The story of Kevin Martínez evidences the persecution experienced by members of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, which keeps more than 10 priests imprisoned, including the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez. .
Kevin Martínez, is 17 years old and is originally from Diriomo. He grew up in the middle of a low-income family that professes the Catholic religion. Since he was four years old, his grandfather took him to church activities, and he became devoted to the Virgin of Candelaria, the patron saint of his municipality.
Related news: Continuous police attacks forced the altar boy Kevin Martínez to flee Nicaragua
At the age of five, Kevin went to a church in Diriomo and said he wanted to serve as an altar boy. His grandfather spoke with the parish priest and they accepted him. From that day on, he officially became an altar boy of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church.
Little by little he became known among the priests of the area and some time later, he was sent to the San Pedro Apóstol Major Seminary in Diriá, to help an exorcist priest. Later, they sent him to Nandaime to help in the Jesús Nazareno parish, where he met Father Manuel Salvador García, the first priest that the dictatorship arrested, tried and sentenced for allegedly assaulting a woman.
against the altar boy
At the beginning of last year, Martínez was located in the Santa Ana de Nandaime parish and while serving as an altar boy, he studied high school. One day in May, he received a call from an unknown number and when he answered, a woman who identified herself as the deputy commissioner of the Nandaime Police, Cecilia Rodríguez, told him that she needed him to deliver a summons to Father Manuel Salvador García.
Martinez went to pick up the citation and then handed it to the father. “He opened it, read it and tore it up. He threw it in the trash, ”Kevin recalls, and from that day on, the priest had to leave the parish to take refuge in a safe place. He knew they would come for him.
On May 30 of that year, sympathizers of the regime reported to the residents of Nandaime that the father had allegedly beaten a woman. Martínez believes that the dictatorship was looking for reasons to imprison him and other religious, as it did in the end. “Before they followed him,” he said.
The priest had to move from the Jesús Nazareno parish to another parish or to relatives, but the dictatorship followed him. Martínez was commissioned to go accompany a layman to take care of her, but the other man never arrived, so the altar boy was alone for several days in the temple.
The dawn that looked at Avellán
In the early morning of May 31, while Martínez was sleeping in the parish, the noise of several trucks in the street woke him up. He leaned out of a window and realized that there were several patrol cars with police officers and canine technical dogs. From the window, he identified Deputy Commissioner Rodríguez and Commissioner Ramón Avellán, who knocked on the door of the parish.
The altar boy was scared, but just the same, he opened the door. “Give us the father. We already know that he is here, ”Avellan told him. He replied that the priest was not in the place at that time.
“The father had already left, so the police chief told me to face the consequences, because he believed that I was hiding him. ´If you are lying to me, I will come back for you,’ he threatened me, ”says Martínez. Minutes later, Commissioner Avellán withdrew from the scene, but gave the order to some agents to stay in case the father appeared to take him away.
Father García was arrested hours later. They kidnapped him and took him to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, better known as “El Nuevo Chipote.” Martínez only learned of the arrest the following day. He did not know what to do. He was in charge of the parish, but he was afraid that, just like his father, they would bring him. He did not leave the place for several days, suffering the siege of the police and paramilitaries that prowled the area, until they ordered him to return to the Santa Ana parish.
exiled on new year
On December 24, months after the arrest of Father García, Martinez was unable to visit his family in Diriomo because he had to help at the Christmas mass, in addition to broadcasting it on social networks from the Santa Ana parish. However , they gave him off on the 31st to spend New Years with his family.
Before going to Diriomo, on December 30, the altar boy was sent to a parish in Moyogalpa, on the island of Ometepe, to support a priest with that day’s mass. On the morning of the 31st, he was free and took a ferry from the island to San Jorge and then moved to Rivas to take a bus that would take him to Diriomo.
Kevin says that that day he was wearing his altar boy suit in a bag, which broke and the garment fell to the ground. The young man stopped, lifted the suit and spread it out to shake off the dust, and suddenly, a police patrol stopped in front of him.
A police officer got out, asked for his ID and after verifying his name, hit him in the pit of the stomach. “Too bad you’re not 18, because if you weren’t, you’d already be well guarded,” the policeman told him, while the young man writhed on the floor in pain. He never understood the reason for such aggression, but he believes it was because of his religious outfit.
forced to flee
Afterwards, the policemen withdrew from the place, but they did not return the ID. At that moment, Martínez was afraid to return to Diriomo by bus because he thought that on the way, they could take him into custody, so he decided to go to the border with Costa Rica.
He arrived at the border around noon and several people approached him to offer their coyote services. “I had no money to pay. They told me to give them my cell phone and they crossed me, ”he recounts.
A woman offered him help when he told her that he was an altar boy and the dictatorship was following him. Kevin joined a group of about 20 people until they were detained by immigration agents from Costa Rica and since he was a minor and did not have identification, they took him to an immigration office.
Related news: Justice of Ortega sentences Father Manuel García to two years in prison
The young man told the agents his situation and told them that he wanted to request refuge in Costa Rica, because he feared being arrested in Nicaragua. The agents carried out the process and communicated through a video call with his family. Kevin’s father told them that he had an aunt in Costa Rica, who could receive him for a while, but since he was a minor, the immigration agents had to take him to the National Children’s Board (PANI), which is an institution Costa Rican in charge of the welfare of minors.
At 7:00 p.m. on December 31, while families in Nicaragua were celebrating the last day of the year, he was transferred to Guanacaste, to a PANI headquarters. There, they took his testimony and together with the security guard and two other girls, he received the year 2023. In the morning, once they verified that his aunt could receive him in San José, the Costa Rican capital, they left him go.
Today he lives in Costa Rica, with his aunt, on the outskirts of San José and recently got a job as a cameraman for a television channel, although he is still in training. Meanwhile, his family in Nicaragua hopes to see him soon. Kevin Martínez comments that her grandmother has become too sad with her exile and that she has wanted to go visit him, but since they are low-income people it is very difficult for her to make the trip.
He assures that he is informed about what is happening with the priests and laity in the country and believes that his faith was definitely worth it. “God brought me here, he protected me,” he said.
By United Voices
