Sports journalist Miguel Mendoza (Camoapa, 1970), a well-known face on Nicaraguan television, never wanted to stay out of politics, although his specialty was baseball. He never sympathized with President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. With the social outbreak of April 2018, he filled his highly-followed social networks with criticism and facts that the Sandinista government wanted to hide: “I was ashamed to talk about sports while young people were being murdered,” he recalls. Three years later, they locked him up in El Chipote, one of the most fearsome prisons in Latin America. After 597 days under “psychological torture,” he was one of the 222 political prisoners that Ortega released and exiled to the United States on February 9. Thirty-three remain incarcerated.
How did you receive the news of your release?
The first thought that occurred to me, when they told me on the bus that was taking us from the prison to the airport, is if my family knew about it. They didn’t answer me. I felt a lot of uncertainty. Obviously, at no time did I consider refusing to sign the paper where they asked me to authorize the trip to the US It was obvious that, even if it was in exile and exile, my situation was going to improve here. Because we were wasting away.
What were the conditions like in jail?
Part of the psychological torture they applied to us was not giving us any kind of information about what was happening outside. We couldn’t tell the time, read anything, or talk to the other prisoners. The policemen who attended us were forbidden to talk to us. The first year, they locked me up in a cell measuring two by two meters, which we called ‘the little one’. I had a problem with my throat, I got sick. The air did not circulate, it was hard for one to breathe, the temperature in Managua became three times more unbearable than if you were outside. There was mold on the walls, I got fungus on my skin and nails. It was closed, with only one small window in the door and a hole to relieve oneself. Another way to make us suffer was to knock on doors while we were sleeping to scare us. They prevented me from seeing my daughter, who is now 9 years old and with whom I had never been apart. Her goal was to drive us crazy.
He went 18 months without seeing his daughter…
The torture of not seeing her was so severe. When I saw her, on December 7, and I looked at her face and saw how she had physically changed, I said ‘they have stolen my time with my daughter’. And with my family and with my people. They also literally robbed me, they took everything from me. Including the belongings I’ve left behind in prison.
Do you fear for your family now?
Once in Washington I found out that they had banished me, left me without a country. So, the questions began about how I am going to work, where I am going to live and the fear of what will become of my family. One has to moderate in the statements to prevent our people, who have remained there, from being affected. I have my daughter and my partner Margin, also a journalist, my almost 92-year-old mother, full of illnesses; my brothers and nephews. We are a united family. Obviously, it scares me. In prison, they even locked up prisoners’ wives in preventive cells, where only one person can fit, to extract forced statements from them. I hope to be able to meet my daughter and my partner soon, because it is a very complicated situation emotionally and psychologically.
When do you think you will see them?
It is complicated because my daughter’s passport has expired and I have been left without the possibility of authorizing her renewal as a father, because I have ceased to exist in the Nicaraguan civil registry. No lawyer has given me a solution. What I’m not going to do is take them out illegally because I don’t want them to risk it.
There have been pro-government marches in Nicaragua celebrating his exile. Is it a victory for Ortega and Murillo?
No, it’s more of a defeat. The release has been the result of international pressure on political prisoners. Having imprisoned prominent members of politics, journalists, bankers, peasants, businessmen… All sectors were represented. I always believed that one of the objectives was to prevent some people from participating in the elections and the other was to use us as a bargaining chip in order to suspend the sanctions that were being rained down on them by the US and the EU and get the international legitimation, but this will never happen. They remain delegitimized. Ortega and Murillo understood that they were losing more than they were gaining by keeping us locked up. If negotiations are going to come or if there was something under the table? We’ll see. Both countries deny it. Getting on a plane is already a defeat. They stripped us of our nationality so that they think they have won something, but that is not the case. All of us who were in jail, including very important people (and I don’t include myself), are free saying things they wanted to silence.
Is there any option to end the Ortega government?
I think our banishment will be shorter than we think. I estimate that less than 10% of the population sincerely supports the government. Ortega and Murillo are more alone than ever. Our country is very dependent on credit and they have not been approved for one for five years.
Spain offers them nationality…
Many of us who came are considering taking advantage of the opportunity. For now, I have requested it. When they answer me, I’ll decide what to do. The only dilemma is that the benefits that I can have with the parole regime that Washington has granted me for two years would practically end.
