Nicaragua: Letter to My Missing Father, Carlos Brenes
This time it is worse and crueler than in 2018: no one confirms where the political prisoners are, there are no visits, no delivery of packages, not even medication.
By Thelma Brenez Muñoz (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – As of today, I still check my phone to see whether my latest messages reached you. It’s been more than four months since I’ve had any news from you. Since August 14, the word uncertainty has taken on a whole new meaning for me: I live in it every day, every hour. Normality broke the moment I saw that you stopped responding to my messages.
They were left on “seen,” without a reply. “He must be tired,” I thought at first, because you were busy with the harvest. By the next day, I was already convinced that something had happened to you. Your disappearance appeared in the news and on social media.
But there is something the news and human rights reports don’t capture. You don’t miss a number. You miss a life. I miss you, Dad, and Salvadora, your partner. The reports say that as of December there are still 62 forcibly disappeared people. You are number 9 on the list, and Salvadora is number 35.
But no one misses number 9 or number 35. I miss you, my dad. I miss talking with you about the farm, about your health problems, about world news, about my work trips. I miss that humor so distinctly Nicaraguan, so Masaya-born, that makes us laugh even in the hardest moments.
I think and try to imagine where you might be and under what conditions. It hurts me to think about your health problems: diabetes, back pain, the tingling in your legs, high blood pressure. I wonder whether they are giving you your medications in the doses you need. I seriously doubt it, and then it becomes impossible not to think that something could happen to you.
You, like the other prisoners and missing people, probably don’t know that at the end of August Mauricio Alonso and Carlos Cárdenas died in prison. Their families were given sealed coffins and were forced to bury them under police escort. Since those days, all of us—family members—can’t stop thinking, in anguish, that any day a similar notice could reach one of us.
In conversations with other relatives of prisoners, we all agree that this time is worse and crueler than in 2018: no one confirms where they are, there are no visits, no delivery of packages, no medications. We have been denied the right to know how they are, whether they are well or ill. We imagine that for you, too, it must be painful not to have communication with your children, wives, mothers, sisters. All we want is to find a way to tell you that you are not alone and that we have not abandoned you.
You and I both know that you were living quietly on your farm, following the rules of the game imposed on you: reporting to the police every four days, sending your photo by WhatsApp, standing against the wall of the house as they instructed you. We don’t know what they are accusing you of now. I imagine they will come up with one of those made-up charges (terrorist, traitor, roadblocker). We both know it doesn’t matter what they accuse you of, because it will make no sense, and because those who know you have no doubts about your integrity.
I imagined and wished for a peaceful old age for you, on the farm with Salvadora and your dogs; I imagine you did too. But at seventy years old, once again you find yourself forced to resist an unjust situation. I want you to know that I am with you. As long as I don’t know where you are or how you are, this letter does not end. Neither does my search.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.