PEN Nicaragua is one of the 1,206 NGOs whose legal personality has been canceled by the Sandinista regime so far in 2022. However, the dictatorship’s measure came a year late: the organization —which promoted culture and reading in the country— suspended operations at the beginning of February 2021. For the former president of PEN Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli, the illegalization of more than a thousand NGOs “has a very big impact, because they are annulling, destroying and wanting to crush civil society, and everything that that means.”
PEN Nicaragua closed in response to the entry in force of the Foreign Agents Law, approved on October 15, 2020, and which is used by the regime to justify the cancellation of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). From December 2018 to date, the dictatorship has outlawed 1,280 NGOs.
In an interview with the program TonightBelli regrets the persecution of the regime against writersNicaraguan musicians and artists; and stresses that harassment occurs “because we have a voice that the people listen to” and “because through poetry and music a very direct and very emotional communication with people is achieved.”
The Nicaraguan writer also speaks of regime attacks on religious leaders and the closure of Catholic media outlets. “They are playing a very dirty card for them (Orteguism), because the Catholic Church has a specific weight (…) And that lying speech by Rosario Murillo, wanting to create a pagan religion, where she is the high priestess, is also very It’s clear to see it”, affirms the author exiled in Spain.
The regime, through its Spanish embassy, blocked his participation in the Celebremos Iberoamérica Festival in Madrid, organized by the Organization of Ibero-American States for Science and Culture. How do you interpret this veto?
What they are doing is absurd, it seems to me that it is unprecedented, trying to get a State to use diplomacy to repress a writer who is not participating in that talk, at a table that he was going to have with Élida Piñón and Mónica Ojeda, as Nicaraguan representative. I am there as a Nicaraguan writer, speaking of the writer as a traveler. Imagine, the topic had nothing to do with politics. They are wanting to extend the black hand of the dictatorship to lands that do not belong to them; use diplomacy to repress Nicaraguan writers and artists outside its borders. It’s a bad precedent.
In February 2021 you closed the Nicaraguan chapter of Pen International. A year and a half later, there are already more than a thousand NGOs cancelled, including the Nicaraguan Academy of Language. What repercussions does this dismantling of cultural promotion spaces have?
Inside Nicaragua it has a very big impact, because they are annulling, destroying and wanting to crush civil society, and everything that that means. It means the organization capacity of the people to achieve things they need: culture, education, water, as had been done for a long time. At the foreign level, it means that they are losing prestige more every day.
“parallel reality”
The regime also undertook, last April, a hunt against Nicaraguan musicians and producers. Why do you think they persecute artists in Nicaragua?
Because we have a voice that the people listen to. Because through poetry and music a very direct and very emotional communication with people is achieved. Let’s see what happened in the Revolution in Nicaragua in the 70’s, for example, the music of Carlos Mejía was very important, that of Luis Enrique; the poetry of so many poets who spoke of the revolution, Ernesto Cardenal. They know that it has a significant impact on the hearts of the people, and what they are trying to do is an unusual thing: put a barrier around the hearts of the people, isolate the heart of Nicaragua from its feelings, make them believe that it exists a parallel reality.
It has affected me very much Rosario Murillo is celebrating 2018 as a milestone in history, saying that they managed to defeat a coup. It is enough for anyone to see the number of people who demonstrated in those days to realize that this was not a coup, that it was a popular expression of repudiation of what they were doing. The hypocrisy, the manipulation, the falsehood with which they are creating that discourse, and preventing anyone else from intervening. They are closing all the spaces where people can receive a different discourse, that seems atrocious to me.
What do you think is the objective of imposing an official message that also uses the historical symbols of the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship?
It is a propaganda manipulation, it is what Donald Trump does, what authoritarian governments do in other parts of the world. People have to be clear that they are trying to brainwash them, they are trying to invent a reality that does not exist.
Does it have an audience? Do you think it has any impact on the population?
There is something insidious about that kind of information handling. And if they take away everything, another channel of information, then, logically, you have an ear for that kind of thing. And people want to be calm, they want to live in peace.
That is the most terrible thing, it is like trying to eat away at the conscience of the Nicaraguan people. I trust the Nicaraguan people. It is how people in the Soviet Union lived for many years, with a speech that they did not believe later. That speech by Rosario Murillo is completely contrary to what she is doing, and that dissonance between reality and what she says, people cannot stop seeing.
Attacks on the Catholic Church
The regime also focused its repression against the Catholic Church, with the persecution and imprisonment of priests; and we see at this moment, the attack on a parish in Sébaco, on Father Uriel Vallejos. Can the regime replace the Catholic Church?
I think not, absolutely. They are playing a very shabby card for them, because the Catholic Church has a specific weight, in each parish, each priest has his specific weight. And that lying speech by Rosario Murillo, wanting to create a pagan religion, where she is the high priestess, is also very clear. It is very clear to see that a person who is talking about God, the Virgin, order to burn an image, he orders to attack religious that the people love, he orders to close the Catholic radio stations. How far are these people going to go in this vengeful madness, of wanting to seize all control of Nicaragua and not mind violating all the rules, all the ways of existing that we Nicaraguans have had? That seems stupid to me, in a way, because people can’t be buying that. If people don’t stand up right now it’s because they can be killed, and the only force this government has is the Army and the Police.
What does the regime gain from these attacks on religious, with this campaign against these respected and supported symbols in their communities? Does it have, perhaps, the support among Sandinistas?
I think there is a group that follows them and swallows that speech, in a certain way. It is very difficult to swallow that speech. That happened in the Revolution in the 1980s. I have to accept that what was done in the Revolution never seemed right to me, but it was done. And what happened? The people did not buy it, that is, the people, the moment they had the opportunity to vote in a clean election, got rid of the Sandinista Revolution. The Sandinista Revolution made the same mistakes that they are making now.
The IACHR rapporteur for Nicaragua has emphasized how in Nicaragua there is a dictatorship and an attempt to silence all voices. Can the regime pull it off?
No. Because we are in another world, in another technology; people have cell phones, they have other ways of getting information. You guys (CONFIDENTIAL on YouTube), for example, with three hundred and a thousand followers who listen to them; there is a need for people to hear other points of view that are more like their own.
That Cristiana Chamorro came out with 54% acceptance (in a recent Cid-Gallup poll), tells you that people are not buying everything that the Ortegas and Murillo are saying; and that they are going to fail, they cannot succeed with that cruelty, that human misery that they have shown with the political prisoners, with the priests, with all the values that we most love in Nicaragua: the value of the homeland, love… They have crushed everything, they have crushed it, and the people are clear about that. Why did so many people go out in 2018? I had never seen that capacity, that spontaneous gathering, of people from all social strata, who came together to repudiate Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega.
