President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, July 7th 2018
https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:78786-presidente-coman…
Unofficial translation
Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, all sons and daughters of this nation of Diriangén, Sandino and Ruben Dario, this afternoon, this march, this march in which you have walked a number of kilometers to get here, full of love in order to combat hatred, to bury hatred, full of love in order to bury evil.
We are in the month of July and in a few days we will be arriving at the 39th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution. How many struggles have been fought in Nicaragua throughout its history with a goal for the people: peace, work, progress and dignity. The people want to be free and to stop being slaves!
There are some who want to put the chains on the people again, there are those who, because the majority of our people are hardworking, honest, humble, they confuse humility with ignorance, they confuse humility with cowardice; and this is a people that are humble but dignified, humble but brave, a people that does not give up and is not for sale.
In these weeks and these days, we have been fighting a battle once again for peace. On one side are the sowers of discord that Christ pointed out, sowing hate, planting terrorist practices, to assassinate Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, their own Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. They follow Cain’s example, who assassinated his brother Abel; and how many Cains do we have financing terrorism, financing the road blocks, so that the communities, territories, municipalities suffocate, become desperate, and give up. And they don’t realize that this people will never give up!
This country, this homeland, this Nicaragua has been progressing, advancing, growing economically, in peace and with security. Nicaragua, an example! A country with few resources, very poor it’s true, but with its own efforts and with international cooperation from sister nations in solidarity and international organizations, a growing Nicaragua.
Growing in highways that had been promised for centuries by those that governed Nicaragua, such as the San Carlos Highway, Rio San Juan, built by the People’s President. And who lives in these communities? It is peasants, workers, families who work in agriculture and with livestock. The highway is for these people.
And the highway that we are about to inaugurate to Bluefields… How many had promised this highway that would connect the Pacific with the Caribbean by land? How many had made this promise? This has forever been promised by presidents. Now the highway is finally a reality, and both the highway that goes to San Carlos and the highway that goes to Bluefields are constructed with concrete that is resistant to the abundant rains in these territories.
Made of concrete because asphalt gets destroyed quickly by water in areas that get lots of rain. So we say: Build with concrete. As we have been building the highways with concrete that go to the northern Caribbean Coast, through the Mining Triangle, where there were giant mudholes but these have disappeared because they built with concrete and now vehicles can pass. And we continue working on a better and bigger route for our brothers and sisters.
How many highways, how many paved streets through all of the municipalities of our country! So many! And what have the sowers of hate done? Destroyed those roads, fomenting and paying for evil, paying people who in their ignorance and delinquency are part of gangs that are paid and commit all types of crimes.
How many assassinated, kidnapped brothers and sisters at the roadblocks! Two days ago a policewoman was kidnapped in the department of Carazo, in Jinotepe, where a band of assassins, financed and encouraged by the sowers of hatred who continue committing crimes.
They have converted these spaces that they call “civic protest”, “peaceful protest”, they have converted them into centers of torture, into centers of terrorism, feeding hatred, feeding criminals and murderers. Murderers too are those that pay for these crimes, and of course, in the first place the people who finance, those that encourage, those that justify these crimes. Murderers, murderers!
These crimes must be stopped! They provoked acts of violence in April. They provoked death in April between Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. And later, developing their plan to bring down the Government of the people, have continued with this wave of crimes, with this wave of murders, with this wave of terrorist acts.
And these people, the people that today have walked the streets of Managua, are delegations only of the Managua neighborhoods. This is not a national march, nor is it a march of all of the department of Managua. No! It is the march by the municipality of Managua, and look at this march, look at this march!
And we are greeting the 39th anniversary that we are going to soon celebrate, saluting the heroic deeds that made it possible for Nicaragua to have peace. And how are we saluting them? By committing ourselves to continue struggling for peace, so that places affected by crime in all areas disappear in all of Nicaragua, these areas affected by crime are justified, as I said, by those who want to turn Nicaragua’s people into slaves, and they have never understood that the Nicaraguan people stopped being slaves forever on July 19th, 1979.
We, Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, independently of what is the Political-Ideological Thought of each person, of religious belief, Christ never said: Kill your brother…Christ never said that! Christ said: “Love your brother as you love yourself,” and this is what we as Nicaraguans have to practice, this is what everyone must practice without exception, including those that send curses and sentence us to death in the name of religious institutions!
They must remember Christ. They must remember Christ, Christ sent us to love one another, and this has been in the practice of Christianity, Socialism, and Solidarity, and it will continue being our effort and our commitment, dear Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, to bring wellbeing even in difficult times, carrying out social programs to the extent that Nicaragua is able, because they have disrupted, sought to destroy the economy of the country. Even so we are still bringing benefits to families.
But the most important thing in these circumstances is the responsibility all Nicaraguans have, independent of economic and social status. Here the Constitution of the Republic makes the rules, through the people. The rules cannot be changed overnight simply because a group of coup conspirators thought to do so. If the coup conspirators want to take over the government, then they must seek the vote of the people, and we will see if the people give the vote to these individuals who have created so much recent destruction.
Go seek the vote! There will be time, as is specified in the law, there will be time for elections. Everything has its time. In the meanwhile, as you all said in this march, as you all said with your hearts and can been seen in your faces as you said it, because in these marches and acts we do not see expressions of hate, we do not see them! We see expressions of dignity, expressions of solidarity, and we see a complete commitment to struggle for peace for the benefit of all Nicaraguans.
Love live peace!
May peace reign!
Love live Nicaragua, blessed and forever free!