Only some sectors of the blindest left refuse to see that there is a dictatorship in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo They have been screwed in power for 18 years without admitting any type of opposition. Remember: shortly before the presidential elections held in 2021, all opposition candidates were imprisoned. Some will ask: and then, why the hell were they summoned? Well, very simple: because they thought they would win them. When they realized that, even with their tricks, they were going to lose them, they did not want to take the risk and locked up the other applicants.
Remember something even more serious: in 2018, a peaceful popular rebellion took to the streets to protest against the government. First, older people mobilized, since an increase in social security contributions and a reduction in pensions was decreed. The police beat them. Then the young people took to the streets in support of him. “We are going with everything,” Rosario Murillo threatened, and the dictatorship went all out in cruel repression. As a result, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), between April 18 and October 5 of that year, 328 people were shot dead. The repressors even attacked “The March of the Mothers”, a demonstration called by the families of the victims. War rifles were used mercilessly by snipers and paramilitaries.
Remember also that hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans live in exile; that freedoms, human rights and the independent press have ceased to exist; and that the presidential couple has expelled all non-governmental organizations that were not related to them, including religious ones. Artists, such as the Mejía Godoys, writers, such as Sergio Ramírez or Gioconda Belli, intellectuals, university professors and even Sandinista leaders of the 1979 revolution, such as Luis Carrión or Dora María Téllez, are in exile. Some were less lucky: Humberto Ortega, Daniel’s brother and former head of the Army, died isolated in a military hospital; and Hugo Torres, died in prison despite the fact that at the time he had commanded a risky mission that allowed the release of Daniel Ortega, then imprisoned by the dictator Somoza.
The Ortegas not only cling to power; also to wealth. They have accumulated a large fortune with the appropriation of part of the oil that Venezuela sent to Nicaragua, and also through businesses and tricks of all kinds, including the collection of bribes from extractive companies that plunder the country’s natural wealth, which thus act without restrictions.
Finally, remember, among the outrages of the presidential couple, the expulsion from the country of hundreds of imprisoned opponents who were stripped of their nationality and, in many cases, their property and pensions. By the way, the regime has become more sophisticated: now, instead of stealing their nationality “de jure” under the accusation of “treason against the country”, it is stolen “de facto”, denying consular services – such as the renewal of passports – to those who stand against the dictatorship, which leaves them in a legal limbo as “unofficial” stateless persons, and which makes it difficult for them to benefit from the protection of other countries and international organizations.
The other novelty, to put an end to this count of cruelties, is the export of repression against prominent exiles. The murder in Costa Rica of army major Roberto Samcam, a crime carried out by a Costa Rican hitman that joins other documented cases, is a good example of this new evil and the warning that the bloody hand of the Ortegas can go far.
Ortega and Murillo have been very lucky: Nicaragua barely appears on the international agenda because the media, human rights defenders and progressive governments are focused on other heartless and inhuman actions, such as the genocide of Gaza by Israel, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia or the war in Iran unleashed unilaterally by the United States and Israel. Or the recent bombings on Lebanon. The Ortegas’ misdeeds may seem like a small thing next to the tens of thousands of deaths caused by Netanyahu with the unconditional support of the US, but their victims do not deserve to be forgotten.
So, it has been the families of the murdered Nicaraguans who have taken on the task of remembering what happens there and, at the same time, demanding justice. The “April Mothers Association” (AMA), established to defend the truth against a regime that, like all dictatorships, denies and tries to hide its crimes, has created a “Museum of Memory against Impunity” with that purpose: to clarify the hundreds of murders caused by the Ortegas.
In 2019, the AMA took advantage of a loophole of freedom and organized an exhibition of photographs in Managua that showed the daily lives of the victims. It was clear that the victims were not criminals or terrorists, but students, workers, journalists, artisans and peasants fighting for freedom.
It was immediately banned. They then decided to travel abroad. The AMA has already organized, with the support of supporters of its cause, more than thirty exhibitions in different countries: France, the USA, Switzerland, Costa Rica and Spain, where it has already been exhibited in Catalonia, Euskadi, Madrid and Zaragoza.
It consists of a collection of 80 portraits that includes profiles of the victims, accounts of the protests and audiovisual materials. This Museum-exhibition is complemented by an interactive book: “AMA, build Memory”, whose second edition was published in 2025, which tells the story of 89 murdered by the dictatorship. Among others, there is that of Álvaro Conrado, a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the neck while bringing water to the university students locked up at the National University of Engineering. He was taken to a hospital and there, due to orders given by the presidential couple to neglect the injured protesters, the doors were closed to him. He was later taken in at another hospital, the Baptist Hospital, but the health personnel could no longer prevent his death.
There is also the case of Orlando Daniel Aguirre who, at the age of 15, received a bullet in the chest fired by snipers crouched in the National Baseball Stadium, when he participated in a march in solidarity with the Mothers of April; or that of high school students Wendell Francisco Rivera Narváez, 17, who was kidnapped by hooded men in a police car and was found dead shortly after with a bullet wound to the skull; Matt Andrés Romero, 16, who was heading to a demonstration to demand the release of the detainees and was shot at close range; Junior Steven Gaitán, 15 years old; Sandor Manuel Pineda and Leyting Ezequiel Chavarría. When it comes to young university students murdered in the prime of life, between the ages of 18 and 25, the list is endless.
Museum and book constitute an essential contribution of the “Mothers of April Association” for the construction of democratic memory in Nicaragua and for the truth to shine. And while the Museum circulates around the world, it must be highlighted that these families fight bravely, every day, for justice within Nicaragua. Already on May 18, 2018, they filed complaints with the Mission on site of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – which Ortega would end up expelling from Nicaragua -. The following year, in 2019, members of AMA presented more than 30 unconstitutionality appeals before the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua against the Amnesty Law that the regime prescribed to avoid paying for its crimes in the future. Although they were not accepted, they remain in memory. Not to mention the complaints that have been filed before the Human Rights organizations of the Inter-American System and the United Nations.
The exhibition of the traveling Museum now arrives in Galicia. It will be in Santiago de Compostela starting April 25 at the AENEA Bookstore, Rúa dos Irmáns Rey-Alvite number 3. Don’t miss it. The museum can also be visited in this website.
Let us support the work of these relatives of the victims so that justice shines and so that the tragedy that this beloved country is experiencing does not fall into oblivion, ends once and for all.
*This article was originally published in World.
