According to lawyer Gonzalo Carrión of the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective, expressions of religious faith in Nicaragua have serious limitations imposed by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, not only against those who profess the Catholic faith but also the evangelical faith.
“The dictatorship has done everything to block these types of demonstrations and has been extremely strict in preventing processions, religious events, and masses from taking place openly. These events are under constant surveillance… to see what is said in homilies and prayers, to extinguish these expressions and acts of faith, but the faith is not extinguished. In any case, its expressions have serious limitations in the de facto prohibition of freely holding processions, pilgrimages, or any act of commemoration,” said the Nicaraguan lawyer, also exiled due to the Ortega persecution.
The Human Rights Collective, in bulletin 4 on “Freedom of religion in Nicaragua”, collected the prohibitions of religious faith that have been documented in Nicaragua since 2022, by order of the Ortega regime.
Some of the prohibitions mentioned by the defenders were the celebration of the San Sebastian festival, in Diriamba, Carazo, which the regime argued was cancelled to avoid “provocations” that affect public peace and security, and which has been banned for three consecutive years; the restriction on the departure of the image of Santa María Magdalena, in January 2022, in Monimbó; and the cancellation of the Holy Week processions last year, arguing “security reasons.”
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Citing independent media outlets, the advocates said that “at least 3,176 processions in 397 parishes” have been banned in the country, stressing that such restrictive measures have “hardly hit public displays of the Catholic faith, limiting the participation of parishioners in activities such as the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.”
Other activities that have been repressed, but locally, according to the Collective’s bulletin, were those in Chinandega and Nandaime, where the Ortega regime banned processions in honor of Santa Ana in July 2023, and in Diriá, Granada, it prevented, using the Police, the distribution of the traditional “atol de ánimas”, a drink linked to Catholic traditions, imposing that only supporters of the dictatorship could distribute and take control of said activity.
Nicaraguan parishioners defend their faith under dictatorship
So far this year, the Collective says, restrictions have continued. It mentions the case of Carazo, where the procession in honor of Mary Queen of Peace was prohibited. There, the police only allowed the image to be transported in a van, without the participation of parishioners.
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The Collective denounced that the repressive measures of the Ortega regime seem to be more aimed at repressing the Catholic Church, although they have also restricted the Evangelical Church, including with massive cancellations of its non-profit organizations.
Lawyer Carrión said that “faith is the same as dignity, the sense of belonging, conscience, and faith itself is like something inherent to the person and can be suffered in any case, which is what is happening in Nicaragua. The regime intends to block any act, expression or manifestation that includes faith, but faith itself in all people of any religious expression, whether Catholic, evangelical, any form of feeling and religious conviction proper to families, the problem is the impediment to practicing it.”
He stressed that despite all these restrictions, even within the same temples, “Nicaraguans have their way of living and practicing their faith even with these limitations. Restricted, limited and even oppressed freedom, but, I repeat, our people are wise and have already manifested a great act of expression of wanting to live in freedom and are doing so to express their religious faith in the midst of the dictatorship,” concluded the defender.
