This coming September 19, the Celebremos Iberoamérica festival begins in Madrid under the auspices of the Organization of Ibero-American States (OIE).
I had been invited to be with Nélida Piñón and Mónica Ojeda in a colloquium on traveling writing.
The description of the act said: "Three writers will dialogue about the experience of writing from a place with the imagination placed in distant cities or places, barely reached by the force of invention or memory."
I gladly accepted because the subject and the company promised an interesting exchange for us and the public.
From my understanding, the OEI is an organization dedicated to education and culture.
For this reason, I was surprised when I found out that, in a meeting related to the festival in which Daniel Ortega's representative participated in Madrid, she took the decision of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry to veto my participation.
The result was that I received a call from the OEI culture department informing me that they had withdrawn my invitation to the event.
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The Darkest Dungeon by Daniel Ortega
It is not my intention to judge the diplomatic commitments of the OEI.
I think this goes beyond them and myself.
It is about the extent to which diplomacy can allow a dictator like Ortega to use his membership in a multilateral organization to prevent the participation of a writer from his country at a table in Spain where artistic creation would be discussed.
Will dictatorships like Ortega's now be able to rely on sovereignty to extend their repressive arm beyond their borders?
Doesn't this perhaps set a disastrous precedent for the intellectual freedom of those of us who, because it has been taken from us, have had to leave our countries?
Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have crossed and transgressed the limits of decency in their own country and in their diplomatic relations with other countries, insulting right and left in their official communications the governments that have tried to intercede for the defense of human rights of the Nicaraguans.
His regime, after silencing radios, television stations, the newspaper
La Prensa
—after its more than 96 years of existence—, it has now raged against the only spaces of freedom that it has not yet silenced: the pulpits of Catholic churches.
In their onslaught, they have jailed critical priests and banished others.
One of our most beloved and wisest bishops, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, has been at home in jail for a month.
Several years ago the regime managed to get the Vatican itself to banish Monsignor Silvio Báez, another brave voice that exposed the arbitrariness of the ruling couple.
This same desire to combat freedom of expression imposed an arrest warrant against my compatriot, Sergio Ramírez, Cervantes Prize winner;
recently canceled the legal status of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, which had been in operation since 1928, also canceled the Poetry Festival of Granada, which has been attended by many Spanish poets since its first edition in 2014, the Festival Centroamérica Cuenta, which will begin in Madrid on same September 19 that begins "Celebremos Iberoamérica" and that has been forced to become itinerant because it cannot be held in Nicaragua.
A regime like that should not even be part of the Organization of Ibero-American States whose mission is Education and Culture.
It is even less acceptable that you try to turn them into executors of actions that go against all the elementary principles of respect for the culture, independence and freedom of expression of Ibero-American creators.
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