Two men and a girl wearing painted masks in Monimbo, Nicaragua. Scott Wallace (Getty Images)
Frenchman Jean Vilar said: "Culture should be a public service like water, gas and electricity."
Art sublimates, makes us freer and more imaginative, promotes bonding.
A regime that imprisons, persecutes and pushes into exile musicians, thinkers, writers, poets, painters, singers or journalists is an anomaly typical of North Korea or Putin's invading Russia, among others.
Nicaragua has entered that infamous list;
Very recently, they imprisoned and subsequently exiled the Monroy and Surmenage gang, as well as their representative, Xóchitl Tapia.
We want a model of coexistence where everyone fits, respect for freedoms, quality public health and education, the rule of law reigns with a fair economic system, stimulating growth.
There is an unappealable demand for periodic alternation of power as a result of clean and fair elections.
It is a reality gathered in many countries, consequently they usually enjoy freedom, progress and stability.
It does not suppose a utopia but a historical call within reach of our hands.
Critical thinking in the face of the atrocious moment that we are suffering highlights hope, an urgent need in a social crisis of the magnitude experienced in Nicaragua, a burning mirror derived from a despotic power, a breakdown of history that one day will be forgotten, overcome with determination and collective enthusiasm.
Josúe Monroy with his band Monroy y Surmenage, in a concert in Managua, on April 22, 2009. Carlos Herrera
In the background is the task of treating the wounds and scars of the families who are victims of crimes in the events that arose from the social upheaval in April four years ago.
The Nicaraguans before the tyranny decided to travel a road that has a lot of volcanic stone route after the lava spill.
In contrast to the insurrectionary movement of the 1970s, they have opted for a peaceful opposition to the State that reaches a scale of repression unknown in the country despite having suffered in the past dictatorships such as that of the Somozas that occupied a significant stretch in our recent history. , in addition to autocracies of various kinds in its journey as an independent Republic.
It aspires to a Nicaragua where all voices fit, however different they may be, thus outlining a Nation with a choir in tune and in peace, poetry of recovered life.
The moral obligation to embrace the present is a civic imperative, to show solidarity with the political prisoners and their families, while nurturing the desire for a constructive destiny for the broad layers of the population that have been left behind and manipulated since ancient times.
Everyone in, no one excluded.
The burning mirror that calls for a torrent of cool and gentle water to quench it.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region
Hernaldo Zúñiga
is a Nicaraguan singer-songwriter based in Mexico.
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber