Dictator Daniel Ortega raised the tone against Nicaraguan exiles during the National Dignity Day event, celebrated on May 4, 2026, by ensuring that the people “have lost the fear of fear” and accusing them of promoting threats of “invasion” from abroad.
“There comes a time when one loses the fear of fear (…) And here this people has lost the fear of fear, this youth has lost the fear of being afraid,” Ortega insisted from a platform located on Avenida de Bolívar a Chávez, in Managua, where he appeared surrounded by the leadership of the Nicaraguan Army, National Police, the National Assembly and members of other State institutions.
During his speech, Ortega insisted that Nicaragua faces a permanent campaign of pressure and attacks driven from abroad by those who are “cornered there in the United States and are cornered in other countries.”
According to the dictator, Nicaraguans abroad are “asking for the invasion against Nicaragua.”
“They think that this type of invasion may be being launched, when we have a people like the people of Cuba, who have been threatened by invasions for more than 60 years, but the people like Cuba are those who have lost their fear of fear for a long time,” said the dictator.
Ortega insisted that “the most powerful weapon that the Nicaraguan people have is dignity.”, and dignity is invaluable.” These statements by the dictator occur two weeks after called the American president, Donald Trump, “mentally deranged.”
Ortega and his obsession with 2018
In his speech, the dictator also referred to the sociopolitical crisis of April 2018 to insist that his opponents “thought we were fleeing,” but that “in the end the ones who left were them,” in reference to the political prisoners who were released, exiled and denationalized in February 2023.
“They would like the people to be terrified with these threats, but how many hells have we been through, the last hell was in 2018, when they felt that we were fleeing,” he said.
Ortega added that several of these Nicaraguans currently face complex immigration situations abroad, including deportation processes, in a statement that reinforces his confrontational discourse against those who have denounced abuses by his regime from outside the country.
“And in the end, what happened, the ones who fled were them. They got on the famous plane and there they are in the United States, and they are threatened by deportations, others have died there, we don’t even know how. Many Nicaraguans, Latin Americans, die there in the United States,” Ortega added.
Attack on independent media
In his speech, Ortega also attacked the independent media, which he accused of spreading attacks against Nicaragua from abroad.
“Every day they are launching here through the networks, through the media that finance them in other countries, launching threats, launching attacks against the Nicaraguan people,” added the dictator.
A report by “Las Exiliadas”, a network of feminist journalists and communicators, prepared in coordination with Reporters Without Borders-Spain and published on April 13, 2026, shows that the “attack on the press” promoted by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in the last 20 years, “it was not collateral damage, but a strategic objective to eliminate public scrutiny and historical memory.”
At least 61 media outlets have been closed or confiscated by March 2025 and more than 309 journalists were forced into exile since 2018.
