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The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega confiscated this Monday (11) the house of the poet Gioconda Belli in the capital of Nicaragua, Managua, seven months after depriving her and more than 300 opponents, activists, journalists and political prisoners of the regime of their nationality.
“I have lost many things, but they will not make me lose my dignity. I accuse and denounce.” [Ortega e Rosario Murillo, sua esposa e vice] for causing so much damage to the country, guided by their ambition and vengeful blindness. “I predict to them the terrible but deserved end that tyrants will suffer,” Belli, who lives in exile in Spain, told El País newspaper.
The house of Camilo Castro Belli, journalist and son of the writer, was also arrested. He and his wife Leonor Zuñiga also live in exile in Costa Rica.
Gioconda Belli is currently living in his second exile. In the 1970s, the poet took part in the revolutionary activities that ultimately led to the end of the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza (19251980), under the leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front today the party is led by Ortega.
During his time as a Sandinista, Belli even completed guerrilla training in Cuba. Persecuted in Nicaragua, she fled into exile, but returned after the revolution and built a career in literature. With the suppression of Ortega and Murillo, he went into exile again.
“I never thought I would live in a dictatorship twice,” the author said in an interview with Sheet in 2021, already living in Spain. “It is very frustrating to have fought so hard, to have believed so much in a revolution, and now to see Nicaragua once again oppressed by another totalitarian regime.”
The targets of the citizenship revocation earlier this year were accused of being “traitors,” including the writer Sergio Ramírez, whose residence was confiscated in July and who had been Ortega’s deputy in the late 1980s. Their assets and property were already confiscated under the measure expected, which was carried out in two waves a few days apart in February.
As part of the first operation, 222 political prisoners were expelled from Nicaragua, sent to the USA and stripped of their citizenship. In the following week, 94 more opponents were targeted by the repressive measures.
For example, those who “violate the highest interests of the nation” or “welcome the imposition of sanctions against the State of Nicaragua” are considered “traitors” by the Ortega and Rosario regimes.
In practice, the law that defines these crimes is applied against critics of the dictatorship and, in addition to the loss of citizenship, also provides for the suppression of political rights and the possibility of permanent public office for the defendants, who are considered refugees their properties and confiscated companies. This last point was gradually recognized by the regime.
In recent months, repression in Nicaragua has reached universities and free thought. Institutions such as the Jesuitrun Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua were taken over by the regime, which transferred the university’s assets to the state, changed the rector, and appointed names to positions of trust.
According to a survey by the local press operating abroad in the face of the regime’s repression, the UCA suffered the same fate as 3,719 other civil society organizations, including 26 private universities, in the last five years.