Nicaragua: Fidel Castro Sculpture Critics Called “Traitors”
by the co-president Rosario Murillo
The monument is a 13-meter-tall, full-body metal image of the Cuban dictator, located along the “From Bolívar to Chavez” promenade.
HAVANA TIMES – Nicaragua’s only spokesperson and self-proclaimed “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, lashed out at those criticizing the giant sculpture the regime plans to install in honor of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, on the occasion of the centennial of the birth of the former leader of the Cuban Revolution (1926–2016).
“Among those who grovel, the traitors and cowards, the servile and subservient, the packs of hounds—for them, as we know, who always show signs of profound darkness, wickedness and malignancy, there can be no pride,” Murillo reproached during her monologue on official media.
“They know only the ground, which does not mean ‘the land where I was born,’ because they know nothing of that. They only bite, as our General [Augusto C.] Sandino used to say, the dust of their own cowardice, of their own malignancies, which continue to grow,” she added.
The monument consists of an enormous, 13-meter-tall, full-body metal image of the Cuban dictator. Lights have also been installed on the figure so that it will be visible at night.
The metal sculpture is located along the “From Bolívar to Chávez” promenade, on the former Bolívar Avenue, which runs north to south through the area known as “old Managua.”
The work was installed inside Luis Alfonso Velasquez Park, beside the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and across from the National Assembly.
“For those who do not believe in love and in the God of all victories, for those who only know how to prescribe what they believe is terror, because they are terrorists, for the clowns who live—or do not live, because how can it be called living to always defy the forces of good,” continued Murillo, wife of “co-president” Daniel Ortega.
In her view, those who criticize the monument live in “a permanent purgatory and, above all, strip themselves of their souls to place themselves among the infernal depths.”
The cost of the monument dedicated to the Cuban dictator is unknown, but the Ortega-Murillo regime routinely spends large sums on projects such as the “Trees of Life.”
Between June and December 2024, a total of 97 of these metal structures had been installed at an estimated cost of US $1.9 million, with electricity expenses of around US $200,000 per month, according to data verified by CONFIDENCIAL. The dictatorship has continued installing these structures throughout Nicaragua.
Lavish Spending on Monuments to Dictators
Among the critics is exiled Nicaraguan priest Edwing Roman, who warned in a post on X that “while thousands of Nicaraguan families endure hunger and live in houses made of plastic and cardboard, the dictatorship squanders money and erects monuments to dictators and criminals who have devastated their peoples, such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, insulting and shaming the dignity of Nicaragua.”
Castro led the 1959 communist revolution that thrust Cuba into the international spotlight, particularly during the Cold War. Nicaragua is Cuba’s main political ally in Central America.
Meanwhile, the resentment of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship toward its critics continues to show no limits.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.