THE OTHER NICARAGUA: EMPIRE AND RESISTANCE YORLIS GABRIELA LUNA1 ABSTRACT: Polarized opinions yield opposite views of the political conflict that occurred from April to July 2018. The hegemonic version told by the media depicts a crazed dictatorship murdering peaceful demonstrators. But this article recounts different experiences and different indignations. We use the term “soft coup” and place the people’s capacity for resistance in the context of their history of anti-imperialism. KEY WORDS: Interventionism; social media; soft coup. INTRODUCTION For those who live in Nicaragua, it is well known that there is a dominant narrative about the political conflict that took more than 200 lives in 2018. The hegemonic version, repeated by human rights organizations and private media outlets from Managua to the halls of power in Washington, describes an almost complete “dictatorship” that, when faced with citizen protesters, responded with waves of violent repression aimed primarily at students and journalists, leaving hundreds of peaceful protesters dead. Therefore, the government no longer enjoys any popular support and a great coalition of social movements is just waiting for international assistance to ensure free elections so that the country can be liberated from a regime that has taken on and even surpassed the brutality of the Somoza dynasty (CENIDH, 2018). This is the version that has been broadly disseminated to the world by voices on both the Right and some who identify as Left. 1 Grassroots educator and researcher in Boaco, Chontales, Zelaya, Central, Río San Juan, and Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Email:
[email protected]. This article seeks to disprove that narrative about events in Nicaragua in 2018, which, although meticulously constructed, is nothing more than a fabrication made a priori by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’s regime change laboratory, along with other U.S.