Gender-based violence and the patrimonial state in Nicaragua: The rise and fall of Ley 779

For the last several decades, a global ideological struggle has been taking place between organizations and institutions that promote women’s rights and a parallel countermovement of conservative and religious groups defending so-called “family values”. The recent political struggle over gender-violence law in Nicaragua is a microcosm of these dynamics. In 2012, the Nicaraguan government passed its most comprehensive law on gender-based violence to date (Ley 779). However, following a backlash by local conservative religious groups, many of the law’s major provisions were substantially weakened. This article analyzes how President Daniel Ortega’s initial support for Ley 779 was undone by the conservative outcry against it. The author argues that the seeming reversal of Ortega and his allies on Ley 779 is better understood as a continuation of Ortega’s longstanding tensions with the country’s feminist movement and his alliance with conservative religious groups. The implications of this alliance go well beyond the particulars of Ley 779. Through his suppression of dissent and integration of religious ideologies into state institutions, Ortega’s actions have created a patrimonial-authoritarian state characterized by the personalization of patriarchal authority that severely undermines women’s rights in Nicaragua