Which Latin American strongman was most on the mind of the American president in 1986? Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua.
Ortega, a Marxist protégé of the USSR, ruled Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. The Reagan administration provided aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, often through clandestine means. This led to the infamous Iran-Contra scandal of Reagan’s second term in office.
There was talk in some quarters about direct U.S. intervention in the Latin American nation in the 1980s, though I don’t think this was ever seriously on the table.
Ortega was eventually ousted from within and found himself out of power for seventeen years, from 1990 to 2007. Then he came back into power. Ortega’s second dictatorship has lasted for almost 20 years now.
The 80-year-old Ortega has just declared that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections at all. We’re back to the 1980s.
No, I’m not about to suggest that the US should attempt to force a regime change in Nicaragua. That was a bad idea in 1986, and it’s a bad idea now. From the U.S. perspective, the situation in Nicaragua is a nuisance, not an existential threat.
But we may consider the irony. So much has changed since the mid-1980s. (To consider the matter from a personal perspective, I turned 18 in 1986, the year I graduated from high school. I will soon turn 58.)
There are, however, some constants in this ever-changing world. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
-ET