Trials and Tribulations of a Nicaraguan Journalist in Exile

“Norway’s ‘migra’ doesn’t believe I’m blacklisted by the dictatorship”

My name is Solange Saballos (31 years old) and I had to wait 20 months to be interviewed by Norwegian immigration authorities (UDI), but the UDI showed skepticism regarding the political persecution I’ve faced for being part of the blacklist of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.

By Solange Saballos

HAVANA TIMES – Before the April 2018 protests plunged Nicaragua into the worst sociopolitical crisis in the last three decades, I had a normal life. I was studying, during the weekends, two bachelor’s degrees: Hispanic Language and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), and Journalism at the University of Managua (UdeM).

I have always been in love with letters. My journalistic ride started when I learned how to read and write as a child, reading the newspapers since I was 6 years old. I grew up in a house full of books, the daughter of a journalist and writer whose machismo ended with many of my dreams, but not my will to write stories. 

But it wasn’t until I was 22 years old, that I decided to rebel against my family’s lack of support of who I really was, ditching 5 years of Biology Science studies to become a cultural journalist. After that I moved in with my ex’s family house and would spend the week studying hard and working as a freelancer in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua.

Despite my internal flame, Managua was a place that didn’t welcome my efforts and just gave me more and more challenges. Nevertheless, I had my own blog about art and cultural journalism called Palmerando for some years, and zero knowledge about how to make it work for me economically.

Managua, a semi-destroyed city immersed in chaos and trash, is my hometown. I was born there 2 years after the Sandinistas lost the general elections against a woman, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. 

I was a baby of the post-war and a millennial who received many promises about the future, as well as criticism growing up regarding “how lucky, selfish and spoiled” we were by a whole generation of traumatized parents that managed to survive the 80s civil war in Nicaragua.

Before 2018, I was like any other Nicaraguan student, adding the challenges of being a female that decided to expose herself to the public with any other support or conviction than “I was born to write”. Slowly and without any famous last name or family, I was becoming known as an independent cultural journalist and manager. My dreams started to come true.

All this changed drastically in April 2018, when I decided to go out and protest in civic marches along with thousands of Nicaraguans because the police began to murder students by orders of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. From one day to another, I went from being a student and cultural journalist to becoming a citizen journalist and human rights activist. 

It sounds so far away when I tell many of these stories to my Norwegian husband and friends in Bergen. I can see in their innocent eyes that they have been sheltered from the horrors of the rest of the world in the pacific and uptight Norwegian society. I envy them, but I also tell myself that I’d be better prepared in case my whole world crumbles again and I have to start all over on another side of the world.

When I came to Norway it was late summer, but I felt like it was freezing in late August 2019. I came alone from Guatemala, the country that received me as an exile for the first time. The Norwegian Student-At-Risk scholarship that I got came as a late reward for a young woman coming from a country whose whole political history has been knitted to extreme violence, dictatorships, and wars.

Because this was my plan, right? I was just 14 years old when the Sandinistas got back the presidential power in 2006. I cried in front of the TV and made a vow to myself: I’d exile if things got as bad as Mom described to me in her horrible teenage stories: picking coffee to support a supposed revolution, without being able to do anything other than support the revolution; being attacked and called an agent of the empire or the CIA for questioning the methods of the Sandinista commanders, or seeing her childhood friends return from the war against “La Contra” in heavy coffins that when opened only contained banana leaves for weight.

I never imagined, at that age, that I would end up living in exile, much less in a Viking land after applying for the most improbable scholarship, from a miserable room in one of the most dangerous zones of Guatemala City: zone 7. 

I will always be grateful to the Guatemalans who trusted that I was not a guerrillera, but a hopeless romantic of social changes. I am still happy that they allowed us to live in a small laundry room in the backyard of a big, colonial house they occasionally subleased to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In those circumstances, what was the possibility that Norway would accept me? I was expelled from my state university, living from charity, and completely broken down. And still… Norway chose me.

Ironically, Norway is the same country that returned my right to education which today doubts my testimony.

Context on the protests of April 2018 in Nicaragua

Since April 2018, Nicaragua has been going through a sociopolitical crisis that has also become a human rights crisis, which began as civic protests against a major fire in the Indio Maíz natural reserve, and later against some social security reforms. 

The current government of Nicaragua, headed by the couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, has been accused, on repeated occasions, of crimes against humanity. These crimes have been so serious that the current Nicaragua under the dictatorship has been compared to Hitler’s Nazi Germany by German investigators from the United Nations, due to the viciousness with which they have carried out their repression against Nicaraguan citizens.

Murders, disappearances, torture, rape, espionage, and forced exile, among others. These abuses have been carried out by the National Police, the National Army, and other Nicaraguan authorities, as well as illegal paramilitary groups, who are sympathizers of Sandinismo, the political ideology of the Ortega-Murillo regime.

I’m back to the present: I’m having a video call at an asylum center, two hours away from Bergen, my hometown since I came to Norway. I’m talking with an agent of the Norwegian “migra” (UDI in Norwegian), and the assistance of a Spanish interpreter which I immediately recognize as a Spaniard, the closest I can get to my mestizo roots in the Scandinavian public sector. There are not many Latin Americans in Norway, and it’s hard for us to ascend to such important positions.

I tried to explain to the Norwegian “migra” agent that the Nicaraguan state is totally controlled by the dictatorial couple at every level: from the neighborhood committees (CPC) that they used to spy on opposition neighbors, to the high command of the national army, and that the situation has worsened over the years. We are practically like in North Korea.

The consequences: arbitrary expulsion from the university and forced exile

From the beginning, I joined the massive civic protests in Managua that demanded the resignation of dictator Daniel Ortega and vice-dictator Rosario Murillo. I documented these protests with my photographer who is also my former partner and is currently in exile as a refugee in the Netherlands.

He stayed after acting with me in a theater play about the torture of political prisoners in Nicaragua. This had to be performed in exile, in the Netherlands. I wish I could say it was cool to travel around the original Dutch land denouncing a dictator, but the director of the play was a psycho himself, and the Dutch people financing it couldn’t care less about our finances or mental state after being kicked out of Nicaragua. 

Receiving just 500 euros out of the 1000 euros without the benefits we were promised, I felt trafficked to this European land for three months from April to July 2019. No contract more than some loose pages until I demanded it, speeches and “intentions” full of bullshit. After 3 months, I was free of this so-called “moral duty” of performing for a bunch of Nicaragua 1980s nostalgic Dutch people, and I went back to Guatemala before traveling to Norway.

My mind wanders through this fragmented memory. Yes, it’s 2018 again and I’m in Managua with my ex-partner and photographer, creating a historical report of the events derived from the April insurrection from a citizen and self-summoned journalism perspective. We are autoconvocados, as thousands of Nicaraguans called themselves in an attempt to create distance between us as citizens and the traditional economic interests and political parties that tried to take advantage of April’s insurrection.

We subsequently collaborated with other journalists, political groups, and human rights organizations to internationally denounce the crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship.

In May 2018, the Nicaraguan students were really angry about the repression and murders ordered by Ortega-Murillo: many students from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) decided to take over this university in protest of the murders of students at the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI), barricading themselves inside the campus.

I briefly participated in this episode of collective madness trying to help with the internal organization of the students’ cells that were inside the campus, and within communications. But the corruption that took over the UPOLI students’ occupation started to lurk inside UNAN, and I was forced to leave the central campus (called Rubén Darío), accused of being a double agent for criticizing (and publishing) about the moral decline of our fight for justice. 

At this point, authoritarianism had also become part of many of the emerging student movements that started to pop up, as a reaction to internal disagreements and the influence of our political history.

I already knew that the UNAN-Managua authorities, loyal supporters of Ortega and Murillo, wouldn’t forgive us. Through a Special Commission that did not exist in its regulations, the UNAN-Managua authorities made a list of the students who participated in the taking and occupation of the Ruben Dario campus, ordering our expulsion in an arbitrary process. I did not receive any notification.

I had just found out after watching the news: the journalists were reporting that the police were capturing and imprisoning the students who participated in the occupation. I wondered: “Am I part of that list of expelled students?” As I checked the student web of UNAN-Managua, I realized I was in danger.

The university’s authorities are cunning. They did not immediately reveal who was expelled, and the names of the unlucky students were collected by other students who were creating a report about the human rights violations that the dictatorship was executing towards our right of freedom of speech, and the legal procedures that should be followed if a student has committed offenses of any kind. The procedures that the public universities already had in their academic regulations.

It didn’t matter. I lost not just 4 years of study (again) but my whole life. I lost it all, 26 years of life, in less than a few months.

For this reason, I was forced to request international protection in Norway in August 2022. I did so after completing my master’s degree in Spanish language and Latin American studies with the thesis Cyberactivism of Nicaraguan Communities in Spain as a reaction to the April 2018 Insurrection. 

However, I wasn’t able to speak with immigration authorities until April 23, 2024. It was 20 months of anxiety, panic attacks, and meltdowns. My Nicaraguan friends that I met in exile were supportive: “Be grateful you didn’t have to live in the asylum center”, they said. Even though I know it’s true, the waiting time still hurts. Did you forget about me, Norway? Don’t you want me around anymore? I thought I could call you home…

Norwegian immigration authorities are skeptical about blacklists

I dare to point out that the immigration authorities of the Immigration Directorate (UDI for its acronym in Norwegian) are skeptical about the blacklists drawn up by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship to repress any Nicaraguan citizen who opposes the authoritarianism of their government.

I choose to believe it’s due to their Norwegian naivety. After all, why a state would dedicate itself to persecuting, imprisoning, or murdering its citizens simply for having an opinion different from theirs? That doesn’t make any sense. Well, dear Norway, for the Nicaraguan dictatorship that’s their way to confront criticism. 

According to the latest report by Landinfo (Norwegian public institution working for UDI) titled “Nicaragua: Blacklists by Nicaraguan authorities on opposition figures” (Nicaragua: Nicaraguanske myndigheters svartelister over opposisjonelle in Norwegian), they say they cannot verify the existence of these blacklists since there is no official document of the Nicaraguan government in this regard, and that they have learned about them from different sources, both oral and from documents prepared by human rights organizations.

Do they seriously believe that double-faced, hypocritical Sandinistas would accept their crimes? They have never done it, and they won’t now after crafting their narrative as an innocent state that is facing a coup attempt, financed by the United States.

When I had my interview, I was ready. I prepared for many years, way before applying for asylum myself when I had to assist Nicaraguan exiles that were abandoned by the Nicaraguan opposition. 

“This is going to be the most important interview of your life”, says my Nica friend. Is it? Begging to become adopted by this cold land makes me feel more arrogant than ever: I didn’t choose this life. I love Nicaragua, I miss home…

During the first part of the interview, the UDI agent acts like “the good cop”: she seems shocked about the triple diagnosis I got in Norway. I was diagnosed with PSTD and two neurodiverse conditions: Asperger and TDAH, at the psychiatric unit (DPS) of Haukeland Hospital, Bergen. She gives me the impression that she is more concerned about this than the crimes against humanity that the Nicaraguan dictatorship orders against people like me, students with no power other than their voices and dreams.

She keeps listening, carefully, to my whole story. I can review it quickly after repeating it more than a million times over 6 years. And, after 5 years in Norway, I can understand both the UDI agent and my interpreter at the same time. I hear the Norwegian language mixing with my mother tongue in the accent of the Spanish colonizers and my mixed heritage, while I try to make eye contact with both. It’s surreal.

My Norwegian husband and friends seem impressed and even delighted by this natural, defiant attitude that all the Nicaraguans I introduced to them seemed to have. They are charmed by the daring pride we have after losing it all and reconstructing ourselves in a new land. Now we are Nica Vikings. I hope the UDI agent can appreciate it too.

In the second part of the interview, the UDI agent started to behave like “the bad cop”, questioned me repeatedly and even assured me that I was not part of this blacklist because I was able to leave legally, stamping my passport in Honduras after crossing the Guasaule (Nicaragua-Honduras) border at the end of September 2018.

She says this, ignoring that the next day I was crossing the border, the police had already captured more students and tortured them at that same moment. One of its most gruesome tortures was raping a medical student. Thirty police officers were cowardly enough to carry out this inhumanity just because she did not want to tell them who were barricaded in the universities. I know I shouldn’t, but I feel guilty.

I tried to explain to her that this was because, at that time, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship could not violate private companies, and that I escaped with my photographer to Guatemala taking a bus from the private company Ticabus, approximately a week after seeing on the news that the dictatorship was capturing all the students who had participated in the takeover of UNAN-Managua, and confirming my expulsion by accessing the UNAN-Managua student portal.

This white Norwegian lady did not understand that, if I had left illegally, my life would have been much more difficult as an undocumented exile in Guatemala, where attacks on undocumented migrants are a serious problem. For this reason, my photographer and I decided to take the risk of crossing the border legally. Sorry I didn’t have a dramatic escape as UDI expected, I was sneaky and could hide well until this dead end: exile.

Read more from Nicaragua here on Havana Times.