<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Nicaraguan writer and former president, Sergio Ramírez, has warned that both Spain and Europe have an obligation to “maintain a critical attitude toward the new autocracies” in Central America, both the “absolute monarchy of Ortega and his wife” in Nicaragua and the “dictatorship” of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.</strong></h4> In Central America, “there are two opposing faces,” Ramírez explained during his presentation “Central America and Spain” in the course “Geopolitical Trends (VI). Geopolitics of Spanish. Rethinking Hispanic Heritage,” led by Army Brigadier General and IEEE Director Víctor Mario Bados Nieto, as part of the summer courses at the Complutense University of El Escorial. On the one hand, he explained, there is the face that leaps onto the front pages of the media, that of "a territory that today serves as a bridge for drug trafficking," whose "primary export product is people fleeing poverty," and where "absolute monarchies like that of Ortega and his wife" or "dictatorships" like that of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, "with the largest prison in Latin America," are consolidated. The region's current problems, he asserted, date back to the "region's original sin": an independence "without any heroics or epic," proclaimed by the elites in 1821 for fear that "the people themselves would proclaim it." That independence, he argued, "already carried within it the worm of dissent and gave way to a cycle of wars, anarchy, and dictatorships that has marked the last two centuries." Since then, liberal-inspired constitutions have been “novels dominated by fiction, a rhetorical ideal in permanent divorce from the reality of the caudillos.” Faced with this situation, the former vice president of Nicaragua (currently exiled and stripped of his nationality by the Daniel Ortega government) warned that, while solutions must come from within, Europe and Spain have a duty to “maintain a critical attitude toward the new autocracies.” In the face of “this brand of political dissension, military coups, and dictatorships,” the writer highlighted “our best face, a face to teach”: that of culture and literary invention. From the Mayan sacred book, the Popol Vuh, to Rubén Darío, Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Ernesto Cardenal, literature “redeems us and reveals that identity so often hidden,” Ramírez affirmed. In this regard, Sergio Ramírez defended the “hybrid, rich, and diverse Spanish of the region” as the result of a “centuries-long fusion that fused the peninsular heritage with indigenous, African, and even English languages.” In September 2021, Ramírez, the 2017 Cervantes Prize winner and vice president of Nicaragua during the first Sandinista government (1979-1990), was accused by the Prosecutor's Office in his home country of “carrying out acts that promote and incite hatred and violence.” In response, the Spanish Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture “strongly” rejected the accusations and asserted that Ramírez “has always demonstrated his commitment to defending democracy in his country, first with his role in the fight against the Somoza regime and then by supporting freedom and democracy ever since.” In 2023, the Daniel Ortega regime stripped him of his Nicaraguan nationality as part of a repressive campaign against dissidents. However, Sergio Ramírez had already received Spanish nationality by letter of naturalization in December 2018, by decision of the Council of Ministers, due to his special ties to Spain and his participation in the country's main cultural institutions.
