DISINFO: Big blackout in Central America may be a rehearsal to ‘unplug’ rebel governments
SUMMARY
The big blackout that left a big part of Nicaragua without electricity and affected the rest of Central America may have been a rehearsal to ‘unplug’ the nation in case the presidential elections don't produce the results expected by those who are forcing the exit of Daniel Ortega. These electricity cuts, attributed to an unknown failure in the electric network of Central America, took place at the same time that mainstream media attack Nicaragua’s government and the US and its allies openly intervene in the electoral process. It is no coincidence, as weren’t previous electric blackouts in Venezuela, one of the problems that tend to have the governments who doesn’t obey the orders of the US.
RESPONSE
The blackout wasn’t the result of external sabotage against Nicaragua. Central American electricity operator EOR explained that it was due to a failure at the key Amarateca Toncontin transmission line in Honduras and a subsequent overload at the Brillantes electrical substation near the Mexico-Guatemala border, which led to a voltage collapse. The outage, which only lasted for a few hours, affected 15 million people in Central America, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua.
The purpose of this unsubstantiated claim is to promote an anti-US conspiracist mindset in face of unexpected events, framing it as the deliberate responsible of most disgraces in Latin America. This narrative also relies on previous allegations about a Western and US campaign against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, after a massive crackdown on Nicaraguan opposition led to serious international criticism (see here the statement of the EU High Representative on 10 June 2021).
Previous claims about US-orchestrated blackouts in other Latin American countries such as Venezuela or Argentina have already been debunked before (see here, here and here).
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that a UN human rights report on Venezuela aims to de-legitimise the upcoming legislative elections, that violent pro-Maduro thugs are Western media propaganda, that a Twitter campaign against Evo Morales may be run by the CIA, that the West refused to call the coup attempt in Venezuela ‘a coup’, or that an alleged US dirty war in Facebook against Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico is a new Condor Plan.