The new Miss Universe is a Nicaraguan; that country's people are exuberant; the government, not so much

 A case of national cognitive dissonance if there ever was one:

Nicaragua’s increasingly isolated and repressive government thought it had scored a rare public-relations victory last week,” reported the Associated Press. Why did Daniel Ortega and his gang think that? Because Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, won the Miss Universe pageant. That is something for a dictatorship to take advantage of.

But there was a problem: Apparently, Señorita Palacios had taken part in pro-democracy demonstrations when a student.

In celebration of her victory in the pageant, Nicaraguans took to the streets, but not in the way the government would have wanted. As the AP said, they waved “the blue-and-white national flag, as opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista banner.”

I’m glad that the Sandinistas have their own flag, their own symbol, leaving the national flag to other Nicaraguans.

Further from that AP report:

Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo lashed out Wednesday at opposition social-media sites — many run from exile — that celebrated Palacios’ win as a victory for the opposition.

“In these days of a new victory, we are seeing the evil, terrorist commentators making a clumsy and insulting attempt to turn what should be a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride into destructive coup-mongering,” Murillo said.

Dictatorships want a nation to have no life outside the dictatorship itself. Remember the slogan of Mussolini and his gang: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Félix Maradiaga is a Nicaraguan democracy leader and a former political prisoner. With other prisoners, he was released earlier this year. They were exiled to the United States, by plane. Let me quote from a piece I wrote about Maradiaga and his ordeal:

The plane was a charter from Omni Air Transport. When it took off, the prisoners — now ex-prisoners — sang the national anthem. And prayed. The moment was “bittersweet,” says Maradiaga. Sweet, because they were out of prison. Bitter, because it would be some time before they were allowed to return to their homeland. (If ever?)

Note something about the national anthem: It is illegal to sing it in Nicaragua. It is also illegal to raise the national flag. Why? Because the dictatorship sees both the anthem and the flag as symbols of the opposition.

Can't sing their actual national anthem or fly their actual national flag, because the Sandinistas want to supplant them with their own brand logo.

I found this noteworthy because the 1979 (highjacked) revolution in Nicaragua, and its impact on US policy toward Central America, was the issue that catalyzed my conversion experience. In the early 1980s, I was a clueless and aimless sort-of left-leaner. But I was taking an increasing interest in world affairs, and I became curious as to just what the Sandinistas were all about. So I read Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family by Shirley Christian. 

Shortly thereafter, I had occasion to hear a presentation by a guy from our local "peace fellowship" who had just returned from a "fact-finding' mission to Nicaragua and El Salvador. He unfailingly toed the Reagan-is-supporting-the-bad-guys-in-the-region line. I squirmed in my seat, awaiting the chance to bring some clarity to the Q&A session.

When the presenter called on me, I said, "Mister, you're leaving out the important part of the story. The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a hardcore Marxist-Leninist organization, and has been since its late-1950s founding by Carlos Fonseca and Tomas Borge. The same is true for the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador, which, fortunately, has not so far taken over that country."

Gasps and looks of disbelief went up from those seated around me. They couldn't handle the injection of some reality into the proceedings. 

Of course, in the ensuing years, Daniel Ortega lost his gamble that the FSLN could win a fair and Internationally monitored election. Violeta Chamorro, the matriarch of the family that published La Prensa, the newpaper that had opposed the Samoza dictatorship and then the Sandinista regime, became Nicaragua's president. The country's fortunes rose and fell over the years, and in 2007, Ortega again assumed the presidency. But since then, the true nature of his ideology has been too on-display for the peaceniks to make gestures of support toward. He's universally seen as being on the level of Venezuela's Maduro and the regime in Cuba. 

Anyway, congratulations to Ms. Palacios. May she inspire her fellow Nicaraguan citizens to hold steadfast in their resistance to the grim nonsense their government has imposed.