Laureano Ortega arrives at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) to teach the commencement lecture for the 2023 academic year: He is impeccably dressed: He wears a wine-brown tie over a white shirt. The beard is neatly outlined and some academic evidence to back it up. Being the son of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo and presidential advisor for investment promotion, it is enough to climb the stage of the most important public institution of higher education in this Central American country. The topic of his course was “Challenges and Opportunities of Higher Education in a Multipolar World for Achieving the Good Life”.
Rather than a professorial dissertation, Laureano points to the lesson to complain about the international sanctions imposed on him and his family circle — after greeting university officials at his parents’ behest.
“In recent years, we have seen how the economic sanctions of the United States and its enslaved Europeans and Canadians are used with a high degree of madness, stupidity and lack of reason, which is nothing more than illegal aggression against the people of the world”, says Laureano, who studied political science and sociology at private universities in Managua. Then audiovisual production in Costa Rica. “They’re throwing these barriers left and right, but with less and less consequence, and the reality is that the interactions of power and balance are very different than they were 40 years ago.”
On April 26, Laureano’s veiled geopolitical contact endorsed “the People’s Republic, the Russian Federation, India, Iran and the Arab States,” which their parent’s government has attempted in recent years. To alleviate the deep international isolation they suffer from human rights violations committed since 2018. A panorama of what the United Nations Panel of Experts has classified as crimes against humanity.
Laureano affirms that China, Russia, Iran and India are “now researching and developing the technologies of the future, and opening doors to mutually beneficial cooperation based on respect and non-interference in each state’s internal affairs.” And while the US will continue to be Nicaragua’s main trading partner, the presidential couple’s son predicted the end of the “world dictatorship of the dollar”.
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“Arab countries and China are major global financial centers with the ability and willingness to create financial cooperation mechanisms through loans, investments and hybrid programs and projects. We cannot fail to mention that transactions and exchanges are already taking place without the use of the US dollar, which means that the global dictatorship of the dollar is over. This “Nicaragua cannot and should not be excluded from new and much-needed employment and financial cooperation,” Laureano said. According to La Prensa newspaperUNAN-Managua’s commencement speaker failed an economic theory class while a student at the University of Central America (UCA), which the Sandinista government financially suffocated in retaliation for supporting youth defectors. In 2018, there should be a general protest.
Relations with the powers that the Presidential Adviser on Investment Promotion mentions are sterile for the Nicaraguan economy, as are the investments Laureano has promoted, such as the Chinese Endeliquia of the Interoceanic Canal or the direct flight Managua-Rome. With Italian airline Blue Panorama, it only lasted three months.
“We are building the alliances of the future in the new world that is being created, and no one and no one can stop it. Thank God, we are at the birth of a multipolar world, where the historical hegemony of the United States and its subjugated Europeans and Canadians is gone, and their pressures and political and economic threats are losing strength and fighting,” Laureano said. ability.
Camilla and the creative economy
Before her brother, at the end of March, Camila Ortega Murillo delivered the inaugural lecture for the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (Uracan). She was the personal assistant of her mother, Vice President Murillo. He runs one of the presidential family’s television channels and is passionate about fashion, to the extent that he has his own luxury runway called Nicaragua Designa. This event, like his brother Laureano’s opera festival, was one of the main activities of his parents’ government. Both attempts succeed million Cordobas Funding from the President, as well as funding from state institutions, ruling family entities, and Sandinista businessmen.
In 2019, her parents created a position for Camelia: coordinator of the National Commission for the Creative Economy in Nicaragua, made up of various government agencies and the “Nicaragua Designa Platform”. The government has emphasized that the “creative economy” creates “jobs, income, local economic growth and exports and revenue from intellectual property”. However, its impact was not even seen in the reports of the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), which showed a recovery in macroeconomic issues, but not in Nicaragua’s economy, which was plagued by unemployment. , thousands have migrated to the United States and other countries in recent years. Almost 7% of the population of six and a half million have left to escape the socio-political and economic crisis.
Camilla is a graduate in Political Science and her inaugural course was almost awarded. He did not visit the Nicaraguan Caribbean islands, where there have been two massacres of indigenous people in recent months at the hands of land occupiers moving under the protection of Sandinista officials. Camilla didn’t talk about it in her presentation, but she did thank her parents. “We are grateful to share with you what we are building with the guidance and work of our President, Commander Daniel and our Vice President, colleague Rosario. The main engine is the major role played by the majority, those MSMEs, those entrepreneurial youth, leading the youth at all levels of our country.
Laureano and Camila are the children who hold the most visible positions in their parents’ apparatus of rule. Although their hobbies are opera and modeling, Sandinista sources consulted by EL PAÍS admit that both perform roles assigned to them by the presidential couple. Teaching introductory lectures is a new job, even without academic credentials. For a public university professor who spoke on condition of anonymity, these inaugural lectures are a reflection of the decline of higher education in Nicaragua, marked by the closing and confiscation of universities.
“The government closed three more universities a few days ago, making it five so far this year. Then the government takes over the universities, and it imposes not science, criticism and knowledge, but humility and admiration for them. Imposing mediocrity and sending their children to master classes is proof of this: meritocracy is at work. “This is the final blow to the university autonomy that the students of this country have fought so hard for since the Somoza era,” said a humanities professor at a public university.
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