Solange Saballos

April 2018. Nicaragua is being violated by its own state. Images and videos of citizens attacked by the national police or the Sandinista youth, one of the arms of the Ortega government, flood social networks like a cry for help: the protesters were demonstrating peacefully against the Social Security reforms that did not benefit them.

More than 8,000 kilometers away, the largest Nicaraguan diaspora in Europe is organizing to protest. They do not know each other, but the message is transmitted quickly through WhatsApp and Facebook: #SOSNicaragua. We must go out and protest against the massacre that is being perpetrated under the orders of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who have shown themselves to be a two-headed dictatorship that dominates the country.

Horrified, the Nicaraguans in Spain are witnesses in their personal social networks of a nightmare that was believed to be buried in the past, particularly in 1990, when Violeta Barrios de Chamorro defeated Daniel Ortega —the eternal and only candidate of Sandinismo since its foundation, in national elections. Doña Violeta granted forgiveness and oblivion through an amnesty to the heinous crimes that occurred during the Sandinista revolution. Perhaps that is why one of the most popular slogans and hashtags of the April insurrection was #NiPerdónNiOlvido.

It is necessary to remember that Nicaragua suffered from a family dictatorship for 43 years: the Somocista dynasty (1937-1979). It was overthrown by an amalgamation of social movements, citizen actions, and a left-wing political-military party known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1979, launching the Sandinista Popular Revolution (1979-1990). This historical event was also known as the second socialist revolution in Latin America after Cuba.

Going back to the social outbreak of 2018, there was a novelty in the political history of Nicaragua: this was the third national cyberprotest and the first to demand the departure of the Ortega-Murillo (ORMU) regime. In addition, the colors of the national flag were used to identify the desire for democracy and it was declared that the peaceful path would be their strategy and not the armed struggle. All this using social networks as “an instrument to facilitate and speed up communication and coordination, and also to sound the alarm,” as indicated by the Nicaraguan sociologist José Luis Rocha.

Today, Nicaraguans have renounced their arms and have endeavored to try to develop nonviolent strategies to confront the ORMU regime. In 2018, a term of great importance emerged that symbolized the desire for independence of political thought among the Nicaraguan citizens: they named themselves “autoconvocados”.

But, what did it mean to be self-summoned in 2018? It meant that a Nicaraguan citizen took to the streets to protest of their own free will, without the need to be encouraged by any political organization. Simply because that is how his ideals drive him. The self-summoned identity was closely related to being an opponent of the Sandinista regime. But, for many this also meant moving away from the discourses of traditional political parties. The self-convocation had a marked component of citizen mobilization where the individual could act as a political subject without the need to resort to institutional or partisan validation.

Self-convened, this is how the unique communities in Europe were defined. The Nicaraguan community in Spain was one of the first to organize internationally. They began to protest against the assassinations ordered by the regime on April 23, that is, barely 5 days after the April insurrection began. This action was followed by several similar activities in different cities in Spain. Little by little, various self-convened groups were formed, developing activities that came to capture the attention of the media on several occasions. This caused an impact and interest in both Nicaraguan and European public opinion.

There is a large organization at the European level called SOS Nicaragua-Europe, which brings together different self-organized groups present on the continent to coordinate actions that denounce the abuses of the Ortega-Murillo regime. Each group retains its autonomy and power of decision. In Spain there is a greater number of groups of self-summoned cyberactivists, which is why they tend to attract more attention from the media and public opinion. However, other groups have also stood out for their tireless work and political advocacy from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands.

Each activity promoted to denounce the ORMU regime is usually self-managed by the people who make up the different Nicaraguan groups, that is, their members put money out of their own pockets to be able to carry them out.

In the case of SOS Nicaragua-Europe, five work groups have been structured with their respective strategies, on six topics: communication, support for refugees, political advocacy, human rights, justice and strengthening Nicaragua. There is also a table dedicated to coordination. It has been indicated that any Nicaraguan who supports the objectives of this organization and from any country in which they are located can participate in each of these tables, so that all countries work in a “united and coordinated” manner. Communication in social networks, as well as the transmission of information, are coordinated among various groups with the support of institutions in Spain and Nicaragua.

On the other hand, there are also groups that are more institutionalized and legalized that have funds from Spanish cooperation or Catholic parishes for the organization of offline activities. There are also those that have allied with opposition political organizations in Nicaragua, such as the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), the Articulation of Social Movements (AMS) and the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy (ACJD). . These have created their own chapters in Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, mainly. SOS Nicaragua-Europe is also related to these groups that are more political-partisan and not at all self-convened. This has caused strong ideological tensions. Another matter has to do with the birth of communication media created by exiled journalists in Spain, such as Despacho505 and Agenda Propia, as well as the presence of the Nicaraguan feminist network with expressions in different Spanish cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, ​​the Basque Country, Aragon , among other.

Some groups articulated in SOS Nicaragua-Europe have maintained their “self-convened” character, proclaiming themselves independent of this articulation, and also because several of their members act in a coordinated manner within their groups or individually. Other individuals remain totally alien to these communities, but participate in the political life of the diaspora by collaborating with other groups or individuals outside of Spain.

It should be noted that one of the largest meetings of cyberactivists in Europe was organized by SOS Nicaragua-Europe, in Barcelona (2019). Thus, the importance of Spain as the central headquarters of self-convened and opposition actions on the continent was recognized.

Both in Spain and in the rest of Europe there have been no violent confrontations of any kind since there is no repression against Nicaraguan dissidents from the ORMU government, so all protest actions have been peaceful. The most notable nonviolent actions have been the following:

Online actions: calls on social networks, design and dissemination of informative posters, group chats, boycotts against the Nicaraguan government, monitoring and recording of material posted on social networks, updates on human rights reports, live videos, interviews with international media , communication campaigns, generation of labels, creation of anonymous accounts.

Offline actions: events, demonstrations, performances, musical tours, talks, conferences, film screenings, photo exhibitions, commemorative calendars, fairs, sale of items alluding to April, among other activities.

The impact of these operations has been such that the European Union listened to the self-summoned in Spain, taking important measures in the Nicaraguan political arena: the United Nations communiqués on the violation of human rights, the visit to Nicaragua of Members of the European Parliament in situ and the Spanish Parliamentary Senate (2019) and the consequent sanctions imposed by the European Union on public officials as of October 2019 and which continue to be extended to this day.

To conclude, it must be emphasized that the self-convened groups in Europe were born in response to the April insurrection in Nicaragua, being created more or less spontaneously through social networks to later structure and name themselves according to their geographical location, purpose or ideology. From 2018 to the present, many of these groups are still active and their demands have been the holding of democratic elections and the peaceful departure of Ortega and Murillo. Others, on the contrary, support the motion for a Constituent Assembly without negotiating with the regime. Within the self-summoned spectrum are people and groups of all kinds of ideologies, and many times their only point of convergence is their desire to see Nicaragua free from dictatorial control.

Over time, the concept of self-convened has gradually faded from the vocabulary of the media, but its spirit endures in the struggle of Nicaraguan citizens who oppose, from personal or collective trenches, inside and outside the country, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

Solange Saballos

Escritora y periodista nicaragüense. Profesora en lengua y literatura hispánicas (Universidad Autónoma de Nicaragua, 2018). Máster en idioma español y estudios latinoamericanos (Universidad de Bergen, 2022) con la tesis “Ciberactivismo de comunidades nicaragüenses autoconvocadas en España como reacción a la insurrección de abril 2018”. Fue becada por el programa Student At Risk en Noruega debido a su labor periodística y activismo autoconvocado en derechos

Translated by Damian Vasquez