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In February, millions around the world watched a Nicaraguan flag bearer cross the field to close out the Super Bowl halftime show, flashing the country’s cobalt blue and white banner with a massive grin on his face.
For nearly sixty seconds, the flag danced with Bad Bunny. For many Nicaraguans, the sight of the flag was rare — even subversive.
It wasn’t accompanied by the ruling party FSLN’s red-and-black revolutionary banner.
Since 2018, Nicaraguans in their own country hardly ever see their flag publicly displayed — except with regime approval, or from abroad.
Particularly during the 2018 mass protests, Nicaragua’s blue and white colors became a direct representation of dissenting groups’ rejection of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
Since then, the government has cracked down on raising the Nicaraguan flag without permission, while still flying it at official events alongside the party flag.
According to exiled digital outlet Confidentialregime opponents have been persecuted and detained for carrying the flag — even street vendors for selling it.
In one high-profile case, Avil Ramírez, son of a former Defense Minister under former President Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007), was detained in 2019 for waving the Nicaraguan flag, in violation of a ban on demonstrations.
That ban remains in effect today.
Through constitutional reforms approved by the National Assembly in November 2024, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) flexed its single-party rule by decreeing their red and black flag as a national symbol.
“When the State tries to monopolize symbols, what it is really saying is that it determines who is Nicaraguan and who is not,” social anthropologist María Díaz Reyes told El Faro English, referring to how this new constitutional imposition demonstrates the State’s desire to control national identity.
According to a September 2025 report by the UN Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua, starting in February 2023, at least 452 Nicaraguans were stripped of their nationality — a state crime under international law.
A comeback for red and black
While reports of persecution for carrying the flag became prominent during the 2018 protests, Díaz Reyes notes that Nicaragua had already begun to view its national symbols differently since the 2006 elections.
That year, Daniel Ortega replaced Bolaños, returning to power after more than a decade.
Ortega’s 2006 campaign, run by current co-president Rosario Murilloused an advertising strategy emphasizing brighter colors instead of the traditional revolutionary red and black.
According to Díaz Reyes, this shift in visual strategy aimed to attract younger voters and other sectors who began to question the effectiveness of the Sandinista Revolution as a change agent in the country.
“At that time, 30 years had passed since the revolution, and Ortega needed a different image,” said Díaz Reyes, referring to the impact of the civil war during the FSLN’s first decline in power.
Ortega, she added, “needed to separate himself, in the eyes of new generations, from the figure of the revolutionary leaderthe guerrilla fighter, the mountains, and the sacrifice of death that usually represents the FSLN.”
Since returning to the presidency in 2007, Ortega had de-facto imposed the use of the FSLN’s red and black flag in public institutions across the country.
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In Ortega’s last four presidential inaugurations, from 2012 to the most recent in 2022, the flag has been used incorrectly, breaching protocol regarding either colors, positioning, or symbols.
“Even before 2018, we saw a phenomenon where the red and black flag was being positioned as a national flag. With this, they were suggesting that both symbols held equal symbolic hierarchy,” Díaz Reyes said.
In addition, Díaz Reyes said that the FSLN flag has become directly associated with crimes against humanity attributed to the regime since the 2018 protests.
According to the Costa Rican polling firm CID Gallupparty support for the FSLN dropped from 54 percent in 2016 to its lowest point of 8 in 2021. Since 2024, it has remained between 11 and 12 percent.
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Like Díaz Reyes, exiled Nicaraguan academic Ernesto Medina believes that the forced use of the FSLN flag reflects how the Ortega-Murillo regime does not understand what it means to be Nicaraguan.
“It is an attempt to make people believe in and show respect for a flag that, for Nicaraguans, represents betrayal, sadness, and death,” Medina told Confidential.
Identity in exile
For people like Díaz and Medina, when raising the flag can lead to stiff consequences, the national symbol transforms for those seeing the country from the outside.
“The flag is an identity marker in this context of persecution. From exile, when you see it, it remains a symbol that hurts,” said the social anthropologist Díaz Reyes, who also fled persecution by the regime.
According to data from the Collective Human Rights Organization for Historical Memory in Nicaragua, between April 2018 and November 2025, at least 800,000 Nicaraguans left their country.
Human Rights Watch reports that, between 2018 and 2025, more than 342,000 Nicaraguans sought asylum, primarily in Costa Rica, the US, Mexico, and Spain.
But only around 31,000 have been formally recognized internationally as refugees, per the same report.
“When you see the flag, we remind ourselves—and we remind the Nicaraguan state—that those of us in exile are not outside the homeland,” said Díaz Reyes. “We are in resistance for the homeland.”
This article first appeared in the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here for more journalism translating Central America.
