Sergio Ramírez in Masatepe (Nicaragua), his hometown.Daniel Mordzinski
The police of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo this Friday broke down the doors of the mansion of the writer Sergio Ramírez in Masatepe, a town on the Meseta de los Pueblos in Nicaragua. The Luisa Mercado Foundation, a cultural and educational institution founded in 2007 to commemorate the mother of the Cervantes Prize, worked in the house. The police occupation led to a virtual confiscation of the property amid the persecution the presidential couple is waging against critical voices.
Less than 24 hours after the police raid, the award-winning author responded in a statement: “This act of aggression against culture ends a cultural enterprise that has left deep marks that we are proud of because we were able to.” Readers in To create Masatepe and surroundings, train musicians, help educate youth and children, and bring culture to a place where we belong and where our lives belong.”
The Luisa Mercado Foundation provided free cultural services to the city of Masatepe and other surrounding towns. Ramírez pointed out that one of the main buildings was acquired for this purpose and that investments were also made in remodeling it to house a 6,000-volume library open to students and the general public. There were also halls for cultural events and exhibitions of fine art and photography; a children’s corner; Music School Lisandro Ramírez Velásquez in homage to Ramírez’s paternal grandfather who was a composer and conductor. The organization also hosted cycles of lectures, publications and literary workshops that the writer occasionally held before going into exile in Spain.
Ramírez has settled in Spain because of the political persecution against him. In April 2022, the Luisa Mercado Foundation’s legal status was overturned by the Ortega-Murillo-controlled parliament when more than 3,000 NGOs in Nicaragua were subjected to a massive shutdown. The cultural facility has since ceased operations and the mansion remained closed until officers broke into it on Friday.
Statement on the confiscation of the headquarters of the Luisa Mercado Foundation.
As of this Friday, the regime had only confiscated the Amazonia Condominium (where the journalist Sofía Montenegro, who was also denationalized, had an apartment) and the property of businessman Piero Coen Ubilla.
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Ramírez, who was Vice President of Nicaragua, has not stopped denouncing the regime at international level. On the day the Luisa Mercado Foundation’s legal status was revoked, the author said that “the repression of these organizations and the confiscation of their assets is nothing more than an excuse to silence civil society and all expressions of to end the freedom and democracy of this type of organization.”
Most of the beheaded NGOs do not pursue political goals, but provide humanitarian aid or work with a cultural focus, as in the case of the Luisa Mercado Foundation. “These are the crimes for which the foundation is punished, as well as the other organizations whose rights have been violated today for similar reasons,” added the Nicaraguan writer, who was quoted by Nicaraguan authorities during the 2021 repressive escalation. The Nicaraguan Public Prosecutor’s Office in the context of the alleged money laundering case against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCh).
“Writing is worth every price”
Ramírez assured this Thursday, one day before the confiscation, that “writing is a profession for which it is worth paying any price”: “Even if you take away the country where you were born.” In February the writer was stripped of his citizenship along with 93 other opponents, journalists, human rights defenders, feminists and political leaders.
Ramírez and Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli, exiled in Spain, attended the closing ceremony of the first Hispanic Literature Conference organized by the International University of La Rioja (UNIR) in the Spanish city of Logroño, where they were honored. “In any case, literature will always and incessantly take you back to this indelible land,” added Ramírez, who was accused of “treason,” declared a fugitive, and had all his property confiscated.
Both authors have received the International Pedro Henriquez Ureña Prize from the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Culture for their careers and literary excellence. The author pointed to the diffuse boundaries between history and fiction: “When you live the facts of independence, you add an abnormality to the exaggeration that from now on will not stop shaping the story” and with it “the way of telling it and to take. “Use it from the literature”.
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