Nicaraguan Photojournalist Recounts his Sudden Exile
“The Police stole my house and vehicles that weren’t even mine”
The Nicaraguan AFP correspondent had to seek exile in the US. “It’s sad that practically no one is left to depict what’s happening in Nicaragua,” he says regretfully.
HAVANA TIMES – In 2018, photojournalist Oswaldo Rivas first began to feel himself under persecution from the regime headed by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Every time he covered an event as a journalist, it became “normal” to find himself surrounded by military, police or plain-clothed police identifying themselves as “intelligence officers.” These agents would interrogate him and make him leave the activities. In 2019, he recalls, such repression against independent journalists increased, especially those working for international news agencies.
Despite this, the Nicaraguan photojournalist continued to do his job, most recently working as graphics correspondent for the Agence France-Presse (AFP). On June 4, 2024, he was in the Granada Cathedral together with an independent French journalist who had come to Nicaragua to document the religious persecution in the country. A police patrol arrived and kept them from continuing their work.
“We couldn’t do anything, we had to suspend our work and we left, but from that point on the persecution against me began,” Rivas affirmed in a telephone interview with Confidencial.
The next day, the journalist was covering the Nicaragua vs. Montserrat soccer game, part of the Concacaf – Fifa World Cup 2026 qualifying series. While he was there, some friends alerted him that the police were planning to detain him that same night. “What I did was to stay at the match until the end, then act like I was going to go to the press conference afterwards. Instead, I went into a bathroom, then slipped out of the stadium, among the large crowd of fans.”
“They stole my house and emptied it”
Oswaldo Rivas never returned to his home, located along the Old Highway to Leon. “I called the people who were there, and they told me that two plain-clothed men were stationed in a car in front of the house. The next day I called again, and they said: “Don’t come – it’s full of police and patrol cars,” he recounted.
The photojournalist decided to leave the country over unmarked border crossings, and he’s now in the United States. Going into exile meant being left with nothing. From that day on, the police have occupied his house, which they also looted completely. “They took everything: computers, televisions, my mountain bike, my pick-up truck, and even a friend’s truck that was parked outside the house,” Rivas stated.
In addition, when he left the stadium, he parked the vehicle he was using to get around at the house of some friends. “Last week I told them to sell it, because I need the money. But when the man who bought it tried to change the title, the Police confiscated it and told him, “it belonged to a person accused of treason to the homeland,” he denounced.
“They stole my house and emptied it of everything, even though it’s in my wife’s name. The same thing happened with the vehicles, although only one of them was in my name.”
Oswaldo Rivas told us that he consulted with some lawyers, who told him “there’s nothing we can do.” None of them even dare to inquire, because they’re “afraid” that if they try to defend him, “[the authorities] will revoke their credentials to practice law.”
“We’re seen as enemies”
Oswaldo Rivas underlines the fact that the journalists and photographers who work for independent press agencies were being watched and persecuted “all the time” for doing their work. “Last year I covered a public activity put on by the Army on Bolivar Avenue in Managua. I was forcibly removed from there by ten soldiers who said they were from military intelligence. They escorted me to my pick-up and they took photos and videos of me,” he detailed.
Some years earlier, on August 30, 2018, he was photographing a billboard of Daniel Ortega when the police detained and searched him, together with a Dutch photographer.
In October 2018, he was run over by a member of the paramilitary on a motorcycle while taking pictures of the police repressing a group of people headed to participate in a protest against Ortega.
“I’m one of those photojournalists who starts a story and wants to finish it, and for that reason I didn’t want to leave Nicaragua, I wanted to continue telling about the things that began in 2018, but it’s impossible to continue in the country,” he asserted.
Oswaldo Rivas began working in journalism in 1987, as a war correspondent. He later worked for the now-defunct newspaper La Tribuna. From 1997 until 2020 he was a photographer for the Reuters news agency, and from 2021 until a few months ago, he worked for the French international News Agency known as Agence France-Presse or AFP.
He’s now unemployed and in the process of legalizing his immigration status in the United States, in order to begin a new life. He “has faith,” however, that he’ll someday return to Nicaragua and recover what they stole.
“It’s sad to see that practically no one is left to depict what’s happening in Nicaragua,” regretted Oswaldo Rivas.
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Originally published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.