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Miskitu leader and national president of the Indigenous political party Yatama, Brooklyn Rivera Bryan, died on May 30, 2026, at 8:30 p.m., at the age of 73, after more than 970 days of illegal detention, according to sources at Fernando Vélez Paiz Hospital, where he had been hospitalized under the custody of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The regime concealed the Indigenous leader’s death for more than fifteen hours. It was not until midday on May 31, 2026, that it acknowledged what had happened, but it did not disclose the date or time of his death. Nor did it mention that Rivera was a political prisoner whom it had subjected to enforced disappearance for nearly three years.
The regime also attributed Rivera’s death to “physical and neurological deterioration” caused by a bacterial infection linked to COVID-19, and it continues to keep his body under police custody. In this sense, even in death, Brooklyn Rivera remains a prisoner.
Sources close to Yatama say the regime is refusing to hand Rivera’s body over to his family, who wish to honor the Indigenous leader’s final wish to be buried in Lidaukra, in Sandy Bay, where his mother is buried.
Rivera is the seventh political prisoner to die in the custody of the Ortega-Murillo regime, which concealed the severity of his health condition despite repeated requests for “proof of life” from his relatives and the international community.
Indigenous Leader Shown in Agony
The regime broke its silence about the condition of the Indigenous leader and political prisoner on May 27, 2026, through an alarming statement revealing the irreversible deterioration of his health after nearly three years of enforced disappearance.
It also released photographs showing the Indigenous leader bedridden in a hospital, connected to mechanical ventilation through a tracheostomy and receiving intravenous nutrition.
The regime attributed a series of medical conditions to Rivera, including a bacterial lung infection, respiratory deterioration, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia infection, liver cirrhosis, and possible pneumonia.
In a second statement, the regime added cerebral edema associated with a severe neurological injury to Rivera’s list of ailments and said it was praying to God for his recovery.
Regime Attempted to Evade Responsibility
Rivera was arbitrarily detained on September 29, 2023, after the dictatorship lured him back to his home in Bilwi, the capital of Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast region, where he had returned after spending some time outside the country.
The regime denied Brooklyn Rivera’s arrest until November 2024, when it acknowledged for the first time that the Indigenous leader had been detained. The admission came during Nicaragua’s Universal Periodic Review before the United Nations and amid pressure from the delegations of Brazil, Norway, Canada, and other states.
Tininiska Rivera, the Indigenous leader’s daughter, rejected the Ortega-Murillo regime’s statements regarding her father’s critical health condition, arguing that they were an attempt to evade responsibility in the face of his imminent death.
“The statement and photographs released by the dictatorship only demonstrate the undignified, inhumane, and degrading conditions in which my father is being held, providing clear evidence of flagrant violations of his fundamental rights,” Rivera’s daughter wrote in a public letter.
Brooklyn Rivera, Yatama’s Historic Miskitu Leader
Brooklyn Rivera was a historic Miskitu leader and founder of the Indigenous political movement Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (Yatama, meaning “Children of Mother Earth” in the Miskitu language). He was an indispensable figure in the struggle for Indigenous autonomy in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast “has a long and painful history of struggle for autonomy, and Rivera has been one of its most visible faces. Detaining him was not an impulsive act; it was a strategic decision to symbolically decapitate a resistance movement that the central government has failed to subdue by other means,” wrote York University professor Miguel González in his article Brooklyn Rivera: An Imprisoned Conscience.
Rivera was born on September 24, 1952, in the Miskitu community of Lidaukra on Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast. He was a member of the anti-Sandinista resistance during the 1980s, served as Minister for the Development of the Autonomous Regions in the 1990s, became a prominent social leader in the 2000s, and was elected to Nicaragua’s National Assembly on four occasions beginning in 2007.
Brooklyn Rivera, the Seventh Political Prisoner to Die in State Custody
Brooklyn Rivera’s death while under police custody immediately recalled the tragic pattern that preceded the deaths in state custody of fellow political prisoners Hugo Torres Jiménez, the historic guerrilla commander who died in February 2022, and Humberto Ortega Saavedra, the retired army general and brother of dictator Daniel Ortega, who died in September 2024.
Other political prisoners who died in state custody include Mauricio Alonso Petri, an opposition activist from Carazo, and legal scholar Carlos Cárdenas Zepeda, both of whom died less than a week apart following their recent arrests in August 2025.
The list also includes attorney Santos Flores, who publicly denounced Daniel Ortega for sexually abusing his underage sister and died under suspicious circumstances in prison in November 2021, and Nicaraguan-American Eddy Montes, who was killed by a prison officer inside a cell at La Modelo prison on May 16, 2019.
