I have been respectful and conciliatory, because I am conscious that, as Sandino said, “Our cause will triumph because it is the cause of justice, because it is the cause of love.” But that does not exclude firmness, the same way that politeness does not exempt from courage; on the contrary, it dignifies courage, and anger forces me to speak with just hardness about the most recent events. 

The Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI) has become the headquarters of the gangs of the surrounding neighborhoods, protected by the presence of the students who have irresponsibly admitted them, because the gangsters have become their strike force to provoke the Police. These groups go out at night to assault dwellings and passers-by and extort food store owners threatening with setting fire to their homes and charging fees to whatever vehicle approaches the place. They thus take advantage of our government’s decision not to send the Police to that sector in order to avoid provocations and situations that may be used by the vultures of Nicaragua’s politics in search of corpses.

In the afternoon of Monday, May 7, a large group of citizens had gathered at the rotunda of the Virgin, close to that place, to demand peace and to support the dialogue. Shortly thereafter they were suddenly attacked from behind with mortars and stones thrown by the gangsters at a very short distance. Part of the crowd abandoned the place and others, supported by the neighbors, resisted the strongly armed assailants, obviously from the UPOLI.

Faced with the situation, the Police had no other option but to intervene to prevent a tragedy. Then 100% Noticias, who had not reported what was happening, began to “inform” that the Police were strongly suppressing the students from the UPOLI. The same thing happened during the events in Niquinohomo and Catarina, where the Police did not suppress anyone but intervened to stop the anti-Sandinista groups that pretended to attack the people who were peacefully paying tribute to General Augusto C. Sandino. The group had re-painted in red and black the base of the monument to the hero who fought and expelled from Nicaragua the U.S. imperialist troops sent at the request of the same traitors who again are invoking the intervention. In the end, the FSLN houses in each of these municipalities were burned down.

They want to present us Sandinistas as aggressors, but it is our premises that are being attacked and burned. Some of the dead people vindicated by the rightist forces have fallen in support of our government, like the young man who was incinerated in León during the fire set to the CUUN house (Centro Universitario de la Universidad Nacional), and no one has written a song to honor him. The killers of those who died while protesting are still unknown; those victims are surely less than the figures given by biased institutions. In any case, the investigations must take into consideration that, as everyone knows, the leaders of the rightist political party in control of the actions at the UPOLI have military expertise.

Finally, I noticed that some student groups from public universities such as the UNAN-Managua joined the protests (if they may still be called so) with the pretext of demanding the ousting of the student leaders who defeated in the elections some of those now promoting the riots. In those actions a woman professor was dragged while clinging with incredible courage and dignity to the red and black FSLN flag, which is not simply the flag of a party but a symbol of the Revolution that made it possible for those boys to study at the university. I ask myself, “Do they think they will continue to enjoy the benefits they have today and the possibility to study at the university if the right is back in power?”

Those youngsters were children or had not been born in the days when the right ruled in Nicaragua. For that reason it is important that they pay more attention to the history classes, or that the academic authorities revise the content of those classes. And, naturally, as I have said at different moments, it is also necessary that the Sandinista political structures resume the political and ideological work we have abandoned, to make these boys learn what would happen if the wishes of some of them become true.