The Struggle of Three Nicaraguans to Graduate in Exile
after being expelled from universities in their country
Resuming their studies in exile and without documents was difficult. This is the story of three young women who managed to restart their education outside the country.
HAVANA TIMES – It took Heyling Marenco six years to return to the classroom after she was arbitrarily expelled from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua). Not because she had little interest in continuing her studies during that time, but because doing so in exile—far from family support, without a passport, and without academic records to validate her years of effort—was nearly impossible.
Heyling’s dream of becoming a professional was taken from her twice by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. First in August 2018, when newly appointed rector Ramona Rodriguez authorized the expulsion of university students who joined the protests. The second time came in 2022, when Pablo Freire University—where she and other UNAN-expelled students had received scholarships—was shut down after its legal status was revoked.
“My world fell apart. Everything collapsed. I was the first in my family to go to university,” says Heyling, 31, recalling the moment she learned she had been expelled for the first time.
The UNAN–Managua Expelled Students
More than a hundred university students were expelled from their institutions in 2018 as a form of “political revenge” by the Ortega-Murillo regime for protesting against them. The decision was made behind closed doors, where the students were declared academically dead, banned from entering campus, and in some cases had their records deleted or denied, making it impossible to resume their studies.
Most of these students were in their final years of university. They were never told what they were accused of or what the evidence was. Nor were they given a chance to defend themselves, in a country where the rule of law has all but disappeared.
In November 2020, the student group Acción Universitaria reported that of the 109 expulsions they documented, only 13 were reversed—though it is unknown under what process or conditions.
To this day, there are no official figures on how many of those expelled students managed to resume their studies abroad or within Nicaragua. It’s known that at least 30% were in their fourth or fifth year. Acción Universitaria has a sample of 69 of the 109 expelled students they tracked. Of these, only 20.3%—about 14 students—said they continued studying at another university. Meanwhile, 42% (29 students) said they resumed their studies, and 37.7% declined to answer.
Many were not accepted by other universities or were told they had to abandon their student activism. That was the case for Alejandra Centeno, who in 2022 finally graduated with a degree in International Relations from Loyola University in Spain. She had been expelled during her final year of studies.
On the occasion of Student Day—commemorated in Nicaragua every July 23 in memory of the 1959 student massacre in Leon, ordered by Somoza’s National Guard—CONFIDENCIAL sought out those expelled students to learn how they managed to continue their education. Some of them were able to achieve their goals after overcoming many obstacles. These are the stories of Alejandra, Yasuri, and Heyling.
I. Dream Achieved
“No one can take from us who we are or what we learned.”
After being expelled from her university in Nicaragua for her activism, Alejandra Centeno traveled to Europe to fulfill her dream of becoming a professional.
Alejandra Centeno had to travel more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) from Managua to fulfill her dream of becoming a professional. Not because she wanted to, but because none of the doors she knocked on in Nicaragua and Central America opened to her in her attempt to reclaim her university career.
“I was expelled for a supposed ‘serious offense,’ but I know it was really retaliation for my activism,” Alejandra explains. “The day I found out I’d been expelled I cried a lot. I felt very sad for myself and for my family. I had no plan other than to study and then work.”
Centeno had a feeling she might be expelled, since she’d heard rumors since July 2018 that the students barricaded inside UNAN would be sanctioned. Still, she tried to convince herself it wouldn’t happen to her. But her fate was sealed by a special commission that, behind closed doors, decided to expel her.
She was 20 years old, in her fifth year of Political Science and International Relations, an honors student, and a student leader. “At that moment, I even had a small identity crisis because we had been fighting for student rights, for university autonomy. But now how could I be a student leader outside the student community, when we couldn’t even set foot near the university?” she says.
But her dream didn’t die there. She tried to get a scholarship at a private university but was asked to renounce her activism in exchange, which she refused. Determined to keep studying, she wrote to several Central American universities. When she got no response, she reached out to a faraway institution: Loyola University in Spain.
“I met the director of the Spanish Cooperation Agency in Nicaragua. He recommended someone at that university, and I wrote to him. I didn’t know him, but I dared to send an email explaining my whole story, along with the grades I’d been able to download from the system (which had no official signature or seal). That was October 11, 2019,” she recalls.
Four days later, she received a reply saying they would study her case. “I didn’t hear anything else until the end of November, when they told me I was being granted a full scholarship on administrative grounds.”
“I couldn’t believe it. Honestly, I never thought about going to Europe to study. I had hoped to finish my degree in Nicaragua or Central America. It was incredible,” she remembers with emotion.
At that point, Alejandra and her family faced a new challenge: the scholarship covered only tuition. She would have to figure out how to survive in a foreign country with no family or support network. And she had to move quickly—she was being asked to join the International Relations program by late January 2020.
So began her search for money to survive her first months in Spain while she looked for work. That search led her to Niñas Arriba, a US-based NGO that helps young women access higher education—though its focus is in El Salvador.
“Even though I wasn’t from El Salvador, I wrote to them, told them my story, and they gave me a grant to live there,” she says.
In late January 2020, Alejandra left behind everything in Nicaragua—her family and friends—to start over at a new university.
She was able to recover her academic record because, at one point, UNAN–Managua handed out some transcripts at gate 2 of the campus. Hers wasn’t among them, but after insisting—almost in tears—the authorities agreed to give it to her. With those records, she was able to transfer some credits.
In July 2022, she finally became a professional. A dream she was able to share with her mother and brother, who managed to attend the ceremony after raising money through a public GoFundMe campaign.
“If it hadn’t been for that fundraiser and everyone who donated, I don’t even know if I would have been able to attend the graduation. That day my mom was definitely happier than I was,” she recalls.
After graduating, Alejandra interned at a Swiss organization, then did a fellowship with a Colombian group focused on social and environmental justice and migration. She’s now in Sweden, where she hopes to learn the language.
“Even if it seems like everything we built was lost in an instant, no one can take from us who we are or what we learned from what we lived through. What we’ve experienced is incredibly valuable,” says Alejandra, seven years after her expulsion.
II. Double Expulsion
The path back to the classroom was not the same for all the expelled students. Some, like Heyling Marenco, couldn’t secure a scholarship outside of Costa Rica—where she took refuge—because lacking a passport or travel document made it impossible.
Or like Yasuri Potoy, who was in her fifth year of Nursing and Obstetrics when she was expelled. No matter how hard she tried to continue her career, she had to choose between studying or working to support herself in Costa Rica and help her parents in Nicaragua. But after years of waiting for an opportunity, she finally received a scholarship to study Psychology at the Central University of Costa Rica.
“No matter my age, I will graduate in Nursing from UNAN”
Expelled from her university in Nicaragua for helping the wounded, Yasuri Potoy dreams of becoming a nurse while studying Psychology in Costa Rica.
Yasuri Potoy dreamed of graduating—of proudly wearing the white uniform worn by nurses—of handing her university diploma to her mother and dedicating to her the poem “Los 200 pesos”. So close to graduation in 2018, she saw it as a dream nearly fulfilled.
“I had a good mother. I had a saintly mother,” begins the iconic poem by Jorge Calderon, who thanks a mother’s sacrifice for her child’s education.
“When I was in Nicaragua, my mother scrubbed floors, washed clothes, and did domestic work in private homes so she could give me money to attend university and cover transportation to my practical assignments,” Yasuri says.
Originally from Ometepe Island in Lake Cocibolca, Yasuri wasn’t the first in her family to go to university, but she was the first to attend one of the most prestigious universities in Nicaragua. Her academic efforts, however, were abruptly cut short in August 2018.
“The first person I thought of was my mother, all the sacrifice she made to support me through five years of my degree,” Yasuri recalls. She doesn’t even know who sat on the commission that arbitrarily decided to expel her, without giving her the chance to defend herself.
Her “sin” was providing medical aid to students injured during police repression. Because of the violence, she spent several months in hiding until she finally left for Costa Rica, hopeful she could resume her studies—never imagining how hard the path would be.
“I tried to get into the University of Costa Rica twice, but without a support network to help me stay afloat in this new country, I had to choose between studying or working, because starting the degree would’ve meant devoting all my time to it,” she explains.
She applied for scholarship programs to cover her expenses, but at that time there was little awareness in Costa Rica—especially in academia—of the situation faced by Nicaraguan exiles. “They asked for a lot of requirements,” Potoy says.
Faced with these obstacles and the urgency of earning a living, Yasuri had to put her studies on hold. It wasn’t until 2021 that the hope of becoming a professional returned when Pablo Freire University offered her a scholarship for online study. That’s when she decided to begin a degree in Psychology. However, her joy was short-lived: in February 2022, the Ortega regime revoked the university’s legal status, and she lost everything she had accomplished.
“I have no official record from Pablo Freire University; all I have are my memories, my recollection that I studied there, because everything was stripped from them,” she laments.
At the end of 2023, Yasuri won a scholarship from the International Network for Human Rights Europe (RIDHE) to study Psychology at the Central University of Costa Rica. She’s currently in her eighth term of the bachelor’s program.
“This scholarship has been a ray of hope—a door toward the pursuit of justice. I, Yasuri, will not stop until I seek justice for the right that was violated and denied to me. And I believe that through this education, I’ll be able to continue raising my voice wherever I am,” she declares.
Yasuri believes that resuming her studies in such adverse conditions is an act of resistance—a way to say “to the dictatorship that we are educating ourselves, we are strengthening our skills, because we are going to return to Nicaragua prepared. We will have all the tools to help build a society where respect for human rights, equality, freedom of expression, university autonomy, and access to quality education without partisan ideologies prevails—a society where critical thinking is truly developed,” she reflects.
“No matter how old I am or what year it is. I will graduate as an obstetric nurse from UNAN–Managua. Because that is my dream,” she declares.
“They didn’t destroy my dream of studying”
Expelled and without documents, Heyling Marenco faced multiple losses in Costa Rica. Now she is studying Psychology, rekindling her dream thanks to a scholarship.
In Costa Rica, Heyling Marenco has endured several losses. The loss of arriving in a new country without documents or family. The loss of missing out—twice—on the chance to graduate in Social Work, the degree she had nearly completed at UNAN, once because of her unjust expulsion, and again when the other university that gave her a second chance was shut down. She tells her story in the first person:
“It was a long process to accept that a chapter of my life was definitely over, but that my life didn’t end there. It was hard to understand and come to terms with that.
I didn’t have any family here. It was a new country where I didn’t even understand the currency. All I had heard about Costa Rica were stories from my neighbors who came to work here in December, but they never mentioned how expensive this country is.
That meant I had to work to pay for food and housing, and it was incredibly challenging because of how costly everything is here. Soon after, the pandemic hit, and I had to reinvent my life all over again. So for a while, I just focused on surviving and put my university dreams on hold.
Still, continuing my education was always important to me. So, I took short courses unrelated to Social Work, but more focused on human rights and activism, and those helped me a lot.
In 2021, I tried to resume my degree a second time—starting from scratch—at Pablo Freire University. But again, the dream was snatched away when the university lost its legal status. I experienced it with less grief that time and focused on working and organizing as a feminist.
Over those four years, I made use of the tools I had gained in my Social Work studies. Even if they aren’t documented on paper, or signed, stamped, and notarized, that knowledge cannot be taken from me—not by the regime, nor the university. They will never be able to take away my intelligence or everything I’ve learned.
Last year, in 2024, I won a scholarship from the International Network for Human Rights Europe (RIDHE), and that’s how—finally, after many years—I returned to university. I didn’t have access to my academic records; the only document I had was my high school diploma, and it wasn’t even notarized. I had to explain my entire situation to the university, that as a refugee I couldn’t access many documents and couldn’t even notarize what I had. In the end, they understood.
With this new beginning, I decided to study Psychology. First, because I had already tried twice to finish Social Work and couldn’t—so maybe life is telling me to let it go. And second, because through my personal journey I discovered that Psychology is a powerful tool for the kind of nation-building Nicaragua needs.
I’m now close to finishing my first year at the Central University of Costa Rica. I’m very happy and making the most of this scholarship. It’s been challenging because I study at night after a full day of work and other responsibilities. The advantage is that for now, I work as a consultant, which gives me the flexibility to prioritize my studies.
Without this scholarship, I probably wouldn’t be studying. In public universities, you must choose between working or studying. And private ones are far too expensive. I don’t have the resources to pay for the university I’m currently attending.
But what excites me most is that, beyond finally having a diploma, it’s about proving to the dictatorship—or to those who decided to expel us—that they didn’t crush my dream of studying, learning, and growing in the field I love: social work.”
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.