After the illegal seizure of the facilities of the extinct Luisa Mercado Foundation, the writer Sergio Ramírez, who founded the cultural organization in 2007, denounced that this repressive action perpetrated by the Daniel Ortega dictatorship “puts an end to a cultural enterprise that leaves a deep mark” in Masatepe, a municipality in the department of Masaya, in the southeast of Nicaragua.
In a brief statement, the novelist confirmed that “the house where it worked (the Luisa Mercado Foundation) was seized with violence by police forces who broke down its doors.”
For their part, local sources informed Confidential that the Sandinista police deployed agents to appropriate the property. The seizure of the property occurred on the afternoon of this Friday, June 30.
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Ramírez described this action by the dictatorship as an “aggression against culture”, because the foundation provided free cultural services to the city of Masatepe and other surrounding towns.
“This act of aggression against culture puts an end to a cultural enterprise that left a deep mark of which we are proud, because we were able to create readers in Masatepe and its surroundings, to train musicians, to help train young people and of children, and of taking culture to a place where we belong, and where our lives belong,” stressed the Nicaraguan writer, who lives in exile due to persecution by the Ortega Murillo regime.
The Luisa Mercado Foundation, according to Sergio Ramírez, was created in memory of his mother, who served as an educator in Masatepe. The entity worked in one of the ancestral homes of the town.
On the property, now taken over by the Police, there was a library of 6,000 volumes, halls for cultural events, exhibitions of plastic arts and photographs, literary workshops, publications, a children’s corner, and the “Lisandro Ramírez Velásquez” music school.
On April 19, 2022, the National Assembly, with a Sandinista majority, resolved to cancel the legal personality of the Luisa Mercado Foundation and 24 other non-governmental organizations. This measure is part of the Ortega regime’s ongoing persecution of civil society, which has resulted in the closure of more than 3,500 organizations since 2018.
Faced with this repressive action by the dictatorship, the cultural organization was forced to close its doors and not continue with its cultural programs.
