18 de April 2025
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“We were attacked in the harshest month of the year and we defeated them. They are failures and that’s what they can’t stand,” says an enraged Rosario Murillo, who, along with Daniel Ortega, has spent seven consecutive years trying to erase the memory of the April 2018 protests. The civic movement in 2018 called for their removal from power in response to the violent crackdown on citizens’ protests.
Traditionally, the ruling Sandinista Front has celebrated the anniversary of the revolution in July, the anniversaries of Augusto C. Sandino’s birth and assassination in May and February, and those of Carlos Fonseca in June and November. April was an unimportant month for the ruling couple, but it has now become their personal project, inventing commemorations to try to take control of the memory of the April 2018 protests.
First, they banned the marches, violating the right to protest. Then, they targeted all commemorative activities, introducing persecution and surveillance into everyday life across the nation. And when that didn’t work, they tried to erase it by creating meaningless commemorations. The latest of these was declaring April the “Month to Defend Peace.”
“How it hurts them, how they burn when we remind them of their failures, their defeat, how they react,” said Murillo in her monologue of March 18, 2025, while the regime itself reacts with intensified repression in the month of April.
April is the month with the highest number of incidents of intimidation, persecution, abductions, and forced exiles reported in Nicaragua, followed by July and September, according to a report from Monitoreo Azul y Blanco, which independently tracks the human rights situation in Nicaragua.
CONFIDENCIAL summarizes the attempts of the regime to erase the memory of the April Rebellion and the repressive acts that reveal its failure.
2018: The de facto police state
After more than 350 people killed, over a thousand injured, tens of thousands exiled due to political persecution, hundreds of prisoners of conscience, and a country marked by mourning and pain, the dictatorship imposed a de facto police state in September 2018. It issued a police order threatening to prosecute individuals and organizations that called for civic protests, which it declared “illegal.”
“They will be responsible and will answer to justice, the people and organizations that call for these illegal displacements from which they have promoted and intend to promote destructive and criminal actions,” said the Police in a press release disseminated through the official media, on September 28, 2018.
The police order came after the dictatorship responded to citizen protests with gunfire, kidnapping and imprisoning hundreds of demonstrators. Since then, the official narrative tried to blame citizens for the killings, talked about the destruction of buildings, streets and universities and an alleged coup attempt, while keeping quiet about the demand for justice, freedom and democracy.
2019 – 2020: Police siege and chase
On the first two anniversaries, the dictatorship imposed repression to prevent the dates from being commemorated.
In 2019, despite the ban on protests and the de facto police state, the self-convened population attempted to hold a civic march on Carretera a Masaya, but this ended with the momentary detention of 60 citizens, who were beaten and assaulted by the same Police.
Students, former prisoners, and Nicaraguan citizens participated in pickets or spontaneous protests at various locations in Managua and other cities across the country. Once again, the police responded with violence and illegal detentions against the demonstrators.
The second anniversary coincided with the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic, and activities were also repressed. The opposition Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco denounced at least 39 arrests of opponents, more than a hundred sieges to homes or businesses, ten raids and direct threats.
But persecution and attempts to erase the April Rebellion increased to impose silence in the following years.
2021: “National Sportsmen and Sportswomen’s Day” invented
The first attempt by the dictatorship to formally change the meaning of the dates of the April Rebellion was to name, by presidential decree, April 19 as National Sportsman’s Day, arguing that it was a tribute to the birth of the three-time boxing champion and former FSLN mayor of Managua, Alexis Argüello.
Following Ortega’s order, the Nicaraguan Sports Institute (IND) and the National Coordinator of Sports Federations (CONFEDE) decided to invent the National Physical Culture Award where they give distinctions to athletes, coaches, leaders and sports federations, despite the fact that there are other similar awards.
That year, the Blue and White Monitor reported more than 382 incidents of repression recorded nationwide, including 13 arrests, harassment, hate campaigns, among other human rights violations.
2022: “Anniversary of Victories”.
For the second consecutive year, in 2022, the dictatorship commemorated April 19 as National Sportsmen’s Day and added to the date a distinction to celebrate the Firefighters. “How much fire they put out in those days when the perfidious sought destruction, death, suffering and pain. How much they contributed to peace,” Murillo said.
For Murillo, April 18 and 19 was the “anniversary of the victories of peace”. “There are those who remember those days with a bad heart. There are those who do not recognize the role they played in the destruction and evil….,” she reiterated.
While the dictator proclaims “peace” in her hate speeches, repression once again reigned in the country with reports of surveillance, territorial control and patrolling throughout the territory. In addition, there was the persecution and banishment of well-known Nicaraguan musicians and producers.
2023: April 19 renamed “Peace Day“.
Only three days before commemorating the fifth anniversary of the April Rebellion, the dictatorship “activated” on Sunday the deputies of the National Assembly to approve in an extraordinary session a law declaring April 19 as the National Day of Peace.
The law barely has three articles. One to name April 19 as Peace Day, another to oblige the population and the powers of the State to “implement actions and activities to celebrate the joy of living in Peace” throughout the month and a third to make it effective after its publication in La Gaceta.
The irony is that while the dictatorship sends out to celebrate peace, they wage war. That year there were at least 39 arrests in April, including a wave of arrests that occurred at the beginning of the month, when Holy Week was commemorated.
2024: All of April is now “Peace Month”.
The dictatorship was not satisfied with declaring April 19 as the National Day of Peace, so in 2024 it ordered the approval of Law No. 1197 or Law Declaring April as “Month of Peace“.
This law requires that every year “the Central Government, the branches of government, institutions, schools, colleges and universities, media, municipal and regional governments will carry out activities to celebrate throughout the national territory, the Month of Peace”.
The regime, which declared itself a “victim” of violation of its rights during the protests, released common prisoners and sent the National Police and its militants to parade in vehicular caravans.
“We saw the flagrant violation of all our rights at the hands of barbaric torturers who filled the so-called social networks with false scenarios, with fictitious scenarios, with manipulations, with rebellion,” Murillo said during her televised speech on April 18, 2024, changing the role of the dictatorship from victimizer to victim.
2025: The “defense” of peace and the “true truth
In 2025, the dictatorship ordered the repeal of Law 1197 that declared April as “Peace Month” to install a new law that basically mandates the same thing, but this time defines April as the “month of the people who defend peace”.
In early April, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo forced state workers and their army of supposedly hooded “volunteer police” to carry out walks in all of Nicaragua’s municipalities.
In the meantime, through their propaganda media, they are using the slogan of defending the ‘true truth,’ when in reality, they are attempting to erase the memory of the April Rebellion in Nicaragua through false narratives in which—according to them—the government was the victim, not the population with its dead, wounded, exiled, and political prisoners, who remain under surveillance, unable to express themselves freely.”
