Nicaraguan Rapper’s Ideas that Forced Him into Exile

The music of Dares Jaguar ranges from sensitive artistic expression to a raging political weapon.

By 100% Noticias

HAVANA TIMES – Nicaraguan rapper and activist Roberto Balladares is better known in the world of music as the YouTuber “Dares Jaguar.” He’s found in music a way to keep alive his protest against the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, even from exile.

In one song, he rages:

“This goes directly to the Commandante with his seal / a deranged old man with his mind lost in July of 67 / When he went to jail for robbing a bank / and since then distrusts everything, even his own shadow.

“A witchlike snake advises him to order death or jail / For everyone who dreams that our freedom can prevail.”

These lines form part of Curriculum Vitae / La Presentacion, a rap in which Dares Jaguar denounces the dictatorship and demands freedom for the political prisoners in Nicaragua.

The singer, 33, lives exiled in the United States, where he’s an active member of the Nicaraguan University Alliance, an organization that brings together young activists such as former student leaders Lesther Aleman and Max Jerez, who were jailed and later banished to the US by the Ortega regime.

“Right now, I’m working on several musical themes which I’ve been releasing on my digital platforms. But the idea for the future is to be able to find space in the international scene and represent my country, my culture and my ideals. I want to leave a legacy by reaching the ears of all the Spanish-speaking countries,” Balladares confided to the news platform 100% Noticias.

“Dares Jaguar” was born in Nandaime, in the department of  Granada,  and graduated in Nicaragua as an industrial engineer. However, his true passion, since he’s had use of reason, lay in the music that was influenced by international artists from different genres.

The words to his songs are charged with emotions that vary from rage to hope. He believes they will find an echo in the hearts of Nicaraguans who yearn for a better future.

“I began with some friends from my town. They had already made some recordings, and I was seeking to record some songs, and we got together and made the first demos,” recalled Dares Jaguar.

He affirms that the teacher Danny Guerrero, who was also his neighbor, gave him his first opportunity. Guerrero was generous in sharing his own talent with Balladares and his friends. Dares Jaguar didn’t stop there, though, but looked for ways to improve his singing, until he sounded more polished and could rise to a greater level.

“Until one day, I presented myself to Hugo Castillo, who had produced several numbers for Carlos Mejia Godoy. I performed for him a song I’d written, and later we recorded it with Carlos and the “Palacaguina” group,” he told us.

With touching honesty, Dares Jaguar’s latest song A la distancia (“From a distance”) explores the complex reality of the young migrants. Through his own experience, the author submerges himself in an emotional voyage that reflects the hope, loneliness and depression that often accompanies those who have had to seek a new beginning far from home.

Read more from Nicaragua here on Havana Times.