Marlon Gerardo Sáenz Cruz, known as “Chino Enoc,” was one of more than 200 former Nicaraguan political prisoners who were recently released and sent to the United States.
However, his story is different from that of the other released. Sáenz was a recognized militant of the ruling Sandinista Front since 1977, when he was a guerrilla fighting to overthrow the government of Anastasio Somoza, overthrown in 1979. That earned him various posts in the government of Daniel Ortega.
His idyll for the Sandinista revolution and his admiration for Ortega lasted for decades, until he was imprisoned in 2022 for criticizing Ortega’s vice president and wife, Rosario Murillo, and saying he wanted to “take over the ruling party” and remove the old militancy. .
The Nicaraguan government arrested Sáenz in May 2022 and later sentenced him to almost 13 years in prison for the crimes of carrying weapons and drugs, but he says that the real reason or his “sin” was having criticized Murillo.
“We were full of confidence in Ortega”
“We were full of revolution, of love and trust in Daniel Ortega. We didn’t have our heads for anything else, we didn’t prepare ourselves to look at anything other than that way, or they prepared us to look that way”, says Sáenz to the VOA via skype from Washington, something unthinkable for him years later, after criticizing the United States for considering it “imperialist.”
According to the former supporter of Ortega, Vice President Rosario Murillo herself opened her eyes to the party, and she says that the same has happened with many followers of the government party.
We were full of revolution, of love and trust in Daniel Ortega”
“Rosario Murillo with her attitude, her despotism, her nepotism, her arrogance… began to wipe out historical Sandinismo, and she wanted to replace it with people, some young, some old, but who were personally faithful to her, to Daniel, and to her family, no longer faithful to Sandinismo,” he adds. “That isolation made me confront her because no one elected her into Sandinismo.”
In the list of 222 political prisoners released and sent to the United States, there are also some five more people who were related to the government party and some worked in various branches of the State, such as Roberto Larios, who served as spokesman for the Judiciary, who was being accused of treason for having leaked information to the opposition media.
Also the former Sandinista mayor Humberto Pérez. Both Larios and Pérez have not spoken to the media since they arrived in the United States on the plane with the exiles.
If abuses were committed, they must be judged at the time
According to political analysts consulted by the voice of americathe United States must protect all who have suffered for their courageous fight “against the Nicaraguan dictatorship.”
However, some warn that if “there are former political prisoners who committed abuses or acts of corruption when they were aligned with the regime, they should be tried at the appropriate time,” as Benjamin Gedan, director of the VOA, told VOA. Wilson Center, a think tank based in Washington.
But he adds that for now “the important thing is to free all political prisoners, protect former political prisoners who have lost their Nicaraguan nationality, and make it possible for civil society leaders, both in the country and in exile” to that they have the capacity to continue defending the human rights of the Nicaraguan people and fighting for democracy.
If there are former political prisoners who committed abuses or acts of corruption when they were aligned with the regime, they must be tried at the appropriate time.”
For his part, Jonathan Hiskey, an expert in Latin American politics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, states that all the efforts that are currently being made to accommodate Nicaraguan political prisoners “must continue to be a top priority for the Biden administration, since these People, by all accounts, have suffered enormously at the hands of the Ortega regime.”
From his perspective, it would be helpful for the Biden administration to prioritize housing these individuals because “such actions are not only consistent with the United States’ long-established humanitarian objectives, but will also serve long-term foreign policy goals.” of the US in the region.
What mechanisms did the US use to welcome these people?
The politically released prisoners were declared “stateless by the Nicaraguan government”, however the United States carried out a selection process to welcome these people.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) followed standard processing procedures for those who receive humanitarian parole, a State Department source told VOA, adding that “they examined all persons entering the United States.
Meanwhile, political prisoners, including former workers of the ruling party, seek to rebuild their lives from the United States. In the case of Marlon Gerardo Sáenz Cruz, known as the “Chinese Enoch, it seeks to awaken the conscience of those who are within the ruling party so that they “wake up”.
“I call on state workers not to be fools, not to be deceived,” claims Sáenz. “I am calling on them because if Daniel Ortega leaves here, he is going to leave them,” he laments. “Leave that ship, don’t be afraid,” he concludes.
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