In Nicaragua, the steady dismantling of democracy by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has been advancing for many years. But in the past couple of weeks, the Ortega-Murillo regime took control of the country’s Supreme Court, a dramatic move that arguably crossed the line into dictatorship.
While the exodus of millions of Venezuelans from their homeland to countries across the Western Hemisphere has attracted considerable attention in recent years, another equally significant migratory pattern in Central America has been taking place with less notice: the roughly 200,000 Nicaraguans who have fled to Costa Rica.
Friction between Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church is not new. But tense relations reached boiling point during Easter celebrations last week with further arrests in Ortega’s latest brazen crackdown, putting the devout in the middle of a power struggle between two mighty forces.
