Ortega offspring deliver universities’ inaugural speeches

Laureano and Camila Ortega Murillo, offspring of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Vice-President Rosario Murillo, have recently given political speeches praising their parents and ranting against their foes at university inaugural addresses. They spoke of a “multipolar world”, the country’s “creative economy”, and the end of “the global US dollar dictatorship”, writes Wilfredo Miranda for EL PAÍS.

At the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) where he delivered the inaugural address of the 2023 academic year in April, Laureano Ortega said: “In recent years, we have seen how the United States and its European and Canadian lackeys have imposed so-called sanctions – little more than illegal attacks on the peoples of this world – with even more madness, senselessness and irrationality,” said Laureano, who studied political science and sociology at private universities in Managua, and later audiovisual production in Costa Rica. “They throw out sanctions left and right, but with less and less effect, because the reality is changing. The power balance and alignments now differ greatly from 40 years ago.”

In late March, Laureano’s sister, Camila Ortega Murillo, gave the inaugural address at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN). Camila is her mother’s personal assistant and runs one of the family’s television stations. Laureano and Camila are the most visible children in their parents’ regime. A professor at a public university who wished to remain anonymous told EL PAÍS that these inaugural addresses reflect the decline of higher education in Nicaragua, recently devastated by university closures and property seizures.
Full report on the EL PAÍS site