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I feel the weight of my own liberty on my back. While I walk around freely, hundreds of people in Nicaragua remain behind bars: silenced, disappeared, tortured, forgotten…
I was a political prisoner. On June 13, 2021, the police detained me, part of a repressive wave that preceded the 2021 elections. I was arrested together with seven presidential hopefuls, dozens of social and political leaders, journalists, human rights advocates, and business leaders. I spent 606 days in solitary confinement in the Managua jail known as El Chipote. Six hundred and six days alone, without the right to speak, read or write; with infrequent access to the sun, restricted food and scarce – very, very scarce – family visits. Terrible years, while my family too endured some of the worst moments of their lives.
But my story isn’t unique. According to the Monitoreo Azul y Blanco [“Blue and White Monitoring group”], more than 5,000 people have spent time in Nicaragua’s jails for political reasons since 2018. Today, thanks to the reports from another group, the “Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners,” we have the names of 73 people who are political prisoners. However, in reality, the number is greater: there’s an enormous undercount, since fear keeps many families from denouncing their loved ones’ imprisonment. They keep silent to avoid being imprisoned as well, as has already occurred, and not just once or twice.
A brutal pattern
The panorama is desolate. Reports confirm that the current prisoners are facing even worse conditions than those of previous years. The most current repressive wave, carried out in July and August of 2025, is characterized by three especially cruel features:
- Extreme violence: In August, two political prisoners died while in government custody: Mauricio Alonso and Carlos Cardenas. Their families had been left totally in the dark after their detention and only learned their whereabouts when they received the call to come claim the bodies.
- Indiscriminate arrests: Entire families have been ripped from their homes: mothers, fathers, children, all disappeared in a block.
- Normalization of disappearance: Today, going months or years with no news of their loved ones is considered routine.
This pattern isn’t only a punishment, it’s a strategy calculated to break families, communities and resistance networks, instilling terror as a method of social control.
The terrible nature of this trend doesn’t augur anything better for the future. I picture the families making their pilgrimage from one place of detention to another: from the Jinotepe police stations, to the District Three and El Chipote jails in Managua, to the El Modelo prison in Tipitapa. They receive no answer, only threats and police patrols in front of their homes to intimidate them, forcing them into silence, even though the entire neighborhood witnessed the abduction of their family member.
On July 18, 2025, Mauricio Alonso, 64, was abducted from his home amid blows, together with his wife and son. She was released a few hours later; Mauricio’s dead body was turned over to the family 38 days later; the son remains missing…
Days later, we learned of another political prisoner’s death – Carlos Cardenas, also while in State custody. He had been detained fifteen days before. Similar circumstances, identical pattern.
These crimes confirm a systematic practice. Since 2019, at least six people have died while in the custody of the State, among them my friend Hugo Torres.
Especially merciless to the most vulnerable
The repression has been especially merciless to the ill and elderly.
Of the 73 current prisoners, 22 are over 60 years old, all suffering with severe health problems. Jail accelerates their physical and mental deterioration. I offer two examples: my friend, Eddy Danilo Melendez, 69, has spent over 1,468 days as a political prisoner, with an advanced case of Parkinson’s disease that has left him unable to walk or take his medication without help. Eliseo Castor Baltodano, detained since 2019, suffered a stroke in prison, and today lies prostrate in bed, unable to speak or move, under guard, in a hospital without adequate care. International norms demand alternative measures, but in Nicaragua these elderly prisoners are condemned to a slow and irreversible torture.
The list of political prisoners also includes at least 11 people from indigenous groups, who not only confront arbitrary detentions, but also a systematic policy of cultural erasure. They suffer even worse discrimination and mistreatment than the others, forbidden to speak in their own language or have access to their traditional medicine. Nancy Enriquez and Brooklyn Rivera, two leaders from the Miskito tribe, who formerly represented their people through the Yatama Party, have been in detention for over 700 days – Nancy in isolation, and Brooklyn disappeared.
Forced disappearances
In 2021, when there was no news of us for 80 days after our detention, the disappearance was a scandal. Amnesty International released a special report, thanks to which I finally got to see my mother for the first time since my detention. Today, sadly, such forced disappearances are the norm. Thirty of the 73 people who are known to be political prisoners are missing. 33 of the 73 people registered are missing
That’s the condition of Angelica Chavarria (480 days without a trace); Fabiola Tercero; Carmen Maria Saenz; and Lesbia Gutierrez (over 420 days disappeared). Also of Julio Quintana, an old friend of mine and a former Sandinista guerrilla once tortured by the Somoza dictatorship; plus journalist Leo Carcamo (over 290 days) and Alejandro Hurtado (229 days), among others.
Imagine what this means for their families: waking each dawn with the same question, and facing a day which brings no answer; every night the same torture of uncertainty…
The repressive machinery has also turned inward, targeting those who were once part of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s inner circle. Today, their former allies are either imprisoned or have disappeared: Álvaro Baltodano, retired general; Bayardo Arce, historic former leader; Néstor Moncada Lau, Ortega’s personal assistant for many years. Other current FSLN officials and activists are also behind bars. The message is clear: this is an “internal cleansing” aimed at securing Rosario Murillo’s dynastic succession and absolute power.
Families pay the price…
Behind every prisoner is a family who must now bear the unbearable. Those “fortunate” enough to know what jail their relative is in, spend hours in line under the torrid sun, waiting to deliver food, medicine, and hygiene packages. Assembling these packages takes hundreds of dollars a month that they don’t have. When the one in prison is a father, mother, or the main breadwinner, the entire household falls into poverty and desperation.
For those whose loved ones are among the disappeared, the most terrifying part is the silence. The family goes from the police stations to the prison doors seeking information, only to be threatened, followed, and turned away. Every dawn they awaken with the same unanswered question. And now, twice this year, the first and only answer the family received was a telephone call: “Come pick up the body.”
Even so, many families are unable to denounce these practices publicly, because they could be arrested themselves.
I know the world is facing enormous pain right now: the wars in Gaza and Ukraine; the Sudan genocide; the earthquake in Afghanistan; the tragedy of Haiti.. but we must not let the Nicaraguan prisoners be buried in silence. Each day they spend behind bars is another day stolen. Every week without medicine is a slow death sentence. Every month without news is another open wound in the hearts of their families.
I was released in February of 2023, thanks to the pressure of voices that refused to be silenced. That pressure must not end now.
Take action
Those of us who can do it must. To every reader I ask:
- Say their names. Keep Nicaragua’s political prisoners alive!
- Help us build humanitarian bridges. We need countries and organizations willing to negotiate prisoner releases and welcome the banished, as did the United States, the Vatican and Guatemala at other moments.
- Pressure for a democratic transition. Only free and transparent elections, with national and international observation, will be able to free Nicaragua from this dictatorship and restore democracy. So that never, never again, is anyone imprisoned for thinking differently.
The day of freedom will come. Justice will arrive. And when they do, it will be because people like yourselves refuse to let silence win.
Until that day, I carry the weight of my own freedom on my back, because it will never be complete while others remain chained.
Viva Nicaragua Libre!
*This article was originally published in Havana Times.
