The images exhibited in Ama y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity, remind you of Francisca Machado “everything that happened in April” 2018, in Nicaragua. But, also, the “responsibility” he assumed to preserve the memory of his son Franco Valdivia and the other 354 victims of repression in the country, until those responsible for their murders answer to justice.
The memory of Franco with his little four-year-old daughter fills her with emotion. Eight years have passed since his murder, on April 20, 2018, and his case has been documented by national and international organizations, but remains unpunished. The pain of her loss and the search for justice “is what keeps me going,” reflects Machado, who chairs the April Mothers Association (AMA).
According to him, pain is something that “never goes away” and has become the main catalyst for the relatives of those murdered in Nicaragua, who, through Museum of Memory against Impunitydispute the narrative of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime that criminalizes citizens who participated in civic protests and the climate of impunity in the country.
Ama y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity, is a space built in 2019 as a “Memory Bank” for Nicaragua. Through accounts of the events, photographs, videos, profiles of the victims of state violence, and various documents it is possible to dimension the context of the social protest.
The museum also reconstructs the stories that the regime tried to silence, offering a place where the voices of those who were murdered can be heard and recognized.
“The Government wanted to erase the memory, the truth of what happened. So, we (AMA) promoted the museum, we created that space to dignify the victims… to tell who our children were, to tell the truth of what had happened,” comments Francisca Machado, April’s Mother.
The director of Ama y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity, Emilia Yangappreciates that in this space the victims are “present.” He explains that the museum-altar concept allows “to honor them and at the same time tell the truth of who they were, what happened to them and strengthen the demand for justice.”
Memory preserved by families
The museum was created “with a participatory approach,” where the victims’ relatives took “an active role” in collecting information, Yang warns. He adds that this search for photographs and documents, which prove the murders and repression, was carried out with the support of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences (ACN) and volunteers.
In addition to making the victims visible, Ama y No Olvida documents “the patterns of violence, it documents the cases, it tells how the violence was systematic in different places, because we have also presented the different cities where the murders occurred,” explains Yang.
In 2021, the museum presented its interactive book “LOVE and Build Memory. Interactive Art Book”as a resource in the fight against oblivion and impunity. But the regime intensified its repression against the victims’ relatives, forcing many of them into exile.
During the presentation of the interactive book “the Police stole the books and also attacked some of the mothers. Then, we realized that we could not have activities where we participated in person,” recalls the director of the museum. Since then, Ama y No Olvida works itinerantly and through social networks.
More than twenty samples of the traveling exhibition of the Museum of Memory against Impunity have been presented in America, Asia and Europe. Some of these in the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica, the city councils of Montpellier, France, and Zaragoza, Spain, and in Geneva, Switzerland, in the context of the Universal Periodic Review of Nicaragua at the United Nations in 2024.
It has also taken place in art and design museums and Human Rights festivals in cities such as San José, Guatemala City, Buenos Aires, California, New York, Madrid, Cologne and Berlin. Additionally, in universities in the United States, Costa Rica and Spain.
A pillar for the establishment of truth
Guatemalan jurist Claudia Paz y Paz, who was part of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to investigate human rights violations in Nicaragua during 2018, values that memory spaces, such as Love and Don’t Forgetare “fundamental” to establishing the truth of what happened in the country.
From a human rights perspective, it is essential “to know what happened, how it happened, who were the perpetrators of serious human rights violations,” explains Paz y Paz. “Even among the rights of transitional justice, there is talk of the right to the truth, the right to memory and the obligation of States to remember,” adds the director of the Program for Central America and Mexico of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).
In the case of Nicaragua, where the regime tries to erase the memory of what happened, “the AMA museum fulfills the fundamental task of remembering who those murdered were, what their lives were, what their dreams, their hopes were, how they related to their families, to the community, and to remind us that they also died for a cause, for the defense of democracy at that time, and that their murder was absolutely an unjust act,” Paz y Paz emphasizes.
The fact that the memory of the victims is being preserved by their relatives, warns the former member of the GIEI, is “a very valuable act of love towards their relatives, but also of love towards Nicaragua.” Because the truth “is a very necessary requirement for the reconstruction of democracy in the country, although it is not possible now,” he emphasizes.
In Ama y No Olvida it is shown that “our children are not numbers, they are stories, they are dreams and lives that the State of Nicaragua took from us”, Francisca Machado, Mother of April.
Roaming memory
Preserving the memory of the victims from exile “is no small thing,” Paz y Paz emphasizes. This is “evidence of the serious crimes that occurred” in Nicaragua in 2018, which were revealed “almost in real time.” Although there has been no trial so far, he warns, “it is a process that will continue in the future” within the country.
“That is why the work that has been done to recover, from the voices of those who lived it, what happened is so important,” emphasizes the former member of the GIEI.
Aware of the importance of preserving the memory of the victims, their family members who are members of AMA show a “firm commitment,” Yang said. But they face a series of challenges associated with their new reality in exile.
“In exile one has to build one’s life, look for a way to earn a living. All the AMA families that have gone into exile have had many difficulties, both stability, the migratory processes, the issue of jobs. All of this contributes to the difficulties of keeping the memory alive,” highlights the director of Ama y No Olvida.
Furthermore, the issue of security “is still a challenge for us, both nationally and internationally,” explains Yang, referring to the transnational repression of the Ortega-Murillo regimeagainst opponents in exile, documented by the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN).
Internalization of the complaint
In addition to preserving the memory of the crimes of the dictatorship in 2018, the Ama y No Olvida traveling exhibition is an important support in the denunciation process at an international level. Because it allows a connection with the Nicaraguan diaspora and the international community.
The museum “helps many people who – perhaps – do not understand the dimension of the seriousness of the events in Nicaragua, can understand it. Not from the figures, not from the papers, but from the stories made true, through what the museum tells in each of its presentations,” Paz y Paz highlights.
Paz y Paz, Yang and Machado agree that Ama y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity, is not only a place to remember the past, but a tool to transform the present and prevent similar events from being repeated.
The museum “is a way to already exercise our right to the truth and our right to justice in the present. Even if we are in a dictatorship, even if there is repression, even if there is complete denial, we are exercising our right,” Yang remarks.
Paz y Paz values that the work carried out, through Ama y No Olvida, is something “very valuable”, which “will be the starting point for national justice processes, which we hope will occur in the near future, and for the moment for international justice processes, since that is not yet possible in Nicaragua.”
“Memory is not about staying in the past, it is about defending the truth so that these crimes are not repeated,” warns Machado. He concludes that “as long as we continue to speak their names, our children will continue to live in the fight for justice.”
