Official Event Promoting Senior Commanders of the Nicaraguan Army
to the Military Rank of Colonel General
June 2nd 2025
Compañera Rosario, Co-President of Nicaragua,
reads Presidential Agreement No. 66-2025,
Promotion in Military Grades of Colonel General
A very good evening. Presidential Agreement No. 66-2005 states the following:
"The Presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua, Co-President Daniel Ortega and Co-President Rosario Murillo, Taking into Consideration :
1. That the Political Constitution establishes the Presidency of the Republic as the Supreme Head of the Nicaraguan Army and, in accordance with Article 125, paragraph 9, that it is the responsibility of the Presidency of the Republic to approve the granting of the military rank of Colonel General at the proposal of the Military Council.
2. That the Military Council of the Nicaraguan Army, proposed to the Presidency of the Republic and Supreme Head of the Nicaraguan Army, granting the Military Rank of Colonel General to Major Generals Bayardo Ramón Rodríguez Ruiz, Chief of the General Staff, and Marvin Elías Corrales Rodríguez, Inspector General.
Using the powers conferred by the Political Constitution and Law No. 181, "Code of Organization, Jurisdiction and Military Social Security".
Therefore, using the powers conferred on them by the Political Constitution, they agree :
Article 1. To promote to the Military Rank of Colonel General the Major Generals: Bayardo Ramón Rodríguez Ruíz, Chief of the General Staff, and Marvin Elías Corrales Rodríguez, Inspector General.
Article 2. This Agreement takes effect as of its publication in La Gaceta, Official Journal.
Given in Managua, Presidential Office, Republic of Nicaragua, on May 7, 2025.
Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Rosario Murillo”.
Many congratulations, Compañeros, many congratulations, and to your Families also.
Address by Daniel
Beloved Brothers, Compañeros of the Nicaraguan Army; Beloved Compañera Co-President Rosario Murillo Zambrana; Beloved Brother, Commander-in-Chief of the Military Forces of the Nicaraguan Army, Army General Julio César Avilés Castillo; Beloved Brother President of the National Assembly, Doctor Gustavo Porras Cortez;
Beloved Brother, Chief of the General Staff of the Army of Nicaragua, as of today, Colonel General Bayardo Ramón Rodríguez Ruiz. Congratulations, Beloved Brother, to You and your Family;
Beloved Brother Inspector General of the Nicaraguan Army, Colonel Marvin Elías Corrales Rodríguez, as of today Colonel General. Our greetings, our congratulations, our love, to you and your family.
Beloved Minister of Defense of the Republic of Nicaragua, Compañera Rosa Adelina Barahona Castro;
Beloved Brother, Chief of the Police Forces of the Republic of Nicaragua, First Commissioner General Francisco Javier Díaz Madriz;
Beloved Sister, Compañera Maria Amelia Colonel Kinloch, Minister of the Interior;
Beloved Brother Commissioner General, Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa, Deputy Minister of the Interior;
Brother Generals and Senior Officers, Members of the Military Council of the Army of Nicaragua who signed this Proposal in what is an advance in terms of the development required for our Institutions, to incorporate the Rank of Colonel General;
Beloved Wives of the Members of the High Command of the Nicaraguan Army; Children and Relatives, and Special Guests of the Chief of the General Staff and the Inspector General of the Nicaraguan Army;
Members of the Nicaraguan Army, the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior;
As always, our greetings to the Brother Journalists who cover the most diverse activities, so as to inform the Nicaraguan people.
This is a day in which Nicaragua takes another step to strengthen the institutions of the Nicaraguan Army. Because we have to continue strengthening all our Institutions, from Institutions, like the Army and the Police, that are for protecting the People, protecting and guaranteeing Security for Peace, but also advancing with all our Institutions in every field, both in the Fight against Poverty and in the activities of the Health System taking care of the Lives of Nicaraguans.
Likewise, the Hospitals, the Military Hospital, the Carlos Roberto Huembes Hospital, Hospitals that are at the service of Soldiers, Officers and their Families, but also with their doors open for the People.
We are also continuing to build more Hospitals, just as we can see how new buses are arriving, in the same way we are seeing new Hospitals multiplying even in the most remote areas, in the Caribbean area, in the area of El Rama.
Hospitals are multiplying all over the country, and this is accompanied by direct care to the population through Mobile Clinics, which go out to Neighborhoods, which go out to Communities, going there to provide care for Families, care for Children, care for those who are presenting different ailments. And they go with modern equipment.
That is to say, this is an attention that is fundamental and which we have prioritized, Health, because the first duty that we have as Revolutionaries, as Sandinistas, as Nicaraguans, is to take care of the lives of Nicaraguans, to watch over the lives of Children, to watch over the lives of Young People, to watch over the lives of Adults.
And we have to develop a Plan that may cause some discomfort to those who like to speed on the highways, but we have to make a Plan where you cannot speed on the roads; put a limit. Set a limit, which cannot be 90 kilometers, nor 100 kilometers; but setting a limit that the Compañeras and Compañeras will have to out well and make their proposal to us.
If the limit is 50 kilometers per hour or it is 60 kilometers per hour, they are going to argue that this is going to cause losses because it is slow. Ah, but what is worth more, a truck with merchandise or the life of a Citizen? We have to put life first.
We see accidents every day, every day, accidents in the world, terrible accidents, caused by acts of terrorism, like the train that was blown up there in Russia.
That I would say is a priority, for the Life, Health, of Nicaraguan Families, for the Life and Family of the Drivers themselves. Because also, at high speeds Drivers perish and run over pedestrians, or those who ride motorcycles, or those who ride bicycles, or those riding horses. All these things happen. Such that we have to make a Plan for the Life and Security of Nicaraguans, in terms of public and private transport.
In the same way, to continue developing the other Programs we have been developing throughout all these years, in every field, in the field of Education, in the field of Academic Training; that is, from the First Degree to the Postgraduate Degree, and the Courses that have been developed, and where we have also now managed to make progress via exchanges and cooperation with countries that have great scientific development, that have great development and that are now here.
They come to transfer knowledge in the Hospitals of the Health System, in the Military Hospital, in the Carlos Roberto Huembes Hospital; we see there the Seminars so that Doctors have greater mastery in order to face the challenges of preserving and saving Nicaraguan lives.
These are the great challenges, among others facing Nicaraguans which we have already noted, in that we are for Peace, for Peace in Nicaragua, where we have an enormous responsibility to preserve Peace and for Peace in the World.
We cannot applaud or support totally brutal, terrorist acts, where children are being massacred every day in Gaza, murdering the Palestinian people. And it is terrible to hear the Prime Minister of Israel announce that he is going to destroy everything, and that they are going to take over all that territory.
Meanwhile, there are Powers, the North American power, the European Powers, which feed these crimes. Why? Because they provide weapons to Israel, to the Government of Israel. We do not get entangled in that, we have respect and affection for the People of Israel, but we cannot have respect or affection for those who rule in Israel and who have set out to destroy.
They want to make the Palestinian people disappear and they kill whoever they find along the way. And what do they do, what do they say, what do the European Powers decide, and what does the North American Power decide? They talk about Peace and that Peace Agreements must be reached between the criminal Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authorities.
But, while they say that arrangements must be made, on the other hand, they do not condemn or act with the necessary rigor to stop this massacre, which aims to do the same as the Nazis did with the People of Israel, who wanted to completely extinguish them, and murdered more than 6 million citizens.
They murdered children, old people, women, simply because they were of Jewish origin, and because they did not fit in the mind of Nazism, which did not recognize any race if it was not an Aryan, German race. And they studied people’s heads, to see if they had any signs to be considered a Human Being.
And there they disqualified everyone, on that basis neither Africans, nor Asians, nor Latin American mestizos would survive... No! they would have had to pass to extinction.
And this practice that was condemned by the world which finally managed to defeat Fascism, thanks to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, which were the two great Fronts where the Fascists collapsed. That's where the Nazis collapsed.
And now there is also talk of Peace and talk of negotiation, of dialogue, between Russia, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, in a conflict that is becoming clearer and clearer. It is the same Nazis who have been taking power in Germany, in England, in France, who now talk about investing billions and billions to arm the fascists of Ukraine. Billions and billions! They have already invested many billions.
Those weapons that the Ukrainians are launching against civilian sommunities, against airports, in the Russian Federation, are weapons that the British, the Germans have given them, and they are even talking about firing ong-range rockets. With such arrogance, true arrogance, because they think the time has come to put an end to the Russian Federation.
But, surely they must realize that the Russian Federation has won great Battles, in favor of Humanity, and that they have armaments which, if they provoke them, if NATO continues intervening as it is intervening, surely, the time will come when they have to think what to do. Because after all, the Russian Federation has every right to defend itself from the fascist Europe that is feeding the Nazis of Ukraine.
It is a world, I would say, this is the most critical period that humanity is living after those other wars, the First World War, the Second World War, after the Napoleonic invasion, which was defeated in Russia; after the terrible wars that were fought in Vietnam where US power was defeated.
But, it’s as if they don't want to look any further in favor of the security of their own citizens, of their own families. They don't want to look further. It is the arrogance of the Imperialist Powers who say, this has to be so, that must be so, otherwise, there follows a coup. But we already know and they know it perfectly well too, those in NATO know perfectly well in which field this confrontation is being conducted and at what level it is now playing out.
So far there have been no agreements in the meetings held this weekend by the Delegation of the Russian Federation and the Delegation of Ukraine, all speaking for Peace, who want Peace, who dialogue for Peace. And what did agreement did they come to? Simply, well, it has its value of course, we are not going to underestimate it, they reached an agreement to deliver Ukrainian prisoners who are in Russia, and to deliver Russian prisoners who are in Ukraine, we are talking about thousands; and also to deliver the corpses of the thousands who have died in these battles.
Well, it's a step, but in the meantime, the missiles keep flying, the war goes on. Because the ideal is that there would be a ceasefire, but it has not been possible because of the attitude of Ukraine, which goes on, although it is well beaten and knows that defeat is self-evident, but what encourages them?
They are encouraged by the support given by the imperialist countries of Europe, who visit Ukraine to give support, there in Ukraine, to the President of Ukraine, whose term has already expired, he is no longer President, he should have called elections. But no one questions that.
We continue to hope, yes, we do not lose hope that in the end they will realize that in a total war there will be neither winners nor losers, and that rather, with this attitude they maintain, it is a permanent threat against all humanity, against all the Peoples who would like those billions of euros and dollars that they have invested and continue to invest in the Israeli Government and that they continue to invest in the Government of Ukraine, the world would be different, if they thought about making all those resources available to developing Countries.
But no, they are investing for war, they are investing in death, and they seem not to care either, although they will surely care, since of course they have to care, they have to worry about the fact that the US government dropped a bomb on the whole world with the famous tariffs.
Al of a sudden it looks like that they are going reach agreement, but the President of the United States announced, in these last few days, that he is going to put tariffs on steel. And this is now worrying the countries that are steel producers, and it is also worrying the same companies that run their financial activities, their businesses, with steel as a raw material.
Thank God in this Central American Region, which has gone through many wars, much violence, much pain, the Central American Region has been stabilizing, regardless of the policies of the different governments. We are not going to offer an opinion on the policies a government applies for its country, for its People, just as we would not like them to try telling us how we should make policies for the Nicaraguan people.
There has been a certain weakening in what is the SICA, the Central American System, and we are still waiting for the appointment of the Secretary of the SICA, which corresponds to Nicaragua. But beyond those appointments, we are managing to maintain exchanges in the region, economic exchanges, exchanges in the field of Security, in the field of the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.
And the Army has already managed to establish a mechanism whereby the Central American Armies can talk, make Plans, devise Programs, to defend the Security of all our Countries. That is, we are not thinking about going and attacking someone, nor are we thinking that it is to defend only one country, but so that we can all defend ourselves, and by all of us defending ourselves, we are defending all the Central American Peoples.
Because Nicaragua has a commitment to the Region to move forward, to the steps that can be taken to make progress, and, above all, we have a commitment to defend Security and Stability in the Central American Region.
And I would say that there is another field in Latin America which is CELAC, which, to be honest, CELAC was born with the Force and Spirit of Latin American and Caribbean Unity. But this initiative of CELAC, well, I would say that we Central Americans are more harmonized than is CELAC, because in CELAC there are governments that simply do not respect other countries, other Latin American Peoples.
There is no way that any agreement can be reached there, meetings are held and they turn out to be vacuous, because when proposals get presented to work out how to unite, how to get closer, right-wing, fascist governments immediately appear there, hurling expletives against those who make such proposals.
That doesn't mean that we're giving up on CELAC, or that we're going to say, well, CELAC better disappear. No! We have to continue to defend CELAC. The time will come when the Peoples who have right-wing governments will understand that the path to Development, to Well-being, to the Strengthening of our Nations, can only be achieved united, only b y being united.
And we are going to continue in that struggle, in CELAC, and always ratifying our Solidarity with those Peoples who are attacked by the great powers, whose Ambassadors show disrespect, disrespecting their own Country by the way they express themselves in the Country where they have been appointed as Ambassadors to cultivate at the very least exchanges, where they can engage, and which enable dialogue.
We are seeing this in the Sister Republic of Cuba, where the Chargé d'affaires, who is the US Ambassador there in Cuba, began to want to run things in Cuba. That is, he felt like a Imperial Delegate, he felt like a Consul of the North American Empire and that Cuba is under his dominion. He has been called to the Foreign Ministry there.
Well, here we are very clear now about our position as regards any Ambassador who want to meddle, and the song “Sovereignty" says it: Out there they can say what they want, but here, on Nicaraguan territory, where the Blue and White Flag flies, defended by the Red and Black Flag of Sandino, here anyone trying to meddle, Out! that's what the song “Soberanía” says, and it's a policy of the Nicaraguan state.
Any Ambassador who wants to give us lessons here, Out!”, and they can go and make those statements outside, but, here, the Blue and White Flag and the Red and Black Flag are respected.
And the Venezuelan Sisters and Brothers continue to suffer from ever greater attacks, greater threats, like the brutal way the US continues to treat and persecute immigrants.
How many Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, thousands and thousands have traveled to the United States in the hope of improving their living conditions, especially in those times when they had no hope here in Nicaragua of being able to improve their living conditions! So very many!
What hope could they have under the Somoza Dictatorship imposed here by the Yankees? Then they saw hope outside. Some of my father's sisters went there, to the San Francisco area, which is, one might say, one of the most resistant areas, because it is territory stolen from Mexico. They went there to work, when they were already a bit older, working in child care, they have spent years taking care of children there, and when they could they sent my father a bit here and there US$20, US$30. That is the sense of cooperation, of solidarity we Nicaraguans have.
Thousands of Nicaraguans are working there, enriching the United States, because they work in jobs US citizens no longer work in; Salvadorans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Guatemalans, Mexicans alike.
But there the President of the United States issued a decree, since now the Higher Authorities who deal with such matters judicially, have approved the expulsion from the US of over 500,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran citizens, and those poor people are fleeing from there, persecuted. It's a terrible thing... terrible!
This is like the persecutions that the Nazis did looking for how to hunt down Jews in the different European countries that they occupied. They went looking for them everywhere, people in civilian clothes, working people, and where they discovered families there they entered with great violence, forced them out with their rifle butts and sent them to concentration camps. And this is happening now in the United States, a brutal, inhuman persecution, which has nothing democratic or Christian about it, but is fascist behavior, simply fascist behavior.
And children, mothers separated from their children, they continue to do so, they are doing it now at this moment they are doing it. Families seek to flee with their children, and where they detect them, they grab the mother and put her in detention, and they grab the children but send them somewhere else. That is a brutal torture against the Latin American, Central American, Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan sisters and brothers.
And today I want to express our solidarity with all those persecuted Brothers and Sisters, and in particular with our Nicaraguan Brothers and Sisters, who always have the doors of Nicaragua open, and have been able to take airline flights and once here they are taken care of very well, on the part of the Migration Service, they are taken care of, they are received; their health is checked.
The first thing done is to examine them to see how their state of health, everyone entering there is fed by the Migration Service, and then they are transferred to their home, if their home is there in Waspam, in Quilalí, the Ministry of the Interior goes there to deliver them to the Family.
In other words, we say to them: Sisters, Brothers, don’t think of trying to return to the United States again right now, because there is a terror there, and the most painful thing is the suffering of Mothers and Children. It's terrible how many images of this appear every day.
Our solidarity is with all those Families who are being persecuted in the US. Our solidarity with those who have returned to Nicaragua, who have managed to return to Nicaragua, and always say to them: This is your Land, this is your Nation, here you will be able to work in Peace.
Beloved Brothers and Sisters, Beloved Nicaraguan Families, Beloved Brothers and Sisters of the Army, of the Police, this day is really a day of great significance, because it is not merely inventing a new rank just for the sake of doing so, it is fundamentally about strengthening the Nicaraguan Army, strengthening Sandino's Army, strengthening the Army born of the Revolution. That's what this is about. And to what end? To guarantee Peace and Stability in the Country, and to guarantee continuing to strengthen our relations with the other Central American Armies, as they have already managed to do so well.
Long live the first two Colonel Generals of the Nicaraguan Army!
Long live the Nicaraguan Army!
Sandino Lives On, the Struggle Goes On!
Long live Blessed, Christian, Socialist Solidarity-inspired Nicaragua!
Long live Peace!