Nicaragua: Cristiana Chamorro, the influential journalist opposed to Daniel Ortega who was found guilty of money laundering and other crimes

For many Nicaraguans, Cristiana Chamorro, an influential journalist who announced in 2021 that she would run as an opposition candidate for that year’s presidential elections and who was arrested in the middle of the contest, represents a link to her country’s past.

She is the daughter of Violeta Barrios of Chamorrothe woman who defeated the first government of Daniel Ortega at the polls in 1990.

“The first thing any Nicaraguan would tell you about her is that, that she is Violeta’s daughter,” Ana Margarita Vijil, a political analyst and former academic at the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua, told BBC Mundo.

“Symbolically, Cristiana, who was closely linked to her mother’s government, also means for the current government the living memory of that defeat,” he added.

In just a few months, Chamorro Barrios went from not doing (openly) politics to becoming the most visible face of the opposition in Nicaragua when he announced that he would participate in the November 2021 elections.

After her announcement in June of the same year, the government of Daniel Ortega criminally accused her, placed her under house arrest, and last Friday was found guilty of various crimes.

Members of the international community as well as human rights organizations affirm that the legal process is really a political persecution.

Shortly after registering to participate in the internal process of the Citizens for Freedom party, which would later choose a single opposition candidate, the Nicaraguan Prosecutor’s Office charged him with “crimes of abusive management, ideological falsehood in real competition with the crime of money laundering, goods and assets”.

The Prosecutor’s Office had also requested his political disqualification “for not being in full enjoyment of his civil and political rights, for being in a criminal investigative process.” This was decreed by a court in Managua.

found guilty

Chamorro, 68, was found guilty by Judge Luden Martín Quiroz along with four other people, including her brother Pedro Joaquín, 70.

The Prosecutor’s Office requested 13 years in prison for the former presidential candidate.

Along with the journalist, the general accountant and the financial administrator of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, Marcos Fletes and Walter Gómez, were found guilty. Her driver, Pedro Vásquez, was also found guilty.

Both Chamorro and his family denied the charges and claim that it is a political maneuver to prevent him from becoming a counterweight to Ortega.

But who is this well-known journalist and how did she end up becoming the new face of the opposition?

the ascent

Born in 1954 in Managua, Cristiana Chamorro Barrios is also the daughter of one of the country’s most renowned journalists, Pedro Joaquin Chamorrodirector of the newspaper La Prensa, who was assassinated in 1978, in the last months of the Anastasio Somoza regime.

His family has been for centuries not only one of the richest, but also one of the most powerful in the country: five of his ancestors, including his mother, were presidents of Nicaragua.

Although he studied History and Philosophy and did a master’s degree in Latin American History and Literature, family ties between journalism and politics marked his career.

In 1979 she would start as a reporter at La Prensa, the newspaper that her mother had managed since the murder of her husband.

At the age of 35, Chamorro Barrios became editor of the publication and soon after, she was one of the architects of the campaign that brought her mother to the presidency.

With Violeta Barrios at the head of Nicaragua, the daughter was in charge of communication and national and international public relations tasks for the Executive, while remaining at the head of the traditionally opposition newspaper (which from then on became the “spokesperson” of the new government). ).

Chamorro Barrios married the politician Antonio Lacayo, who was Minister of the Presidency during his mother’s government and who died in a helicopter accident in 2015.

“Later, she created the Violeta Barrios Foundation, in honor of her mother, who is now at the center of this problem,” recalls Vijil.

“It is an organization that has helped to train the media and that became very relevant after the protests that took place three years ago began,” he adds.

from journalism

In 2018, Nicaragua experienced a wave of demonstrations calling for Ortega to leave power and which, according to human rights organizations, were harshly repressed and caused some 328 deaths, hundreds of political prisoners and the exile of more than 100,000 people.

Vijil remembers that in those years, the government closed many media outlets and that then, the Foundation became a learning platform for the hundreds of journalists who had to redirect their work.

“The Foundation was very important to support independent media to readapt after being taken off the air and having to migrate to digital media,” he says.

However, at the beginning of 2021, Chamorro Barrios announced that he would close it after refusing to register it in the registry associated with a law approved by the Legislative Assembly that forced organizations that received money from international cooperation to register as “foreign agents.”

“The Foundation tendered and managed USAID journalism education funds, that’s no secret,” Vijil recalls.

“But the government considered that these organizations that received money from abroad were coming to oxygenate the opposition, which is why this law was approved, which basically seeks to stop the inflow of money. That is when she decides to close the Foundation”, recalls the academic, in a conversation prior to Chamorro Barrios’ guilty plea.

The rupture

However, local media recall that her work in front of the Foundation and its subsequent closure did not put her in the sights of the authorities.

“She, until that moment, had not been actively involved in politics. The big change came when she announced that she would run as a candidate for the November elections. [de 2021]Vijil recalls.

After the announcement, even before joining any party, Chamorro Barrios was at the forefront of the opinion polls, and independent Nicaraguan media began to talk about the possibility that he could repeat his mother’s victory over Ortega.

“In Nicaragua, the opposition parties are very weak. It is an opposition where the preference of the voter is based more on personal candidacies. So, around Cristiana, a lot of expectation and enthusiasm had been generated because it was seen as a candidacy that returned everyone in the same boat”, says Vijil.

The Public Ministry, for its part, alleged at that time that the process against Chamorro was linked to his work with the Foundation, which, according to what he said, “seriously breached its obligations before the Regulatory Entity.”

He also assured that he had obtained “clear indications of money laundering” after reviewing financial documents between 2015-2019.

Other cases

The arrest of Cristiana Chamorro and the charges against her were seen by activists and opponents as just the latest case of other maneuvers carried out by the Nicaraguan government with a view to the elections.

More than a dozen journalists denounced having been summoned to testify in the Nicaraguan Prosecutor’s Office in the case of alleged money laundering by Chamorro Barrios.

On May 20, 2021, the authorities also raided the headquarters of the newspaper El Confidencial and the television programs Esta Semana and Esta Noche, directed by the journalist Carlos F. Chamorro, the brother of Cristiana Chamorro, who was recently awarded the Ortega y Gasset Award.

Other opposition candidates have also previously alleged that the government created cases against them to prevent them from running in the elections.

Several human rights organizations have denounced that the situation in Nicaragua has worsened in recent times as a result of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the economic crisis, and what they describe as “repression” by the forces of order.

According to a report by the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners in Nicaragua, in the country’s prisons there are still more than a hundred detainees for political reasons.

The Ortega government denies that there are political prisoners in the country and assures that the opponents are “rioters” who seek to create disturbances in the country. (I)