Nicaragua – Artistic Freedom Initiatived 2024
Executive Summary
In April 2018, years of Nicaraguan citizens’ mounting discontent with the administration of President Daniel Ortega’s corruption and human rights abuses came to a head with the outbreak of massive, nationwide protests demanding the
administration’s removal. The protests were initially sparked by the announcement of changes to the national social security system that would increase citizen contributions while cutting benefits. In response, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans banded together outside of universities, government buildings, museums, and community centers to denounce the reforms. However, when the protestors were met with aggression by Nicaraguan police and armed pro-government groups who used excessive force to disperse them, they intensified their resistance by forming tranques, or roadblocks, across the country and demanding an end to the Ortega-Murillo administration.
The State responded to the growing protests with strategic and violent measures.
Throughout 2018 and 2019, protestors encountered brutal repression from security forces,including the use of live ammunition, tear gas, and arbitrary arrests. Unlawful tactics including harassment, extrajudicial killings, torture, and
trials without due process were also employed against dissidents, leading to a significant loss of life and widespread fear among the population. Seeking to exert greater control over public discourse, the government authorized a series of legal and policy reforms that enabled it to target dissidents. From 2020 to 2023, the National Assembly passed a series of laws related to national security, online expression, and the regulation of civil society organizations that undermined the fundamental rights of Nicaraguan citizens, notably their rights to freedom of expression and association. Today, the government continues to utilize these measures to punish critical voices through prosecution and disproportionate sentences, including enforced denaturalization. Among the dissident groups directly targeted by the Ortega-Murillo administration were Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers. Aware of Nicaraguan artists’ historical involvement in promoting human rights and social discourse through their work and related advocacy, the administration was quick to target influential art ists during the crackdowns and subsequent roll out of repressive measures. During the period of repression, many Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers were surveilled, threatened, attacked,and arrested. Many were forced to flee the country and remain in exile today. Fearing retaliation from the government, few Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers have publicly shared their experiences of persecution by the Ortega-Murillo regime and its security forces.
In the present report, several Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers have bravely come forward to share their testimonies with the world for the first time in Echoes of Freedom: art as a voice of resistance in Nicaragua with the aim of shedding light on the regime’s systematic attacks against the group and its efforts to control the arts and cultural sphere.
Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) and the Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina (CADAL) developed Echoes of Freedom to uncover the tactics that the regimeused against artists and cultural workers, and to expose specific violations of their fundamental rights. Through our research and recommendations, we aim to center Nicaraguan artists’ demands for reform, justice, and remedy for the abuses to which they were subjected by the Ortega-Murillo administration and its security apparatus. It is also our sincere hope that this report highlights the resilience of Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers and their resolve to keep Nicaragua’s arts and cultural community alive, including in the diaspora.
To effectuate our aims, our research team spoke with 13 Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers that were affected during the period of repression. The artists and cultural workers shared their firsthand accounts of the regime’s
efforts to punish them for their creative works and advocacy between 2018 to 2023, including through surveillance, threats, arbitrary arrest, the seizure of their assets, cancellation of organizations with which they were associated, rosecution under laws that restrict free expression and assembly, banishment, transnational repression, and denaturalization. Their powerful testimonies expose the regime’s campaign to undermine artists, arts and cultural organizations, and the cultural sector of Nicaragua more broadly. Echoes of Freedom is split into two parts: in
part one of the report, we analyze the regime’s use of coercive, unlawful, and punitive measures against artists and cultural workers that participated in protest or other forms of resistance. The first chapter reconstructs the outbreak of the protests and the regime’s violent response to them, highlighting several firsthand accounts of artists and cultural workers that attended or supported the protests through music, murals, performances, poetry and direct assistance to protesters who were injured or assaulted. The featured inter views highlight that amidst the ongoing State-led
violence, artists and cultural workers organized to create safe spaces for free expression. Using creativity and alternative organizing methods, these artist-led spaces provided a platform for Nicaraguans to come together and resist the government’s crackdown on democracy and civic space. Focusing on the period of 2018 – 2023, the
second chapter of Echoes of Freedom outlines eight specific laws and policies used to criminal ize expression and suppress artists and cultural groups including through the tactics of surveillance, harassment, financial destabilization, nd disenfranchisement. As a group of legal experts, AFI provides analysis on the incompatibilities of these measures with international human rights legal frameworks to which Nicaragua is bound. The chapter analyzes several artists’ cases that are emblematic of how the regime uses these laws as punitive measures against artists’ legitimate expression. Six years after the outbreak of the protests, the political situation in Nicaragua continues to deteriorate as Ortega entrenches the state deeper into authoritarian rule. Unable to return to their homes, nearly 300,000 Nicaraguans have fled the country to seek international protection abroad. Within this context, the third chapter of the report documents the experiences of Nicaraguan artists that have been forced to flee the country, and provides insight into how the Ortega-Murrillo administration uses imposed exile and denaturalization – in some cases resulting in statelessness – as tools of repression against dissidents. The featured interviews outline several artists’ experiences of forced migration and resettlement abroad, highlighting their efforts to reconstitute Nicaraguan civil society and continue the struggle for justice from the diaspora.
The second part of the report centers the hopes that Nicaraguan artists and cultural work ers have for the future of the country. Largely told in their own words, this part of the report details the artists’ and cultural workers’ visions
of a Nicaraguan society where all citizens have access to meaningful rights and protections, highlighting their dreams for a thriving arts and cultural space where expression is truly free. The artists provide examples of reform and systemic
change that would need to be achieved for them to return to Nicaragua and speak to the hopes they hold for transitional justice, reconciliation, and return to their homeland.Building on our research findings and the interviewed artists’ testimonies, AFI and CADAL conclude Echoes of Freedom with concrete recommendations for the Nicaraguan government and other relevant stakeholders, including migrant host countries. We are confident that, if implemented, the recommendations will improve conditions for Nicaraguan artists and cultural workers and fortify protections for all Nicaraguans’ rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
