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I still remember the day I was transferred to La Esperanza prison at the end of 2021. There was a sentence that stuck with me and that I remembered until my last day in this place: “Everyone is equal here, everyone is treated equally.” In this small room with two large windows overlooking the Offices and a terrace, we were five women deprived of our freedom: two for common crimes and three for “acts aimed at undermining the sovereignty of Nicaragua” and “cybercrimes”. Allegations that the Nicaraguan dictatorship criminalizes those who demonstrate against it.
But this equality they told us about didn't last long. Eight hours later, they divided us into two groups: one consisted of ordinary prisoners who were sent to the pavilions, while the other three were moved to an isolation cell. According to prison authorities, Covid-19 quarantine should be maintained for 15 days. It was the longest 15 days of my life, which eventually turned into eight months of complete isolation before I was transported away with the other inmates. The three politicians shared a high-security cell into which we were detained under gross deception, without contact with the outside world and without knowing what awaited us.
I was 20 years old at the time and that was for me the second litmus test of what it meant to face a regime like that of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua. In July 2018, I had left my city of Masaya for exile in Costa Rica after treating people injured in the anti-government protests, participating in the marches and denouncing on social networks the repression against those of us asked for our help had rights that need to be respected. . I was barely 18 years old and in my senior year of high school. I lived in San Jose for two years, where I worked to defend human rights and continued my education. I went to university to study political science, but with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, I lost my job and decided to return to my country.
On November 9, 2021, two days after the regime launched its biggest electoral farce by detaining all opposition candidates, a group of paramilitaries kidnapped me. The regime accused me of conspiring to undermine national integrity and spreading false news, and I was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The evidence they presented against me were messages on my social networks and interviews in which I criticized the government and its handling of the pandemic. A year later, in February 2023, I was exiled to the United States along with 221 other political prisoners who were also stripped of their citizenship. I never imagined that my release from prison – the moment I dreamed of so much – would be like this; that, paradoxically, five years of resistance have taken away the last thing I have left: the right to be Nicaraguan.
During my time in prison, I felt that political prisoners (a word banned in prison) were treated by the guards as if we had a contagious disease. Therefore, we had to stay in a maximum security cell without being able to sunbathe or communicate with other inmates. But I didn't keep quiet about my complaints, and when I dared to report the abuse in a letter to the warden, I of course paid the consequences with more restrictions and surveillance.
For Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, thinking differently than them is an extremely dangerous disease. And to silence a people tired of their authoritarianism, they have been doing everything in their power since 2018: murder, imprisonment, torture, isolation, closure of organizations and universities, exile, forced relocation, persecution of the Catholic Church and imprisonment of their priests.
Women were no exception. More than 200 Nicaraguans have been detained since protests began in 2018. As I saw in La Esperanza, like the prison in which I was cynically called, the lesson is to “heal” the women who raise their voices to denounce human rights violations and perversities of the dictatorship are imprisonment, misogyny and machismo; is to subject them to violations of their everyday human rights and to not enjoy the minimum conditions of dignity in a prison. During these five years, the women who were prisoners of his regime have denounced rape, sexual abuse and brutal beatings that led to abortions; There are mothers who have been separated from their small children for years and tortured by making their little ones believe they are no longer alive or by telling them that they are bad mothers; Others wanted to make us believe that we were bad daughters, sisters or grandmothers just because we raised our voices to defend the path of justice and democracy.
Today there are more than 20 political prisoners who continue to be deprived of their freedom in Nicaraguan prisons. I think of Adela, of Damaris, of Gabriela, of Olesia, of Brenda, of Martha, of Anielka and of other women who suffer from poor nutrition, depression, anxiety, prison stress and no access to medication or medical care, more than measuring their blood pressure to take the photo to show that “they are fine.” They are in punishment cells for demanding the freedom of Nicaragua, are exposed to scorching heat and mosquitoes and are prone to suffering from skin allergies or to develop high blood pressure.
The prisoners also suffer abuse and harassment and are cut off from the outside world. And this abuse also extends to their relatives when they visit them, which they are allowed to do only once a month for just half an hour and after being searched, subjected to insults, inappropriate touching of their private parts, threats… Some even become this forced to undress and do squats In addition, visits usually take place less than a meter away from the guards, who write down what they hear or record the conversation, in rooms monitored by strategically installed cameras to ensure that they not hug their loved ones or report everything they experience there.
Only political prisoners receive these treatments and conditions. During the 15 months that I was in Esperanza prison, I reminded myself every day: “Everyone is equal here, everyone is treated equally.” Some words that were comforting and relieving at first and that after a month of interrogations, isolation , a violent capture without seeing my family, appearing in court completely alone, without the right to due process with the attack of the laws that Today in Nicaragua is just ink on a paper that was part of the torture that I suffered. Defending justice and freedom and waving our flag are now considered crimes in our country. But those of us who pay for it don't have the disease. The true disease is embodied by those who subjugate a people who continue to seek ways to heal from the ills that plague them.
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