The cry of the exiled Nicaraguan feminists: "We are going to march in freedom in Costa Rica"

Feminist intellectuals Sofía Montenegro and Azahálea Solís fled Nicaragua 17 days ago.

The quagmire and paths into which they entered preceded their arrival in exile in Costa Rica, after the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo stripped them of their Nicaraguan nationality and confiscated their property, including the apartment in which they lived in Managua.

They were left with nothing, literally with what they were wearing.

The house is occupied by police officers who, gradually, have been looting their belongings;

many of them with high sentimental value: hundreds of books, family furniture, mermaids from different countries and that thick collection of vinyl records, with Joan Manuel Serrat and his

of him in

avant-garde, Janice Joplin, María Jiménez, Elton Jhon, Maria Dolores Pradera, Pablo Milanés and more leading artists of these two women who experience their first International Women's Day in exile, already detached "from the material", but with a shared smile that this March 8 can no longer contain.

"Well, I'm very excited, because we had years, like five years, of not being able to go out on the streets in Nicaragua to march," says Montenegro, a journalist by profession.

Since before 2018, the year of the social protests that rocked this Central American country, the Ortega y Murillo regime had boycotted all activities called by feminists.

The police and the Sandinista mobs first expelled the women from the streets, then forced them to commemorate in private spaces, until the persecution crossed that threshold, and several were arrested, forced to hide and forced into exile.

“I have great expectations of hugging a multitude of friends who will surely be there.

Let's go free.

The feeling of freedom is priceless;

as Ho Chi Minh would say: 'There is nothing more precious than independence and freedom'.

We had years of not being able to leave our house in Managua.

It is an inexpressible emotion”, affirms Montenegro.

Montenegro thus joins the 170 Nicaraguan feminists forcibly displaced since 2018. Of all of them, according to the IM-Defensoras organization, 60 have been exiled;

although there is an underreporting because many have not denounced it publicly.

Mural in San José (Costa Rica) to honor the history of three political prisoners and ex-prisoners: Mailene Noguera (Cuba), Emirlendris Benítez (Venezuela) and Samantha Jirón (Nicaragua).

Carlos Herrera

“The truth is that we were in exile in Nicaragua.

We had not celebrated March 8 for many years.

Let us remember that the gender approach in the dictatorship was to put us in riot gear to repress the marches since Ortega came to power”, says Azahálea Solís.

The constitutional lawyer agrees with other feminists interviewed for this article: the Ortega-Murillo regime has been cruel to women, especially organized ones.

“We have seen the situation of the exiled political prisoners: they went through long periods of isolation and torture in the El Chipote prison.

It really is a misogynistic government, it is a government that attacks women.

And indeed, I think that deep down or on the surface they are afraid of the power of women”, says Solís.

an old grudge

María Teresa Blandón is another feminist intellectual who lives her first March 8 in exile.

The Sandinista immigration authorities did not let her enter her country in July 2022 when she was returning from a work tour.

Since then, she has settled in San José, one of the capitals of Nicaraguan exile.

“This is probably the worst moment that the Nicaraguan feminist movement is experiencing,” she says with aplomb.

"More than 200 feminist and women's organizations have been closed down by the regime."

“Almost all of the organizations that had houses and other types of assets have been confiscated in an absolutely illegal manner.

Now it is no longer possible to carry out any type of activity within the country because there is a permanent surveillance system against feminists and human rights defenders.

And of course, those of us outside have had to dedicate all our energies to being spokespersons in solidarity for women, but also for men who are inside Nicaragua suffering this level of institutionalized violence.

But we are also in readjustment in exile with all the difficulties and tensions that this entails, ”she explains.

Montenegro, Solís and Blandón have a point of convergence: Ortega and Murillo have an old grudge against feminists because they have been one of the movements to permanently denounce authoritarianism since the Sandinista revolution.

But the viciousness acquires special edges against organized women, because in 1997 they supported Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo's rape complaint against her stepfather.

“We were the first to call Daniel Ortega a rapist and dictator,” they all note.

Blandón assures that all the Sandinista governments have never been interested in women.

"The Sandinista Front in general has an old sexist, misogynistic, authoritarian and utilitarian brand (of women) from the eighties to the present day," she asserts, and rejects government propaganda that insists that they have achieved gender equality in Nicaragua .

“They have increased the number of women in elected positions, but there is a brutal system of co-optation.

We feminists never said that we wanted to be in power to exercise dominance, control and violence against citizens,” says Blandón, director of the NGO called Programa Feminista La Corriente, whose legal status was canceled and its headquarters in Managua confiscated.

“Having more women in authoritarian powers has never been part of the feminist demand.

There are more women in power nominally, but they do not have autonomy and, above all, they are women who do not represent in any way the defense of the rights of Nicaraguan women”.

Never before have so many feminists been exiled and banished.

Montenegro and Solís have been, for now, the last renowned feminists to come out in a context of totalitarian entrenchment of the Ortega-Murillos, which has included the tenacious persecution of all critical voices.

They have charged the Catholic Church, journalists, civil society, social leaders, opponents and this March 6 the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), the main employers' association in Nicaragua.

María Terensa Blandón, Nicaraguan feminist activist. Carlos Herrera

“We always said that the worst thing that could happen to Nicaragua was the victory of Daniel Ortega.

I must say that unfortunately we were right, although we did not dimension such a level”, maintains the feminist Solís.

While Montenegro adds: “It is nonsense to have taken away our nationality.

They confiscated all of our assets, our homeland, they exiled us and also took away our pensions... And on top of that they devastate Cosep, they devastate the Church, everyone.

I don't know what they're really playing.

It seems that they hired an adviser to commit stupid things”.

On the morning of this March 8, the feminists inaugurated in the center of San José, next to the Plaza de la Democracia, a mural that demands the release of political prisoners in Nicaragua and Latin America.

It was a meeting prior to the march where these women met again, hugged each other, complained and expressed longings in exile.

“Rosario Murillo is a misogynist and her husband is too.

And there is hatred against women, because we women represent, particularly feminists, what Rosario Murillo has never managed to be in her life, ”says Montenegro.

“I am going to march with my flag.

I am going to march on behalf of my fellow feminists, who are still in Nicaragua and who cannot march.

I am going to march sure that Nicaraguan feminists are going to have better times for women's rights to be recognized”,

Blandon promises.

And Solís will do it for “the girls”, because “they should never experience anything that we have experienced.

They have to develop in a country in democracy and freedom.

That will be our reason."

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