Nicaraguans of the Year 2024: The Banished Citizens
Confidencial and its Editorial Board selected the 496+ citizens whom the dictatorship officially or secretly declared as persona non grata.
HAVANA TIMES – On the afternoon of Sunday, December 1, 2024, Nicaraguan priest Floriano Ceferino Vargas saw several police officers arrive and arrest him after officiating a mass at the San Martín de Porres parish, in the municipality of Nueva Guinea. A day later, it was learned that he had become one more among Nicaragua’s exiled and was sent to Panama.
It was not known exactly why Vargas, also a vicar of the Diocese of Bluefields in Nicaragua’s Southern Caribbean region, was expelled from the country. The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo rarely provides any explanation.
A week earlier, on November 24, 2024, journalist and small business owner Henry Briceño was arrested along with his family, and all were clandestinely expelled from Nicaragua.
Priests, human rights defenders, university students, journalists, businesspeople, campesino leaders, academics, opposition members, and citizens who have protested since the April 2018 Rebellion have been exiled from Nicaragua. Most have also been stripped of their nationality and illegally confiscated of their assets. Others left Nicaragua voluntarily and were later barred from returning.
Among those exiled from Nicaragua are:
- 222 former political prisoners expelled to the United States in February 2023
- 94 citizens denationalized and confiscated, also in February 2023
- Bishops Silvio Jose Baez, Rolando Alvarez, Isidoro Mora, and Carlos Enrique Herrera
- More than 40 priests expelled between 2023 and 2024
- 135 denationalized former political prisoners secretly expelled to Guatemala in September 2024
- And hundreds of citizens who have been forcibly exiled and are barred from returning to their homeland.
The Editorial Board of CONFIDENCIAL has chosen “The Exiled” as the People of the Year 2024: the 496+ Nicaraguans whom the regime officially or secretly declared as persona non grata in Nicaragua, condemning them to a civic death.
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The Life of “The Banished”
We spoke with four denationalized Nicaraguans who represent hundreds of banished individuals. They maintain their conviction that they will return to their homeland, free of dictatorship.
They are academic Ernesto Medina, a priest who requested anonymity, youth leader Adela Espinoza, and opposition political activist Tamara Davila. They embody the voices and hopes of hundreds of citizens whose resistance represents the hope for change in Nicaragua.
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“I have to believe that I will return to Nicaragua”
On February 15, 2023, academic and scientist Ernesto Medina accepted that he could not return to Nicaragua and resigned himself to seeking political asylum after the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship stripped him and 93 other citizens of their nationality and property.
He was in Germany, where he had previously gone into exile in the 1970s to escape the Somoza dictatorship.
“For me, exile has meant, first, uprooting—the separation from my loved ones, the most important parts of my life: my family, the place where I was born, where I grew up, and where I dedicated the best efforts of my life. Naturally, there’s the pain of living in a land that, although it has welcomed me, still feels foreign to me,” he says from Zaragoza, Spain, where he finally settled.
Deprived of all his rights, including his retirement pension, he survives in modest housing with the support of friends, colleagues from the German university where he studied, and the Zaragoza City Council.
Having studied and worked in Germany for six years and did research for a year each in Sweden and Spain, Medina, now 72, says he feels privileged despite the hardships as he has a network of friends and contacts in Europe.
In Nicaragua, he was the rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN- León) and the Universidad Americana de Managua (UAM).
“What matters is to live with dignity and keep my head held high. I believe the regime’s intent with these cruel and brutal sanctions was to make us bow our heads, surrender, apologize, or stay silent,” he states.
Medina says that staying in Europe has allowed him to remain free to express his thoughts and support students expelled from Nicaraguan universities and contribute to unify the opposition.
“I have to believe that I will return. I have some serious health problems, and my greatest wish is to see my two grandchildren grow up—they are my main source of strength. Likewise, my hope to return to Nicaragua. I can’t imagine dying far from Nicaragua,” he confesses.
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“You have to swallow everything the regime does against the Church”
“Jesus,” the assumed name for a Nicaraguan priest now in exile, describes his forced exile due to the Ortega-Murillo regime’s persecution as “a test” in his priestly ministry.
“It’s been difficult because it’s not only about being far from my country but also away from my people, my family, and those close to me. It’s very hard, but at the same time, miraculous, because I haven’t felt abandoned by God,” he states.
However, Jesus remains hopeful of returning: “We know that God moves the threads of history, so we hope for the dictatorship to fall soon. I hold onto the hope of returning to my country, visiting the places and parishes where I used to celebrate masses.”
He highlights the “visceral hatred” of the dictatorship towards the Catholic Church, describing these times as “difficult.” However, he notes that priests, both in and outside Nicaragua, often remain silent due to fear of repression.
“That’s why I remain anonymous. Whenever you speak, there are reprisals against friends, family, and the laity you served,” he insists.
Jesus adds that communication with his family is “very limited, and although it’s painful, it must be that way.”
Regarding other priests, he mentions that they continue to face persecution. “They are summoned to the police, asked about their activities and plans,” he explains.
Jesús acknowledges that many priests remain silent out of necessity. “They see the injustice but can’t denounce it because if they do, they are imprisoned or exiled. So, you have to swallow everything the regime does against the Church,” he concludes.
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“Telling what I experienced in prison is my way of shedding light on what’s happening in Nicaragua”
Spontaneously, youth leader Adela Espinoza gathered with some friends to protest against the dictatorship at the Centroamerica roundabout in Managua on August 18, 2023. Burning a red-and-black flag of the Sandinista National Liberation Front—now turned into a patriotic symbol—led to her imprisonment, where she spent 383 days behind bars.
Espinoza recalls that at the District III police station in Managua, one of the investigators grabbed her by the neck and tried to suffocate her. “She kept me standing for ten hours, without being able to lean against a wall or touch my face or any part of my body. I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back,” she recalls.
At dawn on September 5, 2024, she was one of 135 political prisoners released and exiled to Guatemala.
“For me, exile has been a huge challenge. The truth is that absolutely no one is prepared for this. No one is prepared to be imprisoned and then wake up the next day in a country that is not your own,” she confesses.
Currently, Espinoza remains in Guatemala, awaiting the approval of her immigration status to move to the United States, where she intends to settle. Meanwhile, she continues to raise her voice against the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.
Her immediate goal is to raise awareness among the people she meets in Guatemala about the situation in Nicaragua, particularly that of political prisoners. “I try to keep the call for justice alive by making our current situation visible to people who have no idea what is happening, both in Guatemala and in other countries,” says Espinoza.
She believes that sharing her testimony about her time in prison “is a way to shed light” on the human rights violations suffered by the Nicaraguan people.
“I wasn’t going to allow this (imprisonment and exile) to silence me without speaking out about what happened to me. My testimony can help people understand what has happened and continues to happen in Nicaragua,” she asserts.
Espinoza describes her daily struggle to live “day by day” and “fight against her own mind” due to the loneliness of exile.
“Being here in exile means not only facing the reality you are living but also the reality your family is enduring and what the country as a whole is facing,” says the youth leader.
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“I decided to use my voice to denounce the dictatorship”
During the 606 days that political activist and feminist Tamara Davila was imprisoned and isolated on orders from the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, she never imagined she would be torn from her homeland.
“I never imagined that they would expel me from the country in the way they did. It never crossed my mind… this practice of exile had never been used by any other dictatorship,” says the young woman, released and exiled on February 9, 2023, along with 221 other Nicaraguans.
The regime also ordered the confiscation of her property and the loss of her nationality. She asserts that throughout her imprisonment, she was certain she would be released and expected to face “greater harassment, persecution, and surveillance”.
“Being exiled was traumatic. I think Daniel Ortega’s intention was for us to stop working and to break our connections, but that will never happen. I remain anchored to Nicaragua,” she declares.
Davila continues to work in the opposition, denouncing the horrendous human rights violations committed by the regime. “The dictatorship has created a tremendous sensation of living in a large prison… both for those inside and for those of us outside Nicaragua,” she insists.
“They are taking away our freedom, taking away our country, but they themselves are also losing their freedom and their country. They are increasingly isolated in their bunker (at El Carmen), growing more fearful of their own people and their own inner circle of power,” she said.
Davila believes the regime’s main intention is “to destroy everything that connects one Nicaraguan to another, whether inside or outside the country,” and to send the message that “Nicaragua is their property.”
Currently, the activist works as a visiting lecturer at a college in the United States. However, she dedicates all her free time to Nicaragua.
Although exiled Nicaraguans know their testimony is a way to highlight the human rights violations in Nicaragua, some have had to remain silent or report these crimes anonymously for fear of reprisals against their families. Davila said this is understandable given the brutal nature of the dictatorship.
“I know many people who remain silent but are working in solidarity networks. For me, silence is not synonymous with inaction. However, I have chosen to use my voice to denounce,” she admits.
The opposition activist says she dreams every day of returning to Nicaragua. “They took my house, they took my nationality, but I still feel Nicaraguan,” she insists.
“Of course, I will return. My eyes are set on that, and I am not alone. Many of us have our eyes set on returning—not just to reclaim what is ours but to work so that this never happens again, so that we never again have someone from the left or right with dictatorial ambitions,” she stated.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.