Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
In Nicaragua, Ortega Was on the Ropes. Now, He Has Protesters on the Run.
Source: New York Times
In Nicaragua, Ortega Was on the Ropes. Now, He Has Protesters on the Run.
By Frances Robles
Dec. 24, 2018
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A life on the run was not one any of these Nicaraguans ever intended.
But many people in this desperately poor Central American nation now live in a bleak new reality. They have exchanged their routine lives as lawyers, engineering majors, radio broadcasters and merchants for one of ever-changing safe houses, encrypted messaging apps and pseudonyms.
Eight months after a spontaneous popular uprising left 322 people dead and 565 others in jail, Nicaraguans from cities across the country have gone underground.
They are hiding from an increasingly authoritarian state that is methodically tracking down those who participated in the large-scale and often violent protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
“They are hunting us like deer,” said Roberto Carlos Membreño Briceño, 31, a former legal clerk for a Nicaraguan Supreme Court justice, who gave up his law license and fled this year after his bosses saw a photo of him at a protest. He now lives in hiding on a ranch in Costa Rica with 50 strangers, including a ballet dancer who goes by code name “The Eagle.”
-snip-
By Frances Robles
Dec. 24, 2018
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A life on the run was not one any of these Nicaraguans ever intended.
But many people in this desperately poor Central American nation now live in a bleak new reality. They have exchanged their routine lives as lawyers, engineering majors, radio broadcasters and merchants for one of ever-changing safe houses, encrypted messaging apps and pseudonyms.
Eight months after a spontaneous popular uprising left 322 people dead and 565 others in jail, Nicaraguans from cities across the country have gone underground.
They are hiding from an increasingly authoritarian state that is methodically tracking down those who participated in the large-scale and often violent protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
“They are hunting us like deer,” said Roberto Carlos Membreño Briceño, 31, a former legal clerk for a Nicaraguan Supreme Court justice, who gave up his law license and fled this year after his bosses saw a photo of him at a protest. He now lives in hiding on a ranch in Costa Rica with 50 strangers, including a ballet dancer who goes by code name “The Eagle.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/americas/nicaragua-protests-daniel-ortega.html