Three months after being exiled by the Sandinista regime, the main public figure of the peasants, the opposition member Medardo Mairena, is perceived to be strong in his convictions.
The released prisoner declares himself determined and confident that he will soon return to Nicaragua to continue, according to what he said, his life in the countryside, together with his family and his people.
For this report, the peasant leader recounted that when he arrived in the United States, he received 300 dollars and has been able to survive “thanks to other Nicaraguan brothers” who opened the doors of his house to him.
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In addition, he commented that upon arriving in the conditions in which the dictatorship expelled him from the country, it has not been easy for him or for other opponents, who were not prepared for exile in this country.
“It is a new world for all of us, used to living on earth. It has been difficult, but here we are. I thank God, because he has never abandoned me both in prison and in exile, thanks to the people who have never left us alone,” Mairena said.
«Three months after exile, we continue firm, resisting, aware that there is a people that suffers, that cries, that carries its cross because of a family, the Ortega-Murillos, that has kidnapped all the powers of the State, that has kidnapped to Nicaragua,” he denounced.
“Ortega is afraid of the peasants”
According to Medardo Mairena, the dictatorship fears the peasants, as well as the popular will that in Nicaragua has decided to say no to the Ortega-Murillo family.
“Ortega has always been afraid of the peasants because we have not given up defending our land, he is afraid of running for an electoral process, like the one that was intended in 2021, you see what he did, he imprisoned the opposition leaders and obviously to the peasant leadership,” said the opponent.
The peasant leader recalled that the Ortega regime lacks legitimacy. “It is, it is illegitimate, it is a government that does not have the sympathy of the people, it is a repressive military force. His fear of the people and the terror of losing power leads him to commit crimes against humanity,” he accused.
Along with peasant exile
During the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the civic revolution of April 2018, which took place this Sunday, May 7 in Chicago, United States, a group of peasants greeted Mairena. They met with him to explain how peasants suffer persecution in Nicaraguan communities and the reasons why they had to abandon them.
One of them showed his visibly deformed arm. “This was the result of a bullet from the paramilitaries,” he said. They explained that they were at the roadblocks. “That is why we fight, so that one day there will be justice, he is our leader,” said another, referring to Mairena, while she holds her fist up.
Everyone wore a T-shirt with the image of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, Father Leonardo Urbina and Father Salvador García; the three religious who remain kidnapped by the Sandinista regime.
The peasants have been the target of persecution for decades, but their ordeal has increased since Ortega began to expropriate their lands supposedly to build the interoceanic canal. With the civic outbreak of April 2018, they went together with the students, the social group that stood up to the regime the most.
In municipalities such as Wiwilí, in Jinotega, up to 52 murdered and disappeared peasants have been documented, but there are many others that nobody knows about, because the population does not denounce them for fear of being assassinated.
They organize to promote unity
According to Mairena, the opposition continues to organize both in exile and within the country, to achieve the long-awaited unity, the release of the prisoners, the democratization of the country and the return of all the exiles.
The peasant leader assured that the movement is a bridge for everyone, “that it is not true that they are fighting” and that those who criticize them are people with little impact and commonly do so on social networks. «The fight is carried out in the territory, in the streets and in the fields. We opponents only have unity and we are looking for it, we are working on it,” he said.
Mairena was a presidential candidate for the 2021 elections, before, he was at the dialogue table, and he was kidnapped twice, the last time was to prevent him and other candidates from competing with Ortega for the presidency. Today he lives in exile, like the other 221 Nicaraguans whom the Ortega-Murillo regime expelled from the country and sent to the United States.
By United Voices
