US Journalist Tim Rogers Leaves Nicaragua Due To Threats From Sandinista Groups

Protests erupted throughout Nicaragua last week in response to plans to reduce social security benefits. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega later reversed this decision after as many as 63 protestors have been killed by government forces.

The Latin-America-focused news organization, Fusion, sent its editor, Tim Rogers, to report on the story. However, he left on Friday due to threats from pro-Sandinista groups labeling him as a CIA agent, per Nicaragua-based La Prensa.

Tim Rogers - Twitter

Anyone familiar with the work of Fusion would never confuse it with a CIA front. (A correspondent from…say…The Washington Post, on the other hand, could deservedly receive such speculation.) Rogers (who had been fairly supportive of Ortega's cause) had lived and worked as a journalist in Nicaragua for many years. However, his critical anti-corruption reporting resulted in these kinds of smears in the past. With that said, being labeled as a CIA agent can be viewed as a death threat in Nicaragua in its current tumultuous state.

If you're not familiar with Nicaragua's current politics, Daniel Ortega is repeating the legacy of the Somoza dictatorship; albeit, as a corrupt left-wing tyrant. He’s been in power for decades and his real-life House of Cards saga was cemented by choosing his wife as his Vice President.  

Daniel Ortega was legitimately elected president in 2007. However, he was reelected to a third consecutive term in 2016, which had been unconstitutional until the majority-party-dominated National Assembly voted to remove term limits.  

Such egregious power grabs and more, however, haven’t been widely opposed. The Nicaragua economy has steadily improved during his time in office and crime has remained one of the lowest in a region plagued by violence. That has helped to placate opposition uprising. 

Despite rampant corruption, Ortega has leveraged his geopolitical relationships. His vehement anti-American rhetoric has helped maintain strong ties with Venezuela, which has supplied Nicaragua with generous subsidies that have helped fund the country’s social programs. 

To the contrary, Ortega has also been able to avoid much pressure from the U.S., in part, because he has been friendly to multi-national corporations. Although he professes to be a socialist, Ortega has given many cushy tax incentives for foreign investment. 

All in all, there hasn’t been much public unrest as Ortega has consolidated political power. However, this recent protest may be a sign of changes to come.

Mayor of Juarez Threatens to Kill Journalist - Long-Term Trend of Impunity Against Journalists in Latin America

Two weeks ago, the mayor of Cuidad Juarez, Armando Cabada Alvídrez, threatened to kill a prominent local journalist, Hector Gonzalez. The mayor was brazen enough that he made these threats in public and threw a punch at one of Gonzalez’s companions. 

This was nothing new for Gonzalez. As a matter of fact, this type of intimidation against reporters is widespread throughout Mexico. Also, the crimes against journalist are rarely punished. Of the 426 reported instances of violence against journalists in 2016, only 0.25% of those cases resulted in a conviction! (My free ebook, “America’s Drug War is Devastating Mexico,” goes into full detail explaining the severity of the problem.) 

This is an issue in which the worlds of organized crime and politics intermingle. It’s well known that reporting on crime in Mexico is a dangerous occupation because the cartels enforce a brutal form of censorship. However, in many instances, reporting on politics can be just as, if not more, dangerous. The reason is that the cartels have deeply corrupted politics and the government provides little to no protection for journalists.

My last book focused on Mexico, but this is a problem throughout Latin America and one of the primary causes of this violence is the war on drugs. Last month, a Guatemalan newspaper reporter, Laurent Ángel Castillo Cifuentes, and radio station worker, Luis Alfredo de León Miranda, were murdered. 

Their bodies were discovered in Suchitepéquez with clear signs of torture. This coastal-region state is a major transshipment point for South American cocaine. Consequently, the area is overrun with organized crime and reporters have faced extreme violence in this region. The Associated Press had previously reported that 10 journalists had been killed in this one state over the last ten years.

Nonetheless, the U.S. government has a complicit role in this wave of violence. Clearly, the prohibition of drugs in the U.S. has created a culture of black market violence throughout Latin America. Worst of all, the U.S. has aided, supported, armed, and financed some of the most corrupt governments throughout Latin America as long as these countries have been geopolitical allies.

There are too many examples of this hypocrisy to list in a blog post. However, since Guatemala is the current focus, we’ll examine the U.S. government’s relationship with the last President of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina.

Molina received training at the infamous School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, GA. This former general was involved with numerous human rights abuses during the U.S.-supported Civil War in Guatemala, including the Ixil massacre. As a matter of fact, many historians identify this Civil War as a genocide because the vast majority of victims of government death squads were indigenous civilians.

Nonetheless, a 2007 WikiLeaks document during his presidential campaign shows that U.S. officials were aware of information connecting Molina with the country’s top drug cartel. However, they weren’t highly concerned based on this quote from the document. 

“Given that Guatemala is awash in narco-money, it is improbable that none of it has found its way into Perez Molina's campaign, but we currently have no grounds to suspect that Perez Molina knowingly accepted narco-funds.”

Ultimately, it turned out that the rumors were well substantiated. Molina is currently in jail on charges of corruption. His Vice President, Roxana Baldetti, is also in jail awaiting trial for drug and corruption charges. She reportedly accepted a $250,000 bribe from Los Zetas. Likewise, the Minister of Interior, Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, reportedly received a $1.5 million bribe from Los Zetas.

This same destructive political dynamic with U.S. complicity is visible throughout Latin American. Much of my work has focused on exposing these truths, particularly in El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, etc. (Please read and share the articles from the links in the previous sentence. However, for a more thorough explanation, grab a copy of my book, The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game, which will make it abundantly clear that the drug war is often nothing more than a geopolitical bargaining chip.)