposition activists for arrest.

As the decade proceeded, Nicaragua became a battleground in the Cold War. American President Ronald Reagan used the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to provide financial and military aid to the rebel Contras (or contrarrevolucionarios), many of whom were former GN soldiers, to destabilise Nicaragua. To beat back the invasion, the FSLN instituted a military draft for young men aged between 17 and 24 and dedicated more than half of its annual budget to military defence. With the economy under great strain due to the bloody civil war and a US embargo, the country saw spiralling inflation, rising poverty and the roll-out of rationing. Many Nicaraguans refused to attend CDS meetings or volunteer for vigilancia, accusing these institutions of abuses against their neighbours. Amid political polarisation, citizens denounced the Sandinista Police for harassing opposition protesters, while permitting riotous attacks by pro-government mobs.⁴² During these years of economic crisis, the country witnessed a steady rise in crime and violence, as robberies, prostitution and drug use once again became ever more prevalent in the cities.⁴³ Boys and young men in Managua’s shantytowns again formed gangs and clashed violently with youths from other barrios, although not on the scale of the Somoza period.⁴⁴ The overstretched and underfunded PS appeared incapable of keeping up with the social and political consequences of external aggression and civil war.

40 La Prensa, ‘Cinco mil delitos comunes en primer semestre de 1982’, 2 July 1982.

41 D. Kruijt, Guerrillas: War and Peace in Central America, 109; R. Vivas Lugo, ‘Todos los gobiernos han instrumentalizado a la policía para sus intereses’, Envío, no. 351, June 2011.

42 La Prensa, ‘Policía sandinista culatea al pueblo’, 11 July 1988; Demokratizatsiya, ‘Tropical Chekists: the secret police legacy in Nicaragua’, 429.

43 Sacasa and Terán, Evolución del delito en Nicaragua, 25–6; J.L. Rocha, ‘Why no Maras in Nicaragua?’, Envío, no. 301, Aug. 2006.

44 L. Grove, ‘Rebels without a Cause in Managua’, Washington Post, 10 Aug. 1986.

Revolutionary police under neoliberal governments, 1990–2006

With continuing economic dislocation and the highly unpopular military draft still in place, the Sandinistas were voted from office in February 1990, effectively bringing Nicaragua’s revolutionary period to an end. The victory of Violeta Chamorro, the candidate of a united opposition, over FSLN standard-bearer President Daniel Ortega, precipitated the enactment of a series of sweeping political and economic reforms. During the transition, the future of the Sandinista police and army became a critical bone of contention. For some, these arms of the party-state needed to be abolished and replaced by new, clean institutions. However, the FSLN assured the survival of the police and army in the post-revolutionary era by agreeing to ‘depoliticise’ and ‘institutionalise’ these one-time partisan bodies that were now under the civilian control of the newly elected government. Interestingly, creative tensions between the ‘reformed’ police and the conservative governments of the 1990s and 2000s helped to produce an internationally recognised model of public safety and efficient policing.

The Sandinista Police was now renamed the Nicaraguan National Police (PN) to emphasise its allegiance to the country as a whole rather than to a particular party. Police uniforms and insignia were changed and responsibility for law enforcement was transferred from the Ministerio del Interior to the Ministerio de Gobernación. Subsequent laws in 1992 and 1996 further solidified the police’s new ‘civilian, professional, apolitical, nonpartisan’ character. The operations of the police force were constitutionally linked directly to the functioning of the judiciary, rather than state security.⁴⁵ Despite efforts to introduce non-partisan officers, the transition was limited as Sandinista officers continued to be hegemonic in both law enforcement and the military during the years of opposition rule. By retaining its control over these armed institutions, the Sandinistas continued to possess a power base within the state even after defeat at the ballot box.

The first significant test for the PN came in the early 1990s when Sandinista-led student and trade union protests exploded in response to neoliberal economic reforms. When some in the PN leadership refused to crack down on their former comrades-in-arms, the Chamorro government removed them from their positions. In 1992, under US pressure, 12 top Sandinista figures, including PN chief René Vivas, were purged from the police force and replaced by pliable officials more willing to use force.⁴⁶ In the violent strikes that took place between 1992 and 1995, at times the PN carried out harsh abuses in the course of their bloody clashes with left-wing protesters, which left a small number of demonstrators and police dead.⁴⁷ Still, Tomás Borge insisted in retrospect, ‘the police survived the efforts of the ultra-right to make it a deadly force … Its essence was unchanged; the police force remains good despite all the efforts to change it; it still has a Sandinista mística.’⁴⁸ Herein lay a contradiction that would have long-term consequences: the fact that the police were still opposed to Guardia-style repression against social protests was at least partially due to its latent loyalty to the political party leading the upheaval.

45 R. Cajina, ‘Reforma del sector seguridad ciudadana, transición política y construcción democrática. Ley 290 y Ley 228’, 35–57; O.J. Pérez, Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Societies: Transforming the Role of the Military in Central America, 74–5.

46 La Prensa, ‘Cambios en la Policía’, 5 Sept. 1992; La Prensa, ‘Estados Unidos elogia jefatura civil de la policía’, 9 Sept. 1992.

Some long-time members of the police, however, felt that significant budget cuts and the new political context had led to a decline in solidarity within the force. The PN shrank substantially in size and closed its academy between 1990 and 1994. Female police officers complained that amid the individualism and careerism of the period, they were passed over in favour of their male colleagues, while ambitious officers lacking the ideological commitment of the PS’s founding generation ascended to leadership positions. The government slashed salaries further and there was a notable and much-commented-on rise in petty bribery by traffic cops. While some individual members of the police force engaged in drug trafficking and vice rackets, such corruption never reached the scale of neighbouring countries.⁴⁹

The period following the FSLN’s exit from power and the end of the civil war also saw rapidly increasing crime and homicide rates which, starting in 1993, began to spiral out of control.⁵⁰ Mass layoffs in the privatised state sector, as well as the abrupt demobilisation of thousands of young men from both the EPS and the Contra forces, helped to foster mass unemployment in the country. By 1995, the police were recording an average of at least one murder and one rape reported every 24 hours.⁵¹ At the start of the decade, 47 youth gangs were operating in Managua, such as the Comemuertos (Eaters of the Dead), a well-armed and violent group active in the Reparto Schick neighbourhood. By 1999, there were more than a hundred gangs exceeding 6,000 members.⁵²

47 Barricada, ‘Presidenta ordena uso de la fuerza’, 10 July 1990; Barricada, ‘Matan a jefe policial’, 22 Sept. 1993; La Prensa, ‘Saúl Alvarez víctima de la violencia; cayó a los pies de un periodista’, 22 Sept. 1993; Barricada, ‘Informe de CENIDH es contundente’, 2 June 1995.

48 Cajina, ‘Security in Nicaragua: Central America’s exception’, 4–5.

49 La Prensa, ‘Escándalo narco sacude al gobierno’, 6 May 1998; Grigsby, ‘¿Tenemos la Policía que nos merecemos?’

50 La Prensa, ‘Hampa se apodera de Managua’, 7 May 1993; La Prensa, ‘No habrá control de ola delictiva en 1994’, 2 Nov. 1994.

51 La Prensa, ‘El crimen: acontecer diario’, 15 July 1995; Barricada, ‘Una violación cada 24 horas’, 10 Apr. 1995.

52 D. Rodgers, ‘Youth gangs and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: a literature survey’, 19; J.L. Rocha, Violencia juvenil y orden social en el Reparto Schick: Juventud marginada y relación con el estado, 9–10; J. Hernández Pico, ‘Juventudes en territorios de violencias’, Envío, no. 398, May 2015.

In its upsurge of post-war violence, Nicaragua was far from unique. During these same years, a parallel increase in criminal gangs was underway in El Salvador and Guatemala as their lengthy Cold War-era armed conflicts also came to an end. Gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13) and the Mara-18 quickly emerged and gave cause for significant social and security concern in Central America. This development was at least partially a result of patterns of transnational migration. Large numbers of poor and rural Guatemalan and Salvadoran refugees had fled their countries during the 1980s to Los Angeles, California, where many of their undocumented children became immersed in that city’s violent youth gang culture. Upon deportation from the United States during the 1990s, these young men helped to bring new forms of criminal violence back to Central America.

While El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua had all experienced high homicide rates dating back decades, Nicaragua alone was able to reduce levels of criminality during the 1990s. Importantly, many of those who fled Nicaragua to the United States in the 1980s were members of the middle and upper classes who settled in Miami and were granted political asylum due to American opposition to the FSLN. Thus, large-scale deportations of alleged criminals from the United States were not among the challenges faced by the Nicaraguan security forces as they battled the expansion of crime in the 1990s.⁵³

More important than migratory patterns, I argue, is the fact that the Nicaraguan police drew upon its revolutionary legacy and responded to the explosion of youth gangs using completely different strategies to those employed in the neighbouring republics. In those countries, where the police forces of the previous military dictatorships remained largely unreformed, the state used heavy-handed Mano Dura (iron fist) tactics which, at times, came close to targeting urban youth and the poor as a means of social cleansing. In addition to significant human rights violations against impoverished barrios, an unintended consequence of this state repression was the increasing militarisation of street gangs. Substantial sectors of the Northern Triangle police and security forces continued their complicity with the criminal activity and international drug trafficking which had begun under right-wing military regimes. In Nicaragua, on the other hand, the PN emphasised prevention and rehabilitation over outright police violence, even during Liberal President Arnoldo Alemán’s declared ‘war against gangs’ in 1999.⁵⁴ These Nicaraguan gangs, known as pandillas, were neighbourhood-based groups that had never evolved into the feared transnational maras operating elsewhere in the isthmus. The founders of the Nicaraguan police force still ‘didn’t want to be like Somoza’s Guardia’, and the PN maintained its opposition to harsh policies targeting the youth and working-class barrios.

53 Rocha, ‘Why no Maras in Nicaragua?’

54 La Prensa, ‘Declaran la guerra a pandillas’, 7 July 1999. According to José Luis Rocha, the PN was divided between Sandinista officers who aimed to continue the community-oriented model and ‘economic elites’ who pushed for more of a Mano Dura approach. J.L. Rocha, ‘The political economy of Nicaragua’s institutional and organisational framework for dealing with youth violence’, 3.

Despite having the smallest security budget and the lowest police salaries in the region, criminality in Nicaragua quickly fell to levels more comparable with Costa Rica’s than the countries of the Northern Triangle.⁵⁵ Maras from Honduras and El Salvador were unable to make inroads into Nicaragua. By 2007, the Nicaraguan government reported that only 20 gangs were operating in the country.⁵⁶ As they had done since the 1980s, the Nicaraguan police recognised the need to address youth criminality at the level of its social causes. The police worked with ‘at-risk’ youth via their schools, families, churches and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like el Centro de Prevención (CEPREV).⁵⁷ ‘Warring’ groups of teenagers signed peace treaties, and youth sports leagues were established to provide a recreational outlet. In the process, the PN came to rely upon nearly 100,000 volunteers in its crime prevention efforts, including university students, psychologists and former gang members. Given its legacy of experimental ‘open’ and ‘semi-open’ prisons and cultural and literacy programmes for prisoners during the 1980s, Nicaragua also increasingly bucked ‘the regional punitive trend’, with notably lower sentences handed down to prisoners than in neighbouring countries.⁵⁸ With many prisons run by former revolutionaries, ‘participation in reeducational programmes, which range[d] from schooling to cultural and church activities’ was ‘often rewarded with considerable sentence reduction’.⁵⁹ In their efforts to dismantle the street gangs, the PN could also draw upon intelligence provided by the dense organisational network of grassroots party activists at the community and neighbourhood levels forged during the revolutionary years. These one-time ‘eyes and ears of the revolution’ continued to serve as informants who provided detailed reconnaissance on gang activities to their Sandinista handlers in the PN.

Instead of the former Eastern Bloc countries, the PN now received training from Sweden, Spain and even the United States.⁶⁰ These years also witnessed a significant shift in the contributions of women to the police force. New attempts were made to provide services directly to women and children, beginning with the innovative Comisaría de la Mujer y la Niñez in 1993, which expanded over time into a nationwide network of special female-run police stations that dealt exclusively with sexual, family and gender-based violence.⁶¹ The PN went beyond merely integrating women, even establishing a Gender Council to assure all women on the force they would have the same opportunities for advancement as male officers.⁶² Rather than serving solely as secretaries, receptionists and cooks, women participated at all levels in all branches and divisions. At the top level of the organisation’s leadership, Eva Sacasa was appointed general commissioner and Aminta Granera, first commissioner.⁶³ A prominent female leader, First Commissioner Granera was one of the most popular public figures in the country for a long time. From a well-to-do family based in the city of León, she studied sociology, philosophy and theology at Georgetown University and, after briefly studying to become a nun, joined the Sandinista guerrillas. During the late 2000s and early 2010s, Granera received much of the credit for the PN’s success.

55 Barricada, ‘Policía nica es la peor pagada; entre los demás cuerpos de Centroamérica y Belice’, 3 Aug. 1997.

56 Ministerio de Gobernación y Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, ‘Atención y tratamiento a las pandillas’ 6.

57 Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, Sistematización del Modelo Policial Comunitario Proactivo de Nicaragua; J.L. Rocha, ‘From telescopic to microscopic: three youth gang members speak’, Envío, no. 311, June 2007.

58 J. Weegels, ‘Prisoner self-governance and survival in a Nicaraguan city jail’, Prison Service Journal, 229 (Jan. 2017).

59 Ibid. As Weegels notes, this has not prevented the ever-present violence or overcrowding, but it has mitigated it to some extent.

60 R. Vivas Lugo, ‘Todos los gobiernos han instrumentalizado a la policía para sus intereses’, Envío, no. 351, June 2011.

With its efficacy in staving off the spread of organised crime, the PN was celebrated both domestically and internationally for its accomplishments and its model of community policing. Even conservative President Enrique Bolaños began to sing the praises of the erstwhile Sandinista Police in his bid for foreign investment. He proudly repeated that Nicaragua was ‘without a doubt, the safest country in Central America and maybe in all of Latin America’, if not ‘the safest country in the hemisphere’.⁶⁴ While such claims certainly overreached, Nicaragua was now widely considered a Central American exception when it came to questions of policing, crime, violence and public safety.

Perverting the police: Daniel Ortega returns to office, 2007–18

In 2007 Sandinista leader and perennial presidential candidate Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency after 16 years out of office. The man who returned to office bore little resemblance to the radical militant of the 1980s. In 2000, he had entered into a power-sharing alliance with his right-wing foe, Liberal President Arnoldo Alemán. With the judiciary packed with party loyalists,⁶⁵ Alemán avoided jail time on corruption charges, and Ortega likewise was able to ensure that he would not face trial for sexual abuse allegations brought by his stepdaughter. While still using the language of ‘socialism’, the FSLN leader cut deals with the private sector and foreign investors, and was denounced for the massive personal enrichment of his family and inner circle. Despite charges of creeping authoritarianism and corruption, the new Sandinista government soon earned widespread backing among the population due to the country’s economic success and increased social spending in comparison to the neoliberal governments.

61 La Prensa, ‘Crean Comisaría de la Mujer’, 9 Mar. 1993; Barricada, ‘Inauguran comisaría de la mujer y la niñez’, 26 Nov. 1993.

62 La Prensa, ‘Mujeres policías crean su consejo’, 9 Mar. 1996; Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, Una historia que merece ser contada: Modernización institucional con equidad de género en la Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, 1996–2005.

63 La Prensa, ‘Policía tendrá dos nuevas comandantes el 5 de septiembre’, 26 Aug. 1995.

64 La Prensa, ‘Somos el país más seguro’, 6 Sept. 2004; El Nuevo Diario, ‘Bolaños ve ‘avalancha de inversiones’ en Nicaragua’, 6 Dec. 2005.

65 E. Martínez Barahona, ‘A politicized judiciary’.

Despite corrupt high jinks at the highest levels of government, the PN continued to be lauded internationally for its role as a muro de contención (shield or wall) preventing the spread of drugs northwards and maras southwards. The levels of common crime and homicide rates continued to fall. During the 2006 presidential campaign, US Ambassador Paul Trivelli warned in secret that former president Ortega had provided protection to Colombian drug-traffickers in the 1980s and could do so again if re-elected.⁶⁶ Following his return to office, however, Ortega and the PN proved to be loyal partners of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in its interdiction operations along the Atlantic Coast. Trivelli reported that, contrary to his predictions, during Ortega’s first 12 months back in power, the Nicaraguan government had:

Coming (in private) from an ambassador so vehemently opposed to the Sandinista government, this was high praise indeed.

Under Ortega’s government, however, the PN’s allegedly apolitical and nonpartisan nature was progressively destroyed. As we have seen, from its very foundation the police force had identified with a particular political project. This allegiance was maintained, despite ‘professionalisation’ and loyal service to administrations from different parties. With the return of the FSLN to power, however, the PN began to lose any institutional independence. As Ortega set about establishing an expansive network of patronage and corruption among party loyalists, the police were not immune to his perversion of the Sandinista legacy. Rumours abounded of police officers and other government supporters promised immunity for their illicit activities (such as drug trafficking), much as in Somoza’s time. It became increasingly clear that to be a police officer required one to display allegiance to Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega quickly placed loyal officials in top positions, forced those who wavered into retirement, and illegally allowed allies to remain in office beyond their constitutionally mandated limits. Reforms to the Constitution and to the new Police Law 872 in 2014 officially defined Nicaragua’s policing as following ‘a preventative, proactive and community-based model’, thus codifying the approach developed over three decades of practice. However, the 2014 law, which declared him to be Supreme Chief of the PN, also greatly expanded Ortega’s hold over the police force. Rather than reporting to the interior minister, the PN now took its orders directly from the President of the Republic. Sidelining broader civilian control, Ortega gained the personal ability, among many other new powers, to assign and retire police chiefs, extend officials in their roles for years without limit, and to assign members of the police force to serve in civil institutions.⁶⁸ The loyalty of the police was now to the head of the political faction to which its high command was universally aligned. Within the police, the worst aspects of its Sandinista legacy were accentuated in the form of a fanatical loyalty to ‘el Comandante’. Campaign posters for the FSLN and pro-government iconography began appearing in police stations and the Sandinista hymn was sung alongside the national and police anthems.

66 P. Trivelli, ‘Nicaragua’s most wanted Part I: the crimes of Daniel Ortega and his family’, US Embassy Cable 1002, 5 May 2006, Wikileaks PlusD Database; P. Trivelli, ‘Nicaragua’s most wanted Part II: the crimes of the Sandinistas (FSLN)’, US Embassy Cable 1003, 5 May 2006, Wikileaks PlusD Database.

67 P. Trivelli, ‘Central American security requirements: Nicaragua’, US Embassy Cable 2593, 14 Dec. 2007, Wikileaks PlusD Database.

A similar process of cooptation of government branches took place as Ortega loyalists dominated the military, the judiciary, the electoral system, the municipalities and the legislature. As Ortega was unconstitutionally re-elected twice in questionable elections (with First Lady Rosario Murillo becoming his vice-president in 2016), the repoliticisation of the PN under party control ran parallel to a generalised deterioration of its efficacy as an impartial force of law and order. While common crime rates continued to decline, a series of violent incidents led critics to challenge the effectiveness and autonomy of the police in its response to political conflicts. On repeated occasions, the PN stood idly by while armed government supporters – including paid gang members – attacked representatives of the political opposition during social and electoral protests. In 2014, during demonstrations against plans for an interoceanic canal on the Atlantic Coast, as well as mobilisations against the mining industry in Mina El Limón, the PN was called in to ‘impose order’. Its excessive intervention was described by analyst and former police officer Elvira Cuadra Lira as constituting ‘intimidation, illegal detentions, denunciations of torture, and the militarization of communities’.⁶⁹ In 2016, even the internationally celebrated police stations for women and children mentioned above were closed on the orders of a man who had been himself disturbingly accused of sexual abuse.⁷⁰

Commissioner Aminta Granera’s unconstitutional role at the head of the PN for more than a decade was further evidence of political distortions. As noted above, Granera had become a much-loved public figure as a result of the police’s renowned efficacy. Indeed, some even floated the idea of her as a potential presidential successor to Ortega. However, a secret US Embassy cable (released by WikiLeaks) of an interview between Granera and US Ambassador Robert Callahan provided a rare insight into the conflicts within the Ortega government. According to Callahan’s report, Granera allegedly told the American Embassy that Ortega was ‘completely crazy and a threat to the country’, and that her popularity was the only thing that protected her from being purged for a more compliant loyalist.⁷¹ Interestingly, for years after this conversation was made public, Ortega maintained Commissioner Granera in her position at the head of the PN, even after she had attempted to resign and much of her power had been transferred to Ortega confidant, Francisco Díaz. There were whispers that she had begun personally profiting from her role, in much the same way as other high-ranking Sandinistas had enriched themselves during FSLN’s tenure. Others believed that she was being blackmailed or otherwise held hostage in her position. Indeed, she served in that job for well over a decade, far exceeding the five-year tenure followed by all previous police chiefs.⁷² She would only depart – in disgrace – after the 2018 wave of political violence.

68 E. Cuadra Lira, ‘Reformas del sector seguridad en Nicaragua – cambios significativos en el paradigma de la seguridad’; R. Orozco, ‘¿El país más seguro de Centroamérica? La politización de las instituciones es el mayor riesgo a nuestra seguridad’, Envío, 33, no. 390, Sept. 2014; R. Orozco, ‘La Policía Nacional se ha desnaturalizado para garantizar la seguridad del régimen’, Envío, no. 402, Sept. 2015.

69 E. Cuadra Lira, ‘El nuevo protagonismo militar: Fuerzas armadas y poder’.

70 These branches later reopened in a far less-specialised form. La Prensa, ‘Comisarías pasarían a Auxilio Judicial como parte de cambios en la Policía Nacional’, 29 Jan. 2016; La Prensa, ‘¿Adiós a las Comisarías?’, 31 Jan. 2016; La Prensa, ‘Demandan al Gobierno a que reabra las Comisarías de la Mujer’, 15 Sept. 2017.

In fact, the political opposition increasingly targeted the figure of Granera for criticism. In July 2015, police carrying out anti-drug trafficking operations in the neighbourhood of Las Jagüitas in Managua opened fire on a vehicle they mistakenly believed to be transporting cocaine. In the process, they killed an innocent young woman and two children.⁷³ The incident shocked the Nicaraguan public and raised serious questions as to the tactics the PN was using in its successful ‘War on Drugs’. The tragedy was quickly politicised. As a weeping Granera begged for forgiveness and promised to punish the officers for their use of deadly force (while following orders), protesters called for her resignation. In November 2017, another tragic event took place in La Cruz de Rio on the Atlantic Coast, in which the army killed a family of five, including two children, during what police described as an anti-narcotics operation. La Prensa, claimed that the targets of the operation had been armed government opponents.⁷⁴ Seen together, such militarised actions suggest that excessive force and repression by the army in the country’s rural borderlands had become a clandestine counterpoint to the internationally recognised ‘preventative, proactive and community-based’ policing in the cities. In response to accusations that civilian deaths at the hands of the government amounted to extrajudicial killings, the Nicaraguan government submitted a January 2018 report acknowledging a series of deadly operations, while lauding the achievements of the past decade. ‘In Nicaragua’, they reminded readers,

71 R. Callahan, ‘Merida initiative: Nicaragua formally joins, but Police Chief Granera in dire straits’, US Embassy Cable 433, 27 Apr. 2009, Wikileaks PlusD Database.

72 La Prensa, ‘Orteguismo va por toma total de Policia’, 7 Apr. 2011; Cuadra Lira, ‘Reformas del sector seguridad en Nicaragua’.

73 La Prensa, ‘Policías masacran a familia inocente’, 13 July 2015.

74 La Prensa, ‘Padre e hijos, víctimas del Ejército en La Cruz de Río Grande’, 17 Nov. 2017; La Prensa, ‘Policía Nacional justifica la masacre del Ejército en la Cruz de Río Grande’, 15 Dec. 2017.

Despite wariness about the emerging details of deadly police and military operations against alleged criminals, few Nicaraguans understood how deep the rot within the PN went.

The extent to which the Ortega government had perverted the police into a personal, praetorian force was definitively revealed in April 2018 when it was confronted with its first major political crisis. Although it is still unclear precisely who gave the order to do so, the PN’s anti-riot forces began firing live rounds against opposition protesters. A force launched with the simple goal that it ‘didn’t want to be like Somoza’s Guardia’, now flooded into the streets alongside illegal paramilitaries to unleash deadly force against the protesting students, who were described by the government as ‘demonic’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘vandals’. With no apparent sense of irony, the government referred to the deadly assaults against the demonstrators’ roadblocks as ‘clean-up operations’, the same term used by the GN for its own actions when recapturing cities from the young rebels in 1978 and 1979. In Nicaragua, it had once again become ‘a crime to be young’. The web of Sandinista informants that had been used so effectively in community policing was now utilised to identify and target those students who had participated in marches or built barricades in each neighbourhood. Unlike the Somoza period, the government did not declare a state of siege and the army remained in their barracks (although there were rumours that well-trained soldiers were among the paramilitary forces). However, the PN’s long-time commitment to human rights, civil liberties and due process, which had been significantly eroded during the decade of Ortega rule, was now jettisoned outright in its struggle to defend ‘El Comandante’.

Conclusion

By the end of 2018, an ostensible calm had returned to Nicaragua, with the disgraced Ortega holding on to power and hundreds of protesters, branded ‘terrorists’, behind bars and facing the prospect of long prison sentences. Hundreds of parents remained without justice for their murdered children, with not a single police officer or paramilitary facing charges for the crimes committed. The Nicaraguan government blamed all of the events that took place after the outbreak of the protests on a US-backed conspiracy, and dismissed human rights reports compiled by the Organization of American States and the United Nations. With Aminta Granera finally removed from the leadership of the PN (following a second resignation attempt in April) and whisked out-of-sight in the wake of the bloodbath, Francisco ‘Paco’ Díaz – related to Ortega through the marriage of their children and accused of human rights violations – was officially promoted to head the institution. Masaya police chief Ramón Avellán, widely criticised for brutal repression in that tense city, was promoted to the post of PN sub-director. Many police officers who bloodied their hands in the crackdown now felt that their futures were bound up in the survival of the Ortega government. In contrast, the hundreds of police officers who refused to join in the repression and remained loyal to the founding values of ‘love and good relations with the people’, now faced harassment, arrest and – allegedly – worse at the hands of their former comrades.

75 Gobierno de Nicaragua, ‘Libro Blanco: incidencias de elementos delincuenciales de Nicaragua en el período 2007–2017’ Report presented to Diplomatic Corps, 16 Jan. 2018.

Sooner or later, the Ortega government will fall from power, but it is unclear whether Nicaragua’s once-exceptional record of public safety and low crime rates will return. Indeed, the very government that opened 2018 with the boast that ‘we do not have the levels of criminality found in our neighbouring countries’, spent the rest of the year obliterating that positive legacy through its actions. It is entirely possible that police actions have so damaged the rule of law that Nicaragua will emerge from the crisis accompanied by a dramatic rise in social violence. Those government supporters given complete impunity to commit human rights violations on behalf of Ortega are unlikely to hand over the heavy weaponry provided by the government. Evidence exists to show that some of these groups are already making the transition from political violence to other forms of profitable criminal activity.

Unquestionably, a cycle in the history of law enforcement in Nicaragua has ended. For all its vaunted success, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s, the PN ultimately failed in its most fundamental aim: to never ‘be like Somoza’s Guardia’. Many PN achievements trace their origins to the Sandinista Revolution, with its mística and its vision of its officers being the ‘guardians of the people’s happiness’. However, its deep commitment to a particular political party meant that, just as Ortega perverted the Sandinista legacy to suit his aims, the worst aspects of police culture were dramatically enhanced. The Nicaraguan police officers were exceptional for many years thanks to their revolutionary roots, standing head and shoulders above their Central American neighbours when it came to crime, human rights and community relations. However, with the return of the FSLN to political power, this exceptional historical origin proved a liability. It is doubtful whether any other police force in Central America today would be willing to commit such extreme violence against protesters on behalf of an individual political figure or party. The PN has irretrievably destroyed its reputation through its role in political repression and, just as a wholesale reform was necessary after the fall of the Somoza regime, the Nicaraguan police force will need to be wholly transformed again following a political transition.

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