6 days ago
I Was Banished by My Country's Dictator. What Happened to Me Is a Warning.
I knew what exile felt like, but nothing had prepared me to experience it again in my 70s.
I was 26 the first time I was forced to flee a dictator. It was in 1975, and I had to escape Nicaragua for resisting the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last ruling member of a dynasty that had ruled the country for nearly half a century. Back then, I was a committed revolutionary, ready to die for my country in the fight against autocracy.
The exile I find myself in now, forced to start life anew in Madrid, is one I never could have imagined — one imposed on me by the man who helped dethrone Mr. Somoza with the promise that Nicaragua would never again suffer under a dictator's thumb.
In 2023, I, along with hundreds of other Nicaraguan intellectuals and dissidents, was stripped of my citizenship by President Daniel Ortega, who has now ruled Nicaragua for the last nearly two decades. Even those of us who have sought shelter abroad no longer feel safe. Roberto Samcam Ruiz, a retired army major and vocal critic of Mr. Ortega, was gunned down inside his home in San José, Costa Rica, on June 19. No arrests have been made in connection with his killing, but he was at least the sixth Nicaraguan dissident to be shot, kidnapped or killed in Costa Rica since 2018.
It is the latest step in Mr. Ortega's transformation from a onetime freedom fighter, my former comrade in the struggle against tyranny, into a full-blown dictator. Autocrats have long wielded statelessness and control over movement as tools to punish political opponents. Now, it seems as if Nicaragua can be counted among the states that reach beyond their borders to silence voices perceived as threats by those in power.
It has been painful for me to watch my country backslide into violence and repression. When I fled Nicaragua the first time, it was also to Costa Rica, to escape the Somozas' iron fists. I was only able to return four years later, after the Sandinistas, the left-wing movement of which Mr. Ortega and I were both members, overthrew the dictatorship in 1979. It was a moment of hope, and I was ready to apply myself to the dream of a free and democratic country.
The guerrilla war that broke out with the contras, U.S.-backed right-wing militias looking to topple the Sandinistas, soon made clear that dream was a fantasy. The conflict, over which Mr. Ortega presided during his first administration, from 1985 to 1990, left Nicaraguans exhausted from death and scarcity — and from Mr. Ortega's increasingly authoritarian tendencies, which I witnessed firsthand as an official in his government.
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