Exiled Nicaraguan Students: “Hard to Consider Returning”
Three students and two exiled professionals explain why going back to Nicaragua isn’t in their plans, as they contemplate a future far from their native land.
By Ivan Olivares (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Six years after the 2018 April Rebellion and the violent government repression that followed, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have gone into exile. Many of the younger members of that diaspora have resumed their studies in the countries that took them in. Now, seeing that the repression hasn’t ceased, they view a return to Nicaragua as ever more difficult.
While, at first, the dream was to continue studying and be ready to return and support the reconstruction of a freed Nicaragua, the passage of the years and the conviction that the dictatorship is going to last for a long time is leading many of them to leave that dream behind.
“There are all kinds [of exiles]. There are kids who already said goodbye to the country and have no interest in returning. There are others who are studying here, with their minds set on returning. As in any process of exile – and we’ve seen this historically – some will stay, others will return, but in the end it’s the homeland that loses,” explains a Nicaraguan educator, now in Costa Rica.
It’s estimated that over 800,000 Nicaraguans are now living out of the country. As many as half of them left for exile after the regime led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered the Police and paramilitary to use bullets to quelch the demonstrations of protesting citizens demanding freedom, justice and democracy.
Flor and Gustavo are two Nicaraguans over 40, both with Master’s degrees in Law. Although they still love their country, they’ve opted to continue their lives in other places – she in the US, and he in Spain. They’re well aware that their return to Nicaragua isn’t something that’s just around the corner.
“I live with my suitcase under the bed, always thinking how I might return, but after so many years, Nicaragua isn’t any better off. You can imagine this continuing for any number of years. The regime is set on not allowing even the tiniest pinch of organization, and only by being organized can we construct something like opposition,” Flor says. She adds: “you need to be where you have peace.” Although she wishes that place were Nicaragua, she fears that “ours is a failed system.”
For his part, Gustavo recognizes, “I haven’t been able to break away from my culture, nor from Nicaragua. In my house, we maintain the Nicaraguan traditions: our food, our way of talking – we maintain that a hundred percent. I’m proud to be Nica, but going back to live in Nicaragua – no, I think not. That’s not because I feel detached, but because I see reality, and it’s that the Ortega dictatorship isn’t going to fall.”
From a Master’s in Law to legal aide
Flor is an older woman, married and mother of four. She’s passionate about the law and about Nicaragua, the country she had to leave three years ago, when the government’s pursuit of all those who opposed it increased in intensity. Her destination was the United States, where she managed to settle with her family nucleus, waiting for the waters to calm.
But the waters never calmed. Instead, the sociopolitical situation in Nicaragua has continued deteriorating, to the point where 5,500 non-profit organizations have been shuttered, including hundreds of religious and trade associations.
While this was going on, and in the face of the need to generate an income to support her children’s studies, Flor found out that she herself had to return to the classroom, because her two Master’s from Nicaragua had no value in the United States.
“Here, you have to be certified. You can have 20 years of experience and five titles from your country, but outside of Nicaragua those diplomas are worthless. You have to get certified and have a credential issued here. Even if you’ve been a respected professional in your country, you get no recognition,” she explains.
Though she had some doubts about starting all over again at her age, the sad advice of an exiled Cuban resolved her hesitations. He cautioned her: “don’t let what happened to us Cubans happen to you. We came here thinking we’d soon be going back to our country. Sixty years passed, and we never got anywhere, but because of that, we never made a life here, or in our country.”
With that thought, she decided not to let that happen to her. “With a heavy heart, I decided to take night classes, using the economic resources I should have put into the education of my children, not my own,” she notes.
Her current goal – notwithstanding her college diploma and two Nicaraguan Master’s – is to obtain her certification as a paralegal, or lawyer’s aide. “Not to be a lawyer, but a lawyer’s aide,” she repeats with resignation.
Answering the telephone, with a Master’s degree
Gustavo left Nicaragua in the middle of the last decade to enter a Civil Rights Master’s degree program, thanks to a scholarship that also allowed him to bring his close family. In 2018, when he was ready to return with his diploma under his arm, the family suggested that he delay his trip for a few days, and wait for the hurricane to pass. That never happened.
The days became weeks, and then months, while he waited for the right moment to return to Nicaragua. Then the repression turned murderous, having presidential aspirations became treason, and instead of scattered economic migration, large-scale exile began.
When it became clear he couldn’t return soon, he wanted to make use of his Master’s in Civil Rights. However, he was told he had to present proof of his college degree. He communicated with the authorities from Nicaragua’s Polytechnic University, where they told him they didn’t have the records, but that there was another way of resolving the issue, except that it would cost him US $2,000. He refused.
Since he couldn’t document his degree, he couldn’t validate his Master’s in Law. Holding that title gave him social recognition, but no legal status; while his degree is recognized, it doesn’t give him the capacity to exercise the law profession. “It demonstrates that I have advanced studies, that I have a Master’s, but I can’t work in the field. I work as a telephone agent, with a salary you could class as mid-range,” he states. He knows professionals with a title similar to his, who earn two to five times what he does.
He reflects: “If I were to go back to Nicaragua, it would be to visit the country and my family. I don’t see myself working there, because this dictatorship is going to last for many years more. In 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, I was still thinking about returning to Nicaragua. I yearned so badly to return. Today, yes, I want to return to a free Nicaragua, but it’s very hard now to make plans to live there, because the years go by in the place you’re in now, and you go on making your life there.”
US $80,000 to study medicine
The University in Nicaragua ended for Chava in 2019, when he decided to leave the country. Fortunately for him, he took with him his transcripts from the first and second year of Medicine in a private university. These were key to being able to overcome the numerous obstacles he encountered when he tried to continue his higher education in Costa Rica.
The first hurdle was to get over his unfamiliarity with the administrative processes he needed to complete in order to validate his high school diploma. Later came the time and expense needed to travel to San Jose to file the request, and later to decide if he should attempt the demanding entrance exam to qualify for the prestigious Costa Rican public universities, or if he would be better off paying the tuition charged by a private university.
He recalls that two roads were open to him. One, work to be able to pay the cost of studying at one of the lower-priced private universities accredited by Costa Rica’s National Council of Rectors which carries out an evaluation before accrediting each department. The other, apply to take the admissions exam at a public university, knowing how difficult it was to score high enough to classify.
“As kids who came from universities where we had studied for one or two years, what we want is to resume our university life – not begin again from nothing, and then complete those very long processes. In the end, I chose to go to a private university. However, when I went to ask about the tuition, the costs were outlandish. Five years of Medical studies cost between 25 and 40 million Costa Rican colones [approximately U.S. $50,000 – $80,000].
Determined not to give up, he chose to work while the panorama cleared. He picked coffee and worked as an assistant cook in a small restaurant, while studying to be certified as a clinical lab technician. However, he discovered that these courses meant spending the little money he had to study something he didn’t like, so he dropped out.
Later he worked for a short time in Starbucks, but was laid off during a cutback. The Covid-19 pandemic found him unemployed, until he landed a permanent job with a supermarket chain. That gave him enough job and income stability to begin his studies in a university that allowed him transfer credit for 15 of the 25 classes he had already passed, and offered him sufficient financial assistance to bear the cost of that investment.
He sees his future in Spain or Germany – countries with which his university has agreements – or perhaps in Costa Rica, but not in Nicaragua. “In the beginning, I said that when I finished my studies I’d return to Nicaragua, but we have the unknown factor of when this regime is finally going to go, and obviously I’m not going back until the dictatorship falls,” he asserts.
If he should go to Germany, and one day decide to return to Central America, it wouldn’t be to a Nicaragua in conflict, but to Costa Rica, noting that many young people are still leaving the former country and will need help, like the help he once received.
With no reason to return to Nicaragua
Sebastian Guevara (17) and Benji (27) don’t know each other. The former is from the north of Nicaragua, the latter from a town near the capital Managua. The teen left for Spain with his mother and siblings; the young adult went to Costa Rica. However, for different reasons, neither of them intend to return to settle in the country where they were born.
Sebastian was 12 and starting sixth grade when he boarded a plane to cross the Atlantic, together with his close family. They headed for Catalonia, where he was placed in secondary school.
Adapting to the Spanish educational system was “very complicated” for him at first, partly for the language [Catalan is the school language in that part of Spain]. However, the educational center assigned all the newly arrived students to a special classroom where they taught Catalan. “We learned it there, and they guided us for two years. Thanks to that, I ended up finding it super easy to study here,” he states.
Although he still has two years left before entering the university, he thinks he might study Computer Sciences, something not that distant from his old desire to study robotics. Meanwhile, he’s thinking of taking a culinary course, and admits that he could well decide to dedicate himself to that field.
Benji left behind his studies as a bookkeeper, and his two years of Law studies in a Nicaraguan public university, plus his job at a government agency, all to avoid the foreseeable sanctions he could suffer from Party authorities at his workplace, in reprisal for his unwillingness to bow down before the regime.
After almost two years living in Costa Rica, he’s had to work in construction and public service. Even though those occupations are far from the spreadsheets and law books he dedicated his attention to before leaving the country. He’s now “percolating” the goal of studying Law in Costa Rica, even knowing that a degree in that field of studies is useless in Nicaragua.
At any rate, returning to Nicaragua isn’t an option – not for Sebastian and not for him.
The teen, because he doesn’t feel comfortable adapting to a different economic reality, but also because “I always saw myself working here in Spain.”
The adult, because he feels that from Costa Rica he can support his brothers and sister better than if he returns to Nicaragua, and doesn’t discount helping his nieces to emigrate to this country as well, “so they have better opportunities than I did.”