Nicaragua’s President Accused of Sex Abuse by His Stepdaughter

It’s been a bad month for Latin American autocrats. Earlier this month, onetime Guatemalan Generalissimo Efraín Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison for his role in the Central American Cold War. Last week, Argentine dirty warrior Jorge Rafael Videla, who presided over the bloodiest period of the 1976–1983 dictatorship died behind bars in Buenos Aires. And such was the disarray of Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela that the autocrat’s successor Nicolas Maduro was left to explain why this oil-rich nation of 28 million is running short of food and toilet paper.

Now Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is facing a hell all his own. The trouble comes not from imperialist gringos, palace rivals, or hanging judges, but Ortega’s own stepdaughter, who claims that the Sandinista supremo began abusing her sexually when she was 11 years old. Now 45 and a mother of three, Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo also alleges that her stepfather is behind a campaign to silence her that is so vindictive and intense it amounts to a “civic death.”

This family conflict has flared on and off for the last two decades. But the fact that it has now come roaring back to roil Nicaraguan courts and public opinion says a good deal about this iconic caudillo and the delicate state of democracy in parts of this region.

Source: The daily beast