“My Future Is Not in Nicaragua”
Thousands have their documents apostilled in case they have to leave.
“We must be ready to look for another path,” say young people who are trying to apostille their documents at the Foreign Ministry
HAVANA TIMES – In a city in southern Nicaragua, near one of the busiest places marked by the 2018 protests, lives Pablo, a young veterinarian who graduated from university not long ago. Next to his bed he has a suitcase with clothes that he packs and unpacks every two months and, on top of the luggage, a backpack where he keeps all his updated and apostilled documents. “In case it’s my turn,” he tells himself now and then, as he looks at them.
Pablo has refused to leave the country. Although he was never involved in the protests, he knows that for going to take a look at the marches, for pulling out his Nicaraguan flag, and because of his Sandinista neighbors, he is “marked.” But the possibility of leaving accompanies him every day. “You never know; I think we all have to be ready to look for other paths,” he reflects with resignation.
This young man hasn’t found steady work and makes house calls to care for some pets at clients’ homes or at his parents’ house, and he covers a few days at a veterinary clinic. That’s why he admits that the lack of money is “another big reason” he knows his turn might come to leave.
At the start of 2025, Pablo decided to authenticate his transcripts, diplomas, and his Veterinary degree at Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry in Managua. He remembers it was a “headache” and that he had to travel there three times, because the lines were huge and people arrived before dawn.
The first time he went, he didn’t know he had to get up early, and around ten in the morning, when he approached, he realized the line was “immense,” and he didn’t even try to get in it. The second time he arrived at seven in the morning and, although he stood in line, he didn’t manage to get an attention slot. The third time he did, because he practically went the night before to wait outside the place.
“I was afraid to be on the street all night, but I realized, from people’s comments, that that’s what you had to do to get it done. That, or buy a slot in line that some were reselling at high prices,” he says.
The lines are over, but demand hasn’t stopped
Diplomas, transcripts, police records, birth certificates, and marital-status certificates are some of the documents most often requested for apostille at the Foreign Ministry. The process has no cost.
An apostille is a certification of the authenticity of a document that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs validates so it will be recognized abroad.
For academic documents, people must first certify them with the corresponding institution. In the case of high-school graduates, they must go to the Ministry of Education, while university degrees must first be authenticated by the National Council of Universities (now the National Council of Rectors).
After months in which hundreds of Nicaraguans got up before dawn and filled all available slots, on April 14, 2025, the Government decided to implement a new appointment system with online bookings through the website www.citas.cancilleria.gob.ni, offering continuous service from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., according to official media. However, as of August 15, 2025, the page had been offline for a couple of months.
Even though the social-media images showing hundreds of people lining up to apostille documents have ceased, the truth is that demand has not stopped. It’s a reality that reflects a silent exodus in Nicaragua.
“Demand is constant, and it’s a reflection that many want to leave or at least have their documents ready in case they have to leave Nicaragua,” confides Ismael, a Foreign Ministry employee who asked that his identity be protected.
Isamel admits that the system crashes constantly and that on many days lines remain because “not everyone knows about the online system.” However, he denies there are obstacles to apostilling documents, though he likewise admits it is “a bureaucratic process.”
“The Government is interested in (Nicaraguans) leaving, because they know that those people abroad will, in the future, have the possibility of sending remittances,” says Ismael.
“My future is not in Nicaragua”
“I never imagined living alone in another country,” says Roxana bluntly, a 22-year-old university student who was studying Psychology at the Central American University (UCA), confiscated and closed by the dictatorship in August 2023.
But this young woman, who now lives in El Salvador, admits that exile “was like a ghost that always haunted her.” First, because in 2022 she lost her scholarship when the regime excluded UCA from the university budget allocation. Then, because she saw many relatives, friends, and people she knew from her neighborhood in Granada leave.
“My family was Sandinista all our lives, but most stopped being so when they saw how the dictatorship massacred the people who took to the streets to protest in 2018, and many of us had to leave the country,” she recounts.
Roxana apostilled her high-school diploma three months after her university closed on the advice of some family friends. “I knew what I had would at least serve as support for my studies,” she explains.
She decided to study the same major and start from zero. “I had barely started the degree, and let’s say I was lucky to lose only one year,” she says. She comments that it has been a hard process, but says she prefers to have a degree that “is worth something” and not one “from a university that only indoctrinates students to flatter a tyranny.”
“It’s sad, but for now my future is not in Nicaragua. I also don’t know where I’ll live, because I don’t think I want to stay here (in El Salvador) forever, but for now that’s what I have to do,” she notes.
Ready to travel “at any moment”
The “ghost” of exile is also something that haunts Manuel’s life, a young man who graduated in Business Administration from a private university. Not long ago he decided to apostille his diploma, his birth certificate, and other academic documents.
“I did it at my parents’ insistence,” he confesses. Migrating to Spain is something that “keeps resonating in my head,” which is why he has looked for scholarship options to study for a master’s degree.
For now, Manuel works at a call center because he hasn’t found a job in his field. “That’s sad, but it’s also something that allows me to be ready to travel at any moment,” he says.
“I think all Nicaraguans, especially young people, must be ready to look for another path because the country is increasingly isolated and opportunities are scarcer,” says this young man from a city in central Nicaragua.
An “alarming” brain drain
It’s unknown how many professionals and students have apostilled their documents, because the regime does not make that information transparent. Nor is it known how many of them have left the country. For Nicaraguan academic and former rector of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-León) and the American University (UAM), Ernesto Medina, it is “alarming” that the majority of those seeking passports and apostilling documentation are young.
“It’s almost certain that the reason for the apostille is to leave the country,” he points out. For the academic, it means “a greater hemorrhaging of Nicaragua’s most important resource, which is its youth, and above all its educated youth.”
Medina notes that many students stayed in the country, after the repression and the expulsion of hundreds of students, “to see what would happen in the universities,” and they have realized that most of them today in Nicaragua “are a scam.”
“Young people see that (in the universities) they have only political authorities who are there to carry out the orders of a government that wants only one thing, which is consolidation in power,” warns the former rector.
Medina insists that the “brain drain of young people in training” is going to have a “very serious” consequence in Nicaragua. First, because those who are leaving probably won’t return, and many more will continue to leave. And second, because the training of professionals “is deteriorating every day” in Nicaragua.
“Seeing that bleak panorama, with educational institutions that don’t win over young people, we’ll see more become part of that army that believes it has to leave the country to seek alternatives to be study with dignity and quality,” said Medina.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.