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The earthquake that destroyed Managua in the early morning of December 23, 1972, surprised a group of young people in the atrium of the Cathedral demanding the freedom of the imprisoned FSLN guerrillas, part of a yearly campaign for \u201cChristmas without political prisoners.\u201d Various accounts of this protest claim that Father Fernando Cardenal and other member of the Christian base communities were among the participants. Years later, many of these same Christians would go on to join the ranks of the urban guerrilla. The Somoza dictatorship didn\u2019t block that act of protest: they didn\u2019t detain the participants or repress the actions of the imprisoned guerrilla fighters\u2019 family members. Today, however, this type of activity would be unthinkable in Nicaragua. The brutal repression that the families of today\u2019s missing prisoners are suffering is the best proof of this impossibility. <\/p>\n\n
If we glance through the list of the people classed as disappeared \u2013 those whose whereabouts remains unknown after their arrest at the hands of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship \u2013 we realize that anyone, at any time, could catch the eye of the repressive forces. One day, without knowing why, uniformed and plainclothes agents of the regime could arrive at your home to take you away to parts unknown. That moment marks the beginning of the suffering of not only the person who\u2019s been taken, but also of their family. It\u2019s the practice of forced disappearance now raised to the category of national policy, a set of State actions designed to [try and] resolve the government\u2019s terrors. <\/p>\n\n
The list of the missing includes all kinds of people: former members of the Sandinista military who fought against Somoza; political leaders and activists; members of the Liberal Party [a longtime political party in Nicaragua]; former deputies; a former FSLN councilwoman; an administrator; a doctor; a cultural promotor; an Evangelical Protestant pastor; an artist; and even a former elementary school teacher from a remote town in Chinandega, among others. What does this social cross-section of Ortega\u2019s repression mean? Simply that the dictatorship has become the enemy of all the people, and not the other way around. It\u2019s the dictatorship that sees enemies under every rock, even as most Nicaraguans, in all of their expressions, are simply trying to lead a \u201cnormal\u201d life despite the restrictions on their freedoms. <\/p>\n\n
This animosity of the dictatorship towards the population is confirmed by the explicit and inferred motives for the detentions: for proposing a national dialogue (a crime of l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9), for reentering the country despite an illegal exile order, for fulfilling the medical duty of treating the injured, for organizing retired military personnel without swearing loyalty to the co-dictators, for resigning from a public office or a teaching position, or for publishing a comment recognizing the spiritual leadership of a bishop (a crime of l\u00e8se-imperatrix against the high priestess, Rosario Murillo). In other words, anyone who thinks and acts independently is guilty of living on the margins of the hacienda that Nicaragua has become. Any suspicion is enough to end up in an unknown location, in a territory where the only law is the whim of the regime\u2019s henchmen. <\/p>\n\n