Brazil and Nicaragua removed their ambassadors on Thursday, as strained relations between the two Latin American countries escalated into a new diplomatic dispute.
According to a Brazilian diplomatic source, the latest escalation in tensions occurred after Brazil’s ambassador to Nicaragua failed to attend an official ceremony in Managua.
The gathering was a July 19 commemoration of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution, which eventually led to President Daniel Ortega’s election, according to various expatriate Nicaraguan opposition media outlets.
According to the source, the Brazilian ambassador was not the only diplomat who did not attend the ceremony.
Nonetheless, Nicaragua requested that the Brazilian ambassador leave the country, prompting Brasilia to respond on Thursday.
Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife, informed state media that Brazil’s ambassador has left the country and is on her way back.
Relations between the two leftist-led countries have soured since Ortega rebuffed attempts by his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to mediate discussions to gain the release of a jailed priest, as requested by Pope Francis.
According to exiled opposition media, in January, Nicaragua released two Roman Catholic bishops, 13 priests, and three seminarians and sent them to Rome.
“This is a tough blow for the Nicaraguan dictatorship because it will become more isolated and alone in Latin America, but above all more isolated and alone within the left-wing Latin American group,” the country’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields, who lives in exile in the United States, told AFP.
Later on Thursday, Nicaragua’s government said it had released seven priests detained last week and sent them to Rome.
They were part of a group of 13 Nicaraguan priests placed under house arrest in the northern city of Matagalpa.
The government did not release any details about the other six priests.
Ortega came to power in the 1980s following the Sandinista victory.
Although he was voted out of office in 1990, he returned to the presidency in 2007 and has since been accused of establishing an authoritarian regime that does not tolerate opposition.
More than 300 people were killed, according to the United Nations, when anti-government protests spread across Nicaragua in 2018.
Ortega’s government portrayed the demonstrations as an attempted coup orchestrated by the United States.