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'La Prensa', the statue of liberty in Nicaragua

2021-08-17T01:06:02.838Z


The newspaper is, today, an icon that has survived many others in Nicaragua, a country where symbols seem to begin to fade


Nicaraguan police emerge from a raid on the offices of the newspaper 'La Prensa', on August 13.STRINGER / Reuters

The guru of Nicaraguan journalists women and men who pride themselves -even many outside of Nicaragua-, no matter how old they are, whether they have met him or not, has undoubtedly been Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal (Don Pedro), the flagship director of the daily

La Prensa

and without whose trajectory the medium would not have the emblematic value of today.

That newspaper, the only bastion of the democratic opposition to the Somoza regime in its first years of life and later to the Sandinista regime, was founded when Don Pedro was just a child.

Since then, "the Republic of Paper" has become a "bastion of republicanism", in the words of Pablo Antonio Cuadra, poet, writer, co-director and cousin of Don Pedro.

A

La Prensa

will be "blamed all defects that want: falls, omissions, passions, failures, etc., but has kept on, against all winds and tides, the two democratic torches that illuminate the democratic life of Freedom and Justice, ”Cuadra wrote.

The newspaper is, today, an icon that has survived many others in Nicaragua, a country where the symbols seem to begin to fade.

More information

  • The Government of Daniel Ortega leaves the main newspaper of Nicaragua without paper and takes out of circulation

Not

La Prensa

, despite everything.

His brand continues to be the Nicaraguan journalistic allegory created by Don Pedro, with a perpetuity and lordship reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty in New York, regardless of the innumerable attacks it has suffered.

"The Republic of Paper" that everyone read at the time, when it cost a few córdobas -although it bothered many because it became the first stone inside the shoe of power- since it came to light in a country where newspapers only sold officialdom or red notes, he suffered serious abuses of all kinds with Don Pedro - imprisoned five times and finally murdered - at the helm.

His first enemy was nature. In 1931, during the first earthquake in Managua, the capital, it lost the first imported linotypes, spare parts until 1946. The physical destruction was of such magnitude that more than a year passed without coming to light. Four decades later, the earthquake on December 23, 1972 devastated its buildings and destroyed its main press, a four-unit press capable of producing 64 pages. In March of that year, with the rescued equipment and four units of a modern offset press that only suffered damage, it was circulated again.

That was a short-lived obstacle, at least until now. Power, government and censorship have always been his uncomfortable companions. The dictatorial tyranny - of whatever color or ideology - has never endured criticism and therefore has not known how to coexist with the freedom of expression that Don Pedro nurtured because he carried it in his soul and that made

La Prensa

the champion of the opposition against Somoza before the Sandinistas appeared on the country's scene and began to label her as a conservative, an ally of the Yankees ("Enemies of Humanity").

During the insurrection of the Sandinista National Liberation Front against the first dynasty in June 1979, La Prensa was bombed and destroyed by the artillery and aviation of Anastasio Somoza's National Guard.

That was a strange attack because, given the insurrectionary situation in the streets, the newspaper did not even circulate.

But it was not the first armed attack that the newspaper had suffered.

Throughout that year the night machine gunning was frequent.

40 years later, after the fall of that regime and with a messianic couple in power - the burden that remained of those who overthrew the Somoza dictatorship only to install another usurping the name of Sandino - little has changed in that sense for

La Prensa

.

In 2018, for more than 500 days, the Ortega-Murillo regime imposed a customs blockade against

La Prensa,

alleging crimes of customs fraud and money laundering. The blockade was suspended in February of that year, but soon after it was re-established, preventing it from accessing its imports of newsprint. "La Republica del Papel" ran out of paper, but not without the fighting soul that continues to report on its digital platform.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, the Ortega-Murillo government also carried out a police raid against him. He raided their facilities first and then took control of the place. He arrested the young general manager Juan Lorenzo Holmann, another inmate more than the hundreds that the regime has accumulated so far. But La Prensa is still alive; his insignia is the kind that never fades. Not for nothing has it been 92 years old, just like its journalistic drive supported by the enormous figure of its director.

And it is that Don Pedro, an impulsive man with a frugal but sharp sense of humor; with an unsurpassed political nose; a recurring presence in Christianity courses; With the journalistic vein feeding his veins, he was the one that the Somoza family described as “poisoned” with hatred and whose image the Sandinista government has not dared to touch - at least until now. Few remember, but Rosario Murillo was his secretary for many years. It only remains to assume that -for her, her husband and her acolytes-

La Prensa

is not Murillo's former boss, forgetting that Don Pedro was by chance the first journalist who left a legacy for later generations, the majority now opponents of the regime. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that all of his "disciples" - those who still work at

La Prensa

and those who would not want to have his talent, his courage and his pen.

Not to mention his convictions.

All of her children, each in their own way, have tried to follow her example.

The most combative as a journalist has been his youngest son, Carlos Fernando, who went on from being the director of

Barricada

, the official organ of the Sandinista government at the time, to be the most prestigious journalist opposed to the Ortega-Murillo regime in his profession. Self-exiled twice, he does not drop his pen for a second to direct it against attempts to establish a regime similar - some say worse, I say different - to that of the Somozas. His eldest son, Pedro Joaquín, is now in jail for who knows what little information he retweeted on social networks. The youngest, Cristiana -who as soon as she began to show her tusk as a possible opposition candidate-, received a house for jail. And his eldest daughter, Claudia Lucía, participated in various tasks of the Sandinista government at the time, His wife and mother of his four children, Doña Violeta, a housewife, who one fine day in 1990, dressed in white, called the reconciliation,Against all odds, she was elected president, which caused Daniel Ortega and his remaining Sandinista Front to turn into opposition "from below."

But all those details - known by those who bet on that Sandinista revolution and by those who opposed it - are sequels to the legend that Don Pedro left behind. As

La Prensa

is today

.

More than 40 years have passed since his assassination in January 1978, when La

Prensa was

turning half a century old. His death, which was "a dark crime whose traces reach the presidential milieu," to quote Pablo Antonio Cuadra in an interview with EL PAÍS on June 12, 1979 - almost exactly one month before the triumph of the Sandinista revolution. That "dark crime" of Don Pedro was also key to the victory of those then rebels. Cuadra did not say it in the interview, but we know it now. Without the assassination of Don Pedro, attributed to hitmen of the dictatorship, the Sandinistas would never have taken power.

What Cuadra did say to Fraguas, when talking about the murder of Don Pedro, was that his death had been "a symbol of the dictatorship, of its horror for ideas, for men who think, for freedom of expression." .

Nothing has changed.

The fear of those who think and the horror of freedom of expression continues in Nicaragua today. This, like the other dictatorship, has to close its cycle.

It will take its time, but it has no other way out - it is self-destructing - and everything indicates that this is why it acts as unbridled.

Instead, Don Pedro's legacy, La Prensa, stands tall, like the Statue of Liberty in Nicaragua.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-08-17

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