A Mayangna man rests after arriving at an area cleared by settlers in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

Indigenous Territories in Nicaragua Face Violent Attacks

Photographs by Carlos Herrera.

MANAGUA—The town bell rang out at 3 a.m. on Friday, February 28, in Santa Clara, a Miskito community in the northern Caribbean region of Nicaragua. As people woke up, they knew a bell at that hour could only mean one thing: they were under attack.

Settlers, known as “colonos,” who infringe on Indigenous territory in Nicaragua, stormed into town, guns drawn. Many of the Miskitos hid, as a group from the community fought back.

“Fortunately, this time no one was wounded,” said Susana Marley, a community leader of Waspam, known as the “Big Mother.” Her voice betrays weariness and desperation. It is not the first time that Santa Clara, a community in the Wangki Twi Tasba Raya territory, suffered an armed attack.

A Miskito family in a community along the Coco River on the border of Nicaragua and Honduras. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

The settlers, among them farmers, ranchers, loggers, and miners, keep a careful eye on the communities. They invade with firearms and consolidate control of ancestral lands through the complicity of the ruling party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Authorities turn a blind eye to illegal land trafficking through a system of forged legal documents that violates national and international law. The settlers’ incursions impact both the Miskito people and the Mayagna.

The Miskitos and Mayagnas are the main Indigenous groups in Nicaragua’s Caribbean region, a vast area, rich in natural resources, which covers half of Nicaragua’s territory. The Miskito population totals 150,000, and is made up of 23 territories with over 300 communities.

Before the February 28 attach, settlers had left a written warning on the door of the precarious health clinic in Santa Clara.

“The war is starting, so prepare yourselves. At any time you will have a visit because we don’t like to stab people in the back, that’s why we are giving you this warning, that we will be seeing each over very soon,” read the note, which was directed at the Communal Judge, one of the highest authorities in Indigenous communities. “You walked into the wolf’s mouth,” the note ended, signed by “el jefe,” the boss.

A group of children in the Mayangna community of Musawas, in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

Accustomed to armed attacks, the Indigenous communities have created a system to monitor and mitigate the aggression. Nonetheless, it does not always work.

On February 16, before the early morning attack, a group of settlers attacked several Miskito young people who were bathing in the kipla Tingni river. Jahaira Lacayo Wislaw, 17, was shot, the bullet shattering her teeth. She collapsed, writhing in pain, according to her aunt, Berty Wislaw German. Berty stayed with Jahaira and took her to the hospital.

Since 2015, attacks on Indigenous communities have increased. The Miskitos and Mayangnas blame the government of Daniel Ortega, which proclaims the banner of revolution and human rights, for its inaction to protect their vast territories.

The Atlantic Coast Center for Justice and Humans Rights of Nicaragua (Cejudhcan) is a human rights organization that works in the remote Caribbean communities. Since 2015, they have documented more than 40 murders of Indigenous people and 50 kidnappings.

In addition to the violence, lawyers and notaries in surrounding regions have a cottage industry fabricating property deeds and paperwork to cede land to the settlers, who then expel the Indigenous residents and declare themselves the rightful owners. Due to the state’s abandonment, and a weak property rights system, a settler only needs to present a handwritten document saying that he has purchased the property for a lawyer to draw up a deed.

LAND has access to deeds and avals, or guarantor statements, written for settlers. These are documents, without legal weight, which nonetheless can be presented as a property title. In other words, it gives a settler the right to a certain property in an Indigenous territory. They are illegal documents, because lands in Indigenous areas cannot be ceded, sold, or broken up under any pretext, unless the community has given consent.

A Miskito man poses with one of the guns that community members have fashioned to fend off attacks from settlers. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

Regional Government Coordinator, Carlos Alemán, and councilors Waldo Müller and Adrián Valle Collins have written guarantor statements for settlers. All three are Sandinistas. None of them responded to LAND’s requests for comment. In September 2015, settlers said that Alemán and Müller had given them guarantor statements, after the Miskitos accused them of escalating the invasions and violence.

“We aren’t invaders. Those of us who live here have been given permission by the community leaders and regional authorities,” said a settler who asked not to be identified. He spoke on behalf of the Farmers and Ranchers Association of Tasba Pri, a group of settlers that has claimed communal lands for agricultural expansion. The source backed up his claim with documents signed by the Sandinista authorities. That same year, the courts suspended five public notaries who wrote guarantor statements, but they soon returned to work.

Indigenous people had reported these problems to the Attorney General’s office, lead until a year ago by Hernán Estrada, a lawyer known to be loyal to President Daniel Ortega. However, LAND found evidence that Estrada is also involved in land trafficking. LAND has access to a copy of a guarantor statement signed by Estrada, by which he ceded a parcel of over 10,000 acres (6,000 manzanas) in an Indigenous territory to two people. The recipients and Estrada did not respond to requests for comment.

Estrada resigned in May 2019, citing health problems.

Leonarda Mercado Benítez, a Miskito woman, in her bedroom. Her community has suffered armed attacks by settlers. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

The government has issued land titles to 23 Indigenous communities on the Caribbean coast, fulfilling one of the steps laid out in the Communal Property Regimen Law, which required land demarcation and titling. However the process remains incomplete. Indigenous leaders say that ten years into the Sandinista administration, nothing has been done to finish the most important step of the law: saneamiento or territorial “clearing.”

Clearing the territory refers to expelling outsiders from the ancestral lands. It is a difficult process considering the number of mestizos who live in the territories, and natural protected areas. On numerous occasions, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued precautionary measures to protect the Indigenous communities. The government has ignored these measures.

The last major massacre took place in the heart of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, in the community of Alal, on January 29. Three Mayangna people were shot. Arly Samuel Gutiérrez died almost immediately, and Centeno Indalecio and Marconi Jarquín were gravely injured. Other people fled from the community to alert people to the tragedy.

Ricalina Davis and her children in the community of Musawas in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve. Her husband was killed by settlers. Carlos Herrera.

The settlers attacked Alal, shooting at other townspeople and burning down 16 houses, including the pastoral house, and killing animals. The attacks left six Indigenous people dead and eight disappeared, according to the community leaders.

“We don’t trust the authorities because they are responsible for the settlers invading our lands, because they are the ones who sold our lands, with a high environmental impact,” said Porfirio Ebel Zamora, a Mistiko community leader.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has created other problems for Indigenous communities. Human rights organizations have warned that the settlers’ incursions have forcibly displaced Indigenous people, putting them further at risk to the virus. Meanwhile the Indigenous communities of Karawala and Sandy Bay Sirpi, near the Rio Grande, decided to impose a quarantine in light of the government’s denial of the pandemic. The pandemic is only the latest challenge in a long battle to defend their territory.

A Miskito family that has taken refuge in Honduras, after fleeing Nicaragua due to the violence of the settlers in their communities. Photo by Carlos Herrera.

Carlos Herrera:

Carlos Alberto Herrera González is a photojournalist in Managua, Nicaragua. He graduated in Social Communication from the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua. Herrera is a correspondent photographer for the newspaper El País and the German Press Agency DPA.

https://www.carlosherrerag.com/

A group of people wait for transportation at a bus stop in Managua on March 13. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Nicaraguans Await the Pandemic that Their Government Ignores

Photographs by Carlos Herrera

MANAGUA— Across Latin America, Holy Week is a time for vacations, church celebrations and family gatherings. That tradition will be broken this year, as most countries restrict travel and mandate that people stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Nicaragua is the exception. While the Bishops Conference of Nicaragua suspended all processions to avoid an outbreak of COVID-19, the government of Daniel Ortega has invited Nicaraguans to participate in a music festival, open air masses and religious activities this Holy Week.

Ortega and his Vice President and wife, Rosario Murillo, have dismissed the risks of COVID-19 to the Central American country. Their hermetic response and lack of transparency in the face of the pandemic has alarmed epidemiologists and public health experts. COVID-19 has caused first-world health systems to buckle under the pressure, but the second-poorest country in Latin America waits with its arms crossed for a tragedy of great dimensions.

The Health Ministry has not reported the number of tests that they have carried out. The authorities have refused to declare a quarantine or suspend classes at public schools, because they consider these to be “alarmist and extremist” measures. Nor have they ordered the closure of borders, even though the five confirmed cases have all entered at the international airport of Managua.

“These are the contradictory and inexplicable things that happen in Nicaragua,” Dr. Milton Valdéz, the former Director of Epidemiology and former Vice Minister of Health during the 1980s in Nicaragua, told LAND. “The key is protecting the people. To gather hundreds of people when the virus is already present in Nicaragua is an irresponsible attitude.”

Few of the Catholic faithful attend Sunday mass on March 22 in a church in Managua after the first case of Covid-19 in Nicaragua was confirmed three days earlier. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Controlling the narrative

On March 22, a Facebook live transmission from a woman suspected of having COVID-19 captivated social media users in Nicaragua. The woman escaped from quarantine at Nicaragua’s Alemán Hospital. She claimed negligence and a lack of information.

“I’ve been shut in for more than 24 hours and they haven’t given me the test result,” she said in the Facebook Live. The woman had contact with the person who was the second confirmed case of coronavirus in the country.

Vice President Murillo appeared on television that night to calm the fears that the woman’s escape had provoked. Murillo sought to lift the blame from health officials. But distrust in the Sandinista government’s response to the pandemic had already been planted weeks earlier.

The vice president speaks in abstract terms and in a mystical, religious tone when discussing the public health crisis.

“As the Nicaraguan family we know that through trust and faith in God, we can go forward, peacefully, calmly, patiently, responsibly…” Murillo said in a midnight address.

“Above all, believing in the Lord and knowing that faith defends us and will save us.”

The government has failed to share key information with the public, such as the number of ventilators available in hospitals to attend to seriously ill patients. The Health Ministry has not made its projections about the pandemic public. It was only through a leak that the public learned about a document that the Health Ministry sent to the executive branch, warning that the virus could causes “32.500 affected people and 813 deaths” in six months.

Despite the advice of its own health authorities, the government has not put into place the measures of social distancing that the World Health Organization recommends. Instead, the administration surprised everyone on March 14, when it ordered Sandinista sympathizers and state workers to take part in a massive march, which Murillo christened “Love in Times of Coronavirus.” The attendees repeated that “with love” they will overcome the pandemic.

A group of supporters of the governing party Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) participate in a march on March 14. Five days after this march the government announced the first positive case of COVID-19 in the country. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Nicaraguans are not waiting for government orders

Since the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the country, some Nicaraguans have chosen to self-quarantine. In the main cities of Nicaragua, the streets, malls, shopping plazas and markets are quiet. Private schools have suspended in-person classes. Even though the Ministry of Education insists that going to classes does not present a risk, public school attendance has gone down,

Bimarck Rodríguez and Katherine Ramírez are two young professionals who live in Tola, a municipality in southern Nicaragua, famous for its beaches. They both decided to self-quarantine to avoid contracting the virus.

“Even though there are no state-issued prevention measures, we have gone more than two weeks without going out to avoid contagion,” the couple said. “We just went out once to buy food and provisions.”

According to Dr. Valdéz, the principle responsibility to prevent and mitigate the pandemic should be with the public authorities.

“They have to communicate with the population completely transparently and educate people so that they take the pertinent measures,” the specialist said. “We need collective action against the pandemic.”

Two students attend classes at a public school in Managua on March 31. Due to the world crisis caused by Covid-19 many parents have chosen not to send their children to classes even though the Ministry of Education has not cancelled the classes. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Ortega avoids the spotlight

At the time of publication, Nicaragua had registered five confirmed cases of COVID-19. One patient has died, and one was released from the hospital. According to the Ministry of Health, they have done about 200 tests and are monitoring 14 “suspected cases.” However, doctors at public hospitals have anonymously reported that they have told the authorities about dozens of other suspected cases of coronavirus.

“They are treating everything related to COVID-19 like a state secret,” said a doctor at the Nicaragua Alemán hospital, who asked not to be named.

Doctors report that the authorities have told them not to use masks and personal protective equipment when treating patients, under the argument that these measures “cause alarm.” The medical personnel worry about getting sick themselves, as has happened in countries like Spain.

Two workers from a public hospital in Managua on their way to work on March 31. Health personnel from public hospitals have reported that they are not allowed to use health protection equipment. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

An independent group of physicians, including epidemiologists and public health experts, formed the “Scientific Multi-disciplinary Coronavirus Approach Committee.” In their first communique, they urged the government to guarantee personal protective equipment for medical professionals and to train them in its use to avoid infections. The Ministry of Health has not responded to the complaints from hospital workers.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has warned against the government’s approach. The organization expressed, “profound concern” for the possible impacts of COVID-19 if the government does not act.

“We call on the state to disseminate complete and accurate information about prevention, resources and the Covid-19 situation, with transparency, rigor and impartiality,” the Commission stated.

The chief executive, President Daniel Ortega, has not shown his face during these debates. Ortega has not referred to the COVID-19 pandemic a single time. On March 12, he participated in a teleconference to address the pandemic with his regional counterparts, organized by the Central America Integration System (SICA). But in his speech the Sandinista leader didn’t say a word about his government’s prevention or mitigation plans.

In Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s Nicaragua, authoritarianism and secrecy are a breeding ground where COVID-19 may thrive.

A group of people gathered in the city of Nindirí on March 29 to elect Miss Summer 2020, an event promoted by the municipality, and held in a public park in the city. At least a hundred people gathered to support their favorite candidates. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Two girls in the middle of the audience applaud with emotion when they see the candidates of the Miss Summer 2020 contest parade. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

Three workers from the Managua City Hall start their work day on March 31. Public employees are prohibited from wearing masks to protect against COVID-19 so as “not to generate panic among the population,” according to the government. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

A worker in a free zone in Managua walks down the street on March 31. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

On March 31, there are fewer vehicles circulating in the capital Managua, but there are still no deserted streets. Photo: Carlos Herrera.

PhotoEssay: Carlos Herrera

Carlos Alberto Herrera González is a photojournalist in Managua, Nicaragua. He graduated in Social Communication from the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua. Herrera is a correspondent photographer for the newspaper El País and the German Press Agency DPA.

https://www.carlosherrerag.com/

TEXT: Wilfredo Miranda Aburto

Wilfredo Miranda Aburto is a Nicaraguan journalist. For more than seven years he has been working as an investigative journalist for the digital newspaper Confidencial and the weekend news show Esta Semana. He has covered political issues but above all human rights violations: forced displacement, illegal trafficking of indigenous territories, environment, mining conflicts and extra-judicial executions.