Nicaraguan YouTuber Chico Reyes Confirms his Forced Exile
“We cannot do anything,” Ortega regime officials at the consulate in the United States told Reyes in response to his inquiries.
HAVANA TIMES – The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo banned Nicaraguan YouTuber Francisco Javier Reyes Rosas from entering the country as he was returning from a trip to Spain. The content creator’s forced exile occurred on August 27, 2024, but the citizen did not confirm it until September 21st.
The YouTuber, who goes by “Chico Reyes Rosas”, explained in a video posted on his YouTube channel, where he has over 130,000 subscribers, that authorities denied him entry to Nicaragua after collaborating with Venezuelan YouTuber Oscar Alejandro Perez Martinez, who criticized the lack of freedoms in the Central American country ruled by Ortega and Murillo.
“We can’t issue your ticket because the Nicaraguan Immigration authorities have prohibited your entry into the country,” the airline told Reyes on August 27 when he was returning from Madrid to Managua and was on a layover in Houston, United States, according to the YouTuber, who is a geologist by profession.
“When they told me that, it hit me hard. You can’t imagine what it feels like to be denied entry to your own country (…) I was calmly heading home, but they left me stranded in a country that isn’t mine, in a place where they didn’t know if I had money to stay, eat, or resolve anything. It was a huge shock, and recalling it still hurts me,” he confessed.
No reasons explained to “Chico Reyes”
After being barred from returning to his country, the YouTuber wrote and called the authorities at the Directorate of Immigration and Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Nicaraguan Consulate in the United States, asking for reasons, but they did not provide any convincing answers or arguments.
“We can’t do anything. When someone is denied entry (to Nicaragua), it’s for some reason, but we don’t know what it is, and they don’t tell us. So, wherever you call, they won’t give you the reason,” one of the Ministry of the Interior officials told the young man, who recorded the conversation.
The Nicaraguan YouTuber, known for showcasing tourist destinations and curiosities of his country, said he hasn’t committed any crime: “Is filming in Nicaragua a crime? Is expressing an opinion about this or that a crime? No, right?” he asked.
“Chico Reyes Rosas” shared that since his exile, he has survived in the United States thanks to a person who gave him “a roof, a house to sleep, shower, eat, (they) opened their home to me.”
Concluding his testimony, the YouTuber stated that he is “100% Nicaraguan, no matter where I am, I will always feel proud to have been born in Nicaragua.”
In December 2023, the NGO Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Never Again warned that de facto statelessness is “a new method of repression” implemented by the Ortega government against critics and opponents, consisting of banning their reentry into the country when they travel and seek to return.
Oscar Alejandro’s criticism of the regime
In February 2024, “Chico Reyes” collaborated with Venezuelan YouTuber Oscar Alejandro Perez, who after his visit to Nicaragua published a series of videos describing what it’s like to live under a dictatorship.
Oscar Alejandro’s visit to Nicaragua caused discomfort for the Ortega regime. The first of his videos was “taken down” from the platform on March 10, seven days after it had been published, after Sandinista trolls claimed of “copyright infringement.”
In the censored video, which was re-shared on Wednesday, March 13, 2024, the Venezuelan YouTuber highlights, among other things, the criminalization of the national flag by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, the monument to Hugo Chávez erected at the roundabout of the avenue bearing his name, and how Managua is filled with the metallic structures called “trees of life.”
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.