The Sunday Story: A rare look inside locked-down Nicaragua
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Am I jaso? And this is a sunday story. Today we're going on a journey when that starts deep in the mountains of central amErica along the border between hundred. Amp's adr parole travel to a remote bonner post to try to internet iraq, A, A country that has kept all for orn journalists out for more than a year. And here you are either trying to get in yeah.

And I mean, I was definitely nervous about what I was doing. I know journalist colleagues who have been turned around at the airport just because their journalists, and this is also A A country that has thrown journalists in prison.

And so what did you think that you would be able to get in when so many other journalists had failed? IT is part of IT because you were at such a area trying to cross the border.

Yeah, that was definitely part of a bit. I also .

had a golden ticket.

OK, a golden ticket.

You said so that I .

was born in nicaragua. I have a nicaraguan passport, and nicko ogwen immigration authorities had been scrutinizing foreigners. So my bet was that they wouldn't pay too much attention to me. And also, my family was encouraging. I mean, everyone else I spoke to keep telling me that this trip was a stupid idea that you're gonna a end up in jail but not my mom and not my grandma uh and you know they had survived a dictatorship and in a civil war in the aragua in the eighties, my grandma ended up uh on this side of undo us in these mountains uh after he had after SHE fled fighting in her hometown and what he told me was if you move carefully, if you don't draw attention to yourself, it's doable. And both my mom and grandma were right.

What will mom and grandma they know? Yeah they know so so what happened um when you were at the border? What happened?

I get there and IT just feels like i'm stepping back in time. I mean, IT feels soviet posters, the signage is off faded instead of crowin flags, there's dozens of these little red and black flags, the colors of the ruling party. And I hand my passport to one of the five immigration officials, and he hands IT to another guy behind him who sits there and punches in a few things into a computer and then into a phone.

And I had run through so many of these scenarios in my head, I had thought about what they would ask me. I imagine them getting mad at me, maybe taking my passport, maybe sending me back across the border. I planned for this trip for a year, and I don't know. Maybe five minutes later, the immigration officer .

comes .

to me and he hands me back my passport, and IT has a little entry slip in IT. And that was that I was in I was about to walk into one of the most authoritarian an countries in the world. And I didn't get asked a single question. And i'm just .

thinking now what .

do I do now?

This week on the sunday story, we step inside what summer calling the western hemisphere new as dictators. We'll be .

right back.

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We're back now with impious ador paralo. He recently returned from a reporting trip to nicaragua. A so either you explain the fact that you made IT into the country, and even doing that was a huge feet. Since the government ruled by president Daniel, tiger has basically banned foreign journalists. You get in at a remote water post in the middle of the mountains and and then what like you weren't caring around like a microphone or anything .

where you no, we had to get in just with a little tiny recorder um because we had to try to blend in. I had to try to trying to get to an out. What is the capital of nika ab? And of course, the seat of government.

So as soon as I cross, I arranged for a car, and we take off on this winding road. And I don't know, maybe it's my country, but the landscape is stunning. Volcanoes and these coffee plantations that look like they're made of emerges. And three or four hours later, uh, lake managa emerges in front of us. And on one side of IT is another volcano with smoke rising from its core.

And you get to the capital like what was the plan when you get there?

Look in the corgi right now, there are fewer and fewer journalists. And I took a queue from the ones who are left. I knew that I wouldn't be able to conduct any interviews in public.

And the crowin journalists warned me. They said, your covers is going to be blown and the government will not hesitate to put you in jail. So the plan was to keep a low profile.

I mean, I mean, that sounds completely dangerous, so i'm glad you safe. But like what was your sense of looking at, you know, life going on in arara? What were you seeing?

I think what surprising is that everything pointed Normal I mean, there's police checked input here and there uh but life keeps going. People are out shopping. They're going to work to school. Uh, on the saturday that I was there, the bars were packed um and so I was thinking of ways to get some truth and I thought, let's go a common club.

Okay, so A A comedy club. Okay, in this authority, an country you want to go to, a country club OK. Tell, tell.

I have found that often it's in art that you can really clean a bit of truth. So I figured if there was a place that I could find some truth telling, c IT would .

be at a comedy for.

And so I go to this little club and itself, beer and chicken wings and and then this guy comes on stage. He's the first time stand up comic. And you can tell he's nervous.

He's kind .

of clutching the microphone and in his hands are a little .

shaky that.

And he asks, how's everyone doing? And everyone, of course, says, great. And then he asks again.

Can he says.

great, you frequent liars. No one lives great in nicaragua. And the audience seems stunned. Even before the awkward loves, the comedian stands down.

He says.

that's dangerous. I want to get home. I want to sleep peacefully. I don't want to talk about sad about our little country.

So either I have some more questions for you. I'm sure you not surprised by that. But right now, i'm gna hand this tail over to you so we can understand more about your journey and how nick aragua came to be what IT is today.

right? So let's start in nineteen seventy nine. The story of what's happening now in the kawa begins more than four decades ago with a revolution nica gua and the gorilla battle to overthrow the regime of president samoa. More than forty two years, the country was ruled by the samoa family. They were a military dynamic y, which was backed by the united states, and they ran one of the most brutal dictatorships in ln america.

He elephant people.

That man is crazy. Then in the seventies, the villa, known as the something I has launched an armed rebellion against the regime. In one thousand and seventy, known and fled to the united states, and the sunday stars rolled into the capital city Victory oria.

Why the news real?

Show me that. Why euphoria Young commander, who had spent seven years as a political prisoner, emerged as the leader of the military. Hood, a ga. The hero was introduced, a national T, V, speaking in front of a war riddled with bullet. For of this Victory .

committed us to those who gave their blood so this .

country could be .

free of the art, free of the security office, free of the .

niches.

A few years later, or dig out, ran for president, and one in a landslide. The us. Was not happy IT secretly gave money and weapons to the contrast, a group of counter revolutionaries. So instead of ending with the Sunny east of Victory, the wb dragged on and the nether tega was forced to hold another election.

In one thousand nine ninety, he lost the second election and arrogance were tired of bloodshed, and so they chose a candidate who promised peace after that, what they have remained in the background of narrowing politics, forging alliances with his former enemies. Seventeen years later, following two more unsuccessful election attempts, he once again became president in two thousand seven. Over the next decade, or sega consolidates his power, and he does something to make sure his rule doesn't end when he is no longer r around, his children take prominent roles in government, and his wife, rosada medio, a politician and a poet, becomes as as president.

Less than a year later, Young people take to the streets to protest changes to social security. The air then turns to the nearly ga. Suddenly they demand and and.

Both the same thing they chanted, the government responds with bullets. The protests turn into a violent confrontation.

Back in two thousand and eighteen, the colonial town of masia was the epa center of the rebellion against president than a lot tega. But as I walk the streets today, the only reminders of that uprising are the bullet holes left in the facades of some of the buildings. The road locks are gone, the graffam insulting the government is painted over or drawn carriages are once again on the streets, and the protesters have been silenced.

I meet gacl, a one of the organizers of that rebellion, in the backroom of a business. We're not using her full name because he fears retribution. In two thousand eighteen, he joined the demonstrations with glee.

SHE volunteered at a makeshift clinic treating wounded protesters, and her whole family was helping the rebellion. They thought, president, or think I was stealing elections and laying the groundwork to rule forever. SHE remembers her dad gave them some precedent advice. My dad work .

for the government, and he told us, we have to keep going. We have to fight, or digger has to go. If not, what is coming is gonna so much worse? A few .

months later, the government launched a ruthless attack. By some estimates, some of three hundred protesters were killed during that spring in two thousand eighteen.

I was scared, but I never ever thought that something like that would happen.

Police rounded up hundreds of Young people I see that remembers police going house to house looking for organizers. But I seal up, ended up in hiding for months. And when he emerged, nekaya has changed.

SHE heard the message loud and clear, keep your dissent to yourself or face the consequences. So over the next year, he tried to live her life. SHE got a job.

SHE kept quiet. But even so, at one point, police raided her home. They took her things and accused her of helping to organize our rebellion.

And from then on, they told us, don't you dare do anything against the government.

At around the same time, her dad got sick, SHE took him to a public hospital. In there, he got even sicker.

I ran across the hospital. I cried. I shouted for a doctor asking for help, and no one helped the people who are supposed to help him close the area and said, everyone is out to lunch.

Her dad died and hanging over her was this idea that he was allowed to die because of his politics.

And what could we do? We can do anything. We live at this far. R that we can't speak, that we can't complain. I was forced to live the way they wanted me to.

A friend told her, if you want bad things to stop happening, join the party. Show them that you are with them. I ask, could I see a love? What about the rebellion? Is that dead?

Yeah, I mean, the ideas are there. People scared. People talk, of course, at home with family and the patios, or from the street out, its silence.

The neighbor turns on a offset and a seela grows nervous. SHE takes a deep breath. Maybe they're listening our conversation and there. I'll be right back.

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I was born in the nicaragua in town of metadata, its coffee country. So the train is unforgiving, the mountains touched the sky and then plunge into fast moving rivers. It's also where the civil war was the bloodiest I was in borne yet bit in the seventies, during the Sunny ter war against the suma dictatorship.

My parents house was bombed like a lot of nicaraguans. My family believed in the revolution. They were ideal alist. My dad worked on a gyan reform for the sunday I test. My uncle was a militant.

My aunt went off into the rural areas to teach people how to read, but when one civil war turned into another, they tired of the fighting. So my parents started helping Young men sneak out of the country to avoid the sunday east. The draft.

One of their friends was tortured and killed for helping these Young men. My dad received a death threat, and the sandinistas also accused him of selling gold, which was illegal. So in the midi ties, they fled the country.

The same thing happened with my pet nal grandma. He told me that one day the Sandy ist's came to take my Youngest uncle to the war, and SHE stopped them at the door. He told the soldiers, god gave me my son, not the new otaka.

And that was IT. SHE became an enemy of the revolution. They had to leave the country.

But on this reporting trip, IT wasn't the war I kept thinking about. IT was one thousand ninety. That's when the civil war ended, and IT was safe to come back.

I was nine years old. My parents, my siblings and I were living in miami, so my mom book tickets and loaded us on a plane for a visit. We landed in manoa, and there were still fighter jets in the hangers.

Unlike us, my maternal grandmother wrote out the war in nicaragua, and we went straight to her house. There was no running water, very little electricity to me. All of this felt so grim.

But I remember my mom was so happy. And sometimes I was too, because there were so few lights. The nights were beautiful.

I saw the milky way for the first time. I remember my mom screaming at us to take a deep breath to smell the mountains, to smell home. But the peace didn't last.

And since then, nicaragua has created from one political crisis to another. My parents have remained in exile. They've made lively in the united states, but have always dreamed of coming home.

My dad bought a little coffee farm right across the border in hondas, where he plans to retire. And he always tells me that if you head up the mountain, there is a place where you can listen to nick og in radio. He always points and says, you see the mountains across the valley, that's nicaragua.

And that's the story of modern nick aragua. This constant turmoil has left millions without a home. Just in the past few years, six hundred thousand nico gones have left their country. And being there, I kept thinking that things are not likely to change. I kept thinking that maybe my parents may never get the chance to go back.

As I continue my reporting in massa, the sun sets, the clouds gather and the tropical rain falls. I move through the stress of the town like a bandit. In case i'm being followed, I dropped my car and walk around about out to ignorance house when I meet him.

He's wearing his medical scrubs. He spent decades working for the ministry of health. He says politics has taken over every aspect of life. In nick aragua, even the trios at the hospital.

What they say is that comrades have preference. If you get up, patients says, i'm here because conrade someone, so send me, you have to breathe them.

We're not using actors voice, nor his full name because he fears retribution.

We provide professional service, so it's understood that we should not have a political flag.

he says. Public workers like him are forced to attend political rallies at the moment. He says there is a severe lack of supplies at public hospitals, everything from gloves to pain medication, and he is expected to stay quiet.

Is that simple? I cannot express criticism, not to my, but not to debating members of the ministry of held. It's that simple.

He tells me all this with shame. The professionals, this is not ethical. X, R, feels trapped. He says one of his bosses put IT in simple terms to earn your guy open to your red beans and rice. You do what you're told or you're thrown out on the street.

and that's a good choice because is treated stuff. The economic situation is tough right now. We are simply surviving.

Actor's allegations are not out of step with what we heard from others. I spoke to one worker, for example, who says some private jobs require a recommendation letter from a ruling party representative. I spoke to a Young activists who said a public university asked for the same to enroll.

A U. N. Report from march found that in two thousand eighteen, the government ordered doctors not to treat wounded protesters. The report accuses the government of committing crimes against humanity. The worst part, says account, is that he can't even talk about this with his colleagues.

It's right for me to say something insured to someone. I prefer to stay quiet. It's Better enough to say that because you can't trust anyone.

Sometimes he says he thinks he can trust someone, and then he sees them on facebook wearing the ruling party colors. I stop him. In the next few days, the government will be celebrating the forty fourth anniversary of the triumph of the nick orogen revolution. I ask him if he's going to go to the big celebration.

Yeah, what else can I do?

That means that someone might see him wearing the party colors. Someone might say, wow, and I almost trusted him. In the latest polls, just thirteen percent of nick aog, one identified as Sunny as but when you're in nicko og web, president of the party hangs over the country like a heavy smog.

It's suffocated. Ext shrugs his shoulders. What else is he supposed to do? He says he feels trapped by this vicious cycle, and it's exactly what the government wants.

He says, I thought comment from the krog in government about all the allegations in the story. We sent emails to vice president rosada moral, and we also emailed and called the nicaraguan embassy in the united states. They have not responded. Caroline a, he met his hand well of the washington office on that n amErica calls nick AA something of a user manual for authoritarian leaders. And Nikita wa says he, man is what or bigger came to power legitimately .

or they I was elected um but how then he changed all the rules of the game to stay there is a different story, and I think is at a story that we see repeated in in many countries.

Close rea or to take up changed the electoral laws. He captured the judiciary. He passed soviet style laws to destroy nakata was civil society. He used those laws to shut down media houses, and in prison, his foes, in two thousand twenty one or bigger, imprisons potential presidential candidates.

I don't know how many have that very sad record of putting seven presidential candidates in increase on the under house.

but perhaps, or tiger's most impressive feat, says he in the sandoval, is that he has proven to other authoritarian leaders in the america's that an iron fisted rule can survive. Opposition from the international community. The U.

N. The us, the E. U. The organization for american states have denounce ga in unequipped terms, and they've even instituted sanctions. But in the kaa, very little has changed.

The main problem when when authorising becomes routed is that IT shows that the international system has few tools to combat this type of government.

A senior state department official who asked for anonymity so they could speak freely, says the world, miss red Daniel, arda. When he gave a power in one thousand nine hundred ninety, everyone thought he would be content to go down in history as a stateman. I left this gorilla fighter who peacefully transferred power and ushered in a new era of a democracy in nicaragua.

Instead, the state department official says, or taga spent seventeen years in the wilderness and he quote, seems to have concluded that decision only made him poor and powerless or fig up has become a man driven by fear and a lust for power, says the official, a man who has decided he'll do anything to never return to that children. The night before the forty fourth anniversary of the sunday anisa revolution, I head to manner was revolution square on the shores of lake should plan. This was the place where one thousand nine hundred and seventy nine, the sunday east has rolled into town and Victorious, and buses with their old soviet weapons in hand as the adoring masses cheered them on. And at the time, the getae OS about, never will this country see another dictatorship.

大年 大年 大年 大年 大年。

When I get to the celebration, thousands of people are gathered. The lake front is lit up in red and black, the colors of the sunday I does. And on the stage is the regimes official band.

Leave IT out there. Let's be loud enough so the commander can hear you. One of them says.

And they launch into a song full of bravado IT paints the nail OK taga as a fighting rooster armed with blades and ready for his blood spot.

On this night, what the gas regime feels in full control. And it's a world away from last february, when there was hope, the ortho regime was listening its grip. In a surprise move, the regime freed two hundred and twenty two political prisoners.

The government strip them of their citizenship and then put them on the plane to the united states. Felix matter diag a was among those two hundred and twenty two. He was arrested in the summer of twenty twenty one. Shortly after he declared he would chAllenge tag up for the presidency.

I was kidnap, taking to a maximum security prison called A G ported captain soliton finance for close to eight days after I was beating captain. Interrogation, live deprivation, food deprivation, and through other things that i'm not yet prepared to talk about publicly was IT was very, very inhumane.

One of the alga .

spent six hundred and eleven days in prison. He spent long hours thinking about his Young daughter, his wife and about his country.

We aren't giving cycling in a ha, a cycle of hatred. Or dea himself was a political prisoner in the early thousand nine .

hundred and seventies. And what of the yoga realized after weeks in prison is that a thaar's ire had been one of the ega had always been anti sana, anti socialist, but in prison he saw many of his form of arrival sanest us, who had disagreed vehemently with his views. Now they were united in prison.

My, my sense is that we had arrived to a clear definition in which he was no longer sunday anise against antsy is but he was the llama of democracy .

versus tyrant's in prison. He also thought about and how naraka never had a truth commission after the war, how what he saw as war crimes were never investigated, how political polarization was papered over in prison. He resolved not to repeat the past.

So my commitment now is to break the cycle. And the cycle is not to come out of prison with a sense of hatred, not to come to a prison session for revenge.

but the truth is, you can, I will is polarized. Some narrowness and xie have openly called for the use of force to remove or tega. And inside the country, the feeling is that nick og went two choices, stay quiet and pretend life is Normal, or take up arms and fight against the regime. The prospect of a political solution feels remote. Do you think that this process can take place with the near ortega?

It's impossible. The neology taga only understand the language of.

The day after the celebration at the lake front, I here present on the of sega will be giving a public speech. The radio is full propaganda.

huge.

Managa are corned off. Suddenly, a city that has seemed Normal now has police officers on every corner. Checkpoints have been erected around the stadium near worthing, us.

home. And IT becomes clear that only a select group of people are invited to hear the president speech. The rest, including me, will have to watch IT on the big screens set up across the country.

I end up at a park where the municipality has put up a tent and chairs that feels like a party. People are drinking, they are chatting, and on the big screen, the country's dynasty is on display. Presence of taga wears a red members only jacket in a facebook cap croci o.

Medio, his wife and vice president. Where's a flowing pink dress and matching visor? Like always half her four arms are covered in bracelets. Every finger has a ring. Mod has always been a aside. When what O, L daughter accused ga of raping her, moo believed her IT was modi o, who famously ordered the police to hit protesters in two thousand eight with, quote, everything they had or now calls her his co president in his speech or sega gives a typical history lesson full of disdain for american imperialism. M.

We want the peace we fought against, the turning imposed by the junkets because we want that being.

But model is different. The Younger daughter stands behind her, making sure the pages of her speech don't fly away. And video delivers spoken word poetry.

We had a boast, of course, we are opposed to human decrepitude. We are opposed to the decay of the spirit.

SHE looks directly at the camera.

How is that possible to understand that? Absorb curse of snakes of treasurer vipers, five riches of lies within grades for hire. S of lies and falsehoods.

I think she's talking about journalists .

how to understand those who, in shameless and diastolic best customers, close themselves to the to the coexistence of all .

vibrations. I look around and almost everyone is wearing bread, and I wondered what would happen. The proud new.

I was a journalist for a moment. I LED paranoia. See into my thoughts for a moment.

I feel the way living here. This is a country soaked in fear. You watch your back. You watch your words. You hope that a neighbor, a cold, a family member, won't to betray you. I realize fear run so deep that even the president and vice president don't trust their country mean enough to hold a real public rally.

Epr S A paralo reporting from the aragua. He's the first journalist from outside the country to have made IT in in more than a year. So either you are here with me now, so obviously made IT out. You got in pretty easily, but was IT hard to leave the country .

IT was a much harder than coming in. Um I went back to the same remote checkpoint in the mountains. But this time the immigration guys had a ton of questions. They helped me up for a good hour.

And then an intelligence officer, this super buff guy who was wearing street closed in military boots, stood over me and he told me, when the immigration guys are done with you, I want you to go through me. Uh, and I have to say that that made me A A little scared. He took my passport, said he needed to run some checks uh and eventually, you know after what fifteen twenty minutes um he just came up to me and he flipped my passport at me.

He didn't say anything and I you know I don't know how much they knew about me. I think in a lot of ways, that's what's scary about nicaragua. A that everyone lives not knowing what exactly the government is capable love.

I think everyone lives with the ghosts of what this government has already done. They thrown a catholic bishop in jail. They threw revolutionary heroes in jail.

They exiled nick og was greatest poets and writers. They shut down the historic newspaper just a few weeks ago. They closed the jesuit ET university in manager. And of course, in two thousand eight, they opened fire on protesters. And all of this creates this unshakable sense of uncertainty.

What people in the country told me is that they're constantly thinking, if the government can do this to the untouchables, imagine what they can do to me. So maybe the government doesn't have to say anything. Maybe they can just flip your passport at you. And the message is clear .

either .

are are you afraid that the message that that yoga um is that you won't be able to return to the country where you were born?

Yeah I I I mean, I think that's what i'm most afraid of. And I think a lot that I did nothing wrong because the constitution of the aragua protect journalists but real alister ally, I know that those things don't matter. Uh, so I wonder if i'll end up like my parents are on some mountain across the border listening to nicaraguan and yearning for a country that is so much a part of who I am.

If you like the deep dies you get on the sunday story, check out in P, R, S, considered this podcast this week. Consider this brings you a look at the future of remote work, how big oil is getting into the carbon removal business and the dilma for the nfl as IT embraces big betting platforms. Listen to consider this whatever you get your protest this episode of the sunday story was produced by dane girma and edited by genius.

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