In the months of June and July 2018, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo deployed an irregular army outside the law to viciously crush the civic insurrection, which put the dictatorship in check with a citizen strike for almost three months.
The so-called “cleaning operation” carried out by police and paramilitaries in the UNAN Managua, in Monimbó and the municipalities of Masaya, Carazo and the rest of the country, left dozens dead, wounded and thousands of exiles.
Four years after the bloody operation against the unarmed civilian population, the dictatorship celebrates the massacre, alleging that the social outbreak that demanded democratic change was an attempted coup. Meanwhile, the victims of the repression, the mothers of those murdered, demand justice without impunity.
Four victims of the repression spoke with CONFIDENTIAL from exile, on the fourth anniversary of the brutal attack, and told how they lived those days.
“They shot us to death”
Nydia Elisa Monterrey Guillén, former entrenched in the UNAN Managua.
On July 13 there were already few people who had remained entrenched until that moment. The outlook was sad. There was an air of death, but we still couldn’t imagine the impact, until at noon we began to hear the shots… Paramilitaries, paramilitaries! And the bombardment begins there, pa pa pa pa pa!
We believed in many moments that they were going to kill us. It was a bummer at all times. Then we managed to take refuge in the Divina Misericordia church. They cut off the water service. They cut off the electricity service. The conversations between those of us who were there was: Where do you think they come in? Do you think they enter through this door or the other? If they enter or when they enter, how do we get on? Shall we hold hands? We don’t hug, we run, what will we do?
My family, my friends imagined me in a coffin, they even thought about what our arrival in a coffin in Bluefields was going to be like.
We need justice. It is an entire country affected with each one of these murders during Operation Clean-up.
“We withstood 13 hours of fire”
Dulce Porras, self-summoned from Jinotepe. She showed solidarity and supported the citizen strike.
That is an unforgettable moment for me. On July 8, 2018, when I woke up at 5:30 am, they called me to tell me to leave my house, because there was going to be an operation by the Army and the Police in Nicaragua, in the municipalities taken over by the people. where there was more resistance. We went to ask for shelter at the Santiago Apóstol parish at six in the morning. At 6:30 am they were massacring the boys who were at the roadblocks.
This was horrible, horrible. It was an unequal war of young people with mortar lances, against a well-armed army… and then we began to receive the news of the dead.
We endured 13 hours of fire. We resist. The people took to the streets to defend the youth. What do they say they were armed? No man, the town of Jinotepe has been a town of courage, a brave town.
The feeling that awakens four years is horrible. I feel that this duel, I have not been able to close it. As long as there is no justice for everything they did to us, for all those mothers whose children’s lives were taken from them, there cannot be a closed duel. Because that’s going to be going to be there for life.
“If there is no justice, the people will not have peace”
Óscar Manuel Cortés, former FSLN combatant and self-summoned in Masaya.
We were clear, and the experience we have as historical combatants, because we come from the Somocismo struggle: “Operation Cleanup” is that there was nothing left, no evidence, because everything had to be cleaned up.
I always found myself barricaded in Don Olinto Valle’s street. We were prepared for what could come to us. They resisted with what little they had like mortars, contact bombs. Here four years later, the struggle was not in vain, because the people shook off all that injustice like what is being committed now.
In 2018 the town exploded, as it exploded with Somoza. Unfortunately we fell into another dictatorship and worse than Somoza’s because we lived through it. The people showed that the people have the power… they did it in a spectacular way. Those marches that they say “puchitos”, no, the people were there claiming their rights that had been cutting their rights for a long time.
It was not something organized as the Government says that there was a coup. Ortega gave the coup d’état a long time ago.
If there is no justice, the people will not have peace.
“We will continue our fight for justice”
Susana López, mother of Gerald Vázquez, murdered during Operation Clean-up at UNAN-Managua.
For me, the cleaning operation was the worst thing that I experienced. I never expected to be a victim of repression, a victim of the Nicaraguan State. What my son wanted was freedom for Nicaragua.
Every July 13 of each year, the 13 of each month, for me it is very sad… I would like to disappear on the 13 of each month. – Mom, you know that I love you very much, my friends are going to need me. I’m going to be here because it’s just what we university students are fighting for – I remember that he gave me a big hug, and told me: I love you, you’ll see that I’ll be back soon.
He left me a letter telling me to take care of his sisters, to support them, that we were going to start the fresco business again, that he wanted freedom for Nicaragua and that he was going to return.
As the mother of Gerald Vázquez, I will always be firm. We will continue our fight. We know that the State of Nicaragua has many ways of wanting to destroy us, but we as mothers are going to remain firm.
