Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sent, for a week, a police contingent to fence in his house an old weapons partner: Henry Ruiz, a high relief figure of the Sandinista revolution, better known as Modest commander, and who from the nineties broke with the drift of the presidential couple. The ex -81 -year -old man, was imposed on the “house per jail de facto”, that is, house arrest, And they have not only forbidden to leave their home in Managua, but have limited the entry of people. That has made it difficult to give them medications or food, since he lives his retirement in solitude, after most of his family had to exile.
Ruiz discovered the police measure imposed on Saturday, March 8, when he quoted a plumber to his home located in the Los Robles Residential to review the pipe system in search of a hypothetical leak. For months, the water receipt arrived very high, about 15,000 córdobas monthly ($ 400 to change). That seemed very rare to the modest commander, since he lives alone, just with a person who assists him in domestic work. A valid doubt if it is taken into account that, between the persecutory fan of the Ortega and Murillo regime, excessive collection of public taxes or services is a common practice of soft repression.
The police did not let the plumber and Ruiz went to the sidewalk of the house to check the water meter, but immediately a dozen young armed officers surrounded him and called him to return to the interior. They warned him that he couldn’t get out of her. The modest commander tried to explain to the officers who he and his imprint on the Sandinista front; that he was already retired for years from public life … but the police told him that they did not know who he was and that they only obeyed “orders from above.”
This is not the first time that the Ortega-Murillo attack against central figures of the Sandinista revolution, whom they consider “traitors” for having broken with the marriage authoritarian project after the 1990s, as is the case of the modest commander. For example, Dora María Téllez, former Commander Dos, and Retiro General Hugo Torres were political prisoners. Téllez was denationalized and banished, while Torres died in prison in February 2022 for not providing timely medical attention.
A mythical character of Sandinismo
Ruiz is a mythical character of the Sandinista revolution because he spent more than seven years as head of the guerrillas operating in the jungles and mountains of the north of the country. He was one of the leaders of the trend known as prolonged popular war, but united strength with the other two Sandinista tendencies to achieve the conjunction of forces that made possible the overthrow of the Somocista dictatorship. After the triumph of the revolution, Ruiz was appointed Minister of Planning of the new Sandinista government, with the mission of structuring the economy in a context of war and international blockade.
“Known for his character that fled from fame, his modest pseudonym became an example of coherence for the simplicity of his life,” he says, being consulted by the country, the writer Gioconda Belli, who also made the revolution in the eighties. “Stepario wolf, lived and lives alone. In recent years he dedicated himself to study, reading and was absent from political struggle. ”
“I am very affected by the news that Henry Ruiz was given a house by jail, who lived only with a home assistant whose entrance to his home now denies the regime. After a hard life keeping the guerrillas alive in the Nicaraguan mountains for more than seven years, his dedication during the revolution to his tasks as a minister of planning and his voluntary seclusion in recent years, there is no reason for the dictatorship to surround his house and decide to treat him as a criminal, ”says Belli. “As someone who knows him well and who feels great respect and affection for him, I hope that these measures are withdrawn and allowed, at 81, to have the freedom to live in peace for the rest of his life.”
With the electoral defeat of the Sandinista Front in 1990, Ruiz distanced himself from the party and the leadership headed by Daniel Ortega, whom he criticized for distorting the original ideals of Sandinism and consolidating an authoritarian power model. In later years, the modest commander maintained a critical position against the evolution of Sandinism and decided to depart from partisan policy. Since then, he has dedicated himself to historical analysis and reflection on the revolution, insisting on the importance of revolutionary ethics and social justice.
Before the publication of this article, El País knew that the officers let the house to the only daughter who has left in Nicaragua. He took his aspirins and metformines for diabetes, as well as food.
