April 18 marks the fourth anniversary of the uprising of the population against the Sandinista regime over initially the lack of response to forest fires, followed by the government reform of social security. Paradoxically, many of those participating in the uprising were Sandinistas at the time. The following article provides the perspective of three people from arguably the most Sandinista neighborhood in Masaya, the indigenous neighborhood known as Monimbó, and the cost they paid for their participation in the protest.
Repression and death: so was the Masaya massacre under the troops of Daniel Ortega
By DIVERGENTES April 18, 2022
DIVERGENTES and NICARAGUA INVESTIGA reconstructs in three stores how the popular uprising happened in Masaya, the ferocious Operation Clean up and the flight of some inhabitants. The construction and analysis of a database, contrasted with relatives of the victims and information from human rights organizations, exposes the result of the Sandinista repression 34 mortal victims. Their deaths continue unpunished. “Will it be that they are going to be left like any animal that they have killed? This cannot be erased,” demanded the mother of one of the victims.
Bullet marks are scattered throughout the city. In almost every corner, on the posts, on the walls. These bullet holes form part of the urban setting of Masaya, one of the cities most punished by the repression of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in 2018. Even though they are there, emblazoned as the brutal example of a violence for which one is never ready, it is better to pretend to not see them. The repression left a bloody trail: 34 people murdered.
A database done by DIVERGENTES AND NICARAGUA INVESTIGA for the first time provides details that in Masaya 34 people were murdered in the context of the civic protests of 2018. The information was contrasted with relatives of the victims, reports from human rights organizations, and publications that the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) did, as well as the Museum of the Memory of the Mothers of April Association.
The number could be larger if we added the names of eights citizens who were reported by several communications media as murdered. Nevertheless, in the search for information and data comparison that DIVERGENTES and NICARAGUA INVESTIGA did, the relatives of these victims could not be found, or information that would confirm their deaths. The figure could also increase if we added the names of the victims who remain anonymous because their relatives have wanted them to remain so. For the purposes of this report, the figure reflected will be 34. If some relatives has details about the death of their loved ones and want to share it, we have set up an email to receive the information: [email protected] All the data shared will be managed in a confidential manner.
For two months we traveled to the city of Masaya to reconstruct through three stories the genesis of the rebellion, Operation Clean up and the resistance that citizens showed who still live in this town. It is a town that, even though it is subjected to a police state of siege, continues with their pride intact.
I. A city that rebels
María Melania Putoy is not at peace. At her 60 years of age she knows that she will not have peace until she finds justice. Her son, Jasson Ricardo Putoy was murdered the night of June 3, 2018, nearly three months after the social uprising began that shook the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua.
Jasson was one of the thousands of Nicaraguans who came out to protest against a regime that showed its most repressive face. While he and his group of friends carried rocks, and in some cases homemade bombs, the National Police responded with bullets and high calibre weapons. His death occurred from a bullet in the city of Masaya, one of the most embattled pockets of resistance in the country.
He was 22 years old when he was murdered by an accurate shot to the thorax. He worked as a shoe maker. In May of the year of his death he took three pairs of shoes to his mother as a sample of his work. “He was joyful, very popular. He always liked to be out with his friends and watching soccer games on television,” said María Melania.
Jasson is one of 13 youth between the ages of 19-29 who were killed in Masaya. Most of the victims in this age range died as a result of a bullet to their body while they were protesting or remained in the barricades in the city.
“The first day – April 18, 2018 – he told me that he did not like them beating the elderly. He told me that he had to fight for them, for his grandfather,” added María Melania in his home located in a neighborhood of Masaya.
The protests started that day in several provinces of the country after the announcement of a reform to Social Security that would increase the years of payments to gain access to a pension in Nicaragua. A group of elderly people went out to the streets of León to demand an end to the measure, but they ended up attacked by shock troops of the party.
In the country they are known as “mobs” and are composed of members of the Sandinista Youth and paramilitaries. The scenes recorded by cell phones and shared in real time on the internet infuriated hundreds of young people. The repression caused thousands to join the demonstrations that were demanding the end of the regime. Jasson was one of them.
But the anger was not enough. Immediately, irregular groups ruthlessly opened fire on the population. The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) calculated that 355 people were murdered within the framework of the protests, according to the latest update that the organization did at the end of 2021.
The incursions of paramilitaries began in June, when the Police found themselves surrounded by the organized citizenry. They were times when Nicaraguans barely slept. On June 3 one of those attacks occurred by Sandinista militants, with the purpose of preparing the terrain for what would be Operation Cleanup one month later.
“There was a shooting, and as a mother you feel it. My heart already was warning me that something was happening. They called one of my daughters, then they called me. They told me that he was wounded, I thought that he was only wounded, but all his friends brought him to me dangling. They laid him on the floor, already lifeless. There was nothing to do. It was through the thorax,” stated María Melania on nearly the fourth anniversary of the attack.
The mother of Jasson Putty, killed June 3, 2018
Since then, the regime has tightened the screws of the repression to ensure their permanence in power for more time. The most recent repression consisted in arresting and penally processing seven opposition candidates and dozens of activists, analysts, business leaders and critical citizens.
After having carried out some elections without competition this past November 7th, Ortega and Murillo have continued with their crusade against all those who dare to challenge their power. Their radicalization has been complete.
During his inauguration speech on January 10th Ortega said that he was starting a new stage. One in which “a clean slate” would be imposed, all for the purpose of “returning the country to the good path it was on prior to 2018.” In other words, the mirage of economic stability at the cost of public freedoms through pacts and negotiations with big capital.
“I asked myself the question, is all this going to remain as it is? Would it be that they are going to be left like any animal that they have killed? This cannot be erased in that way. A mother is not going to accept what Daniel says. I do not think that this can be left like this even though it is so easy for him to say,” says María Melania.
[Interactive list of those killed in Masaya]
The mother passes the days beside the two sons who live with her. In the house operates a small store of basic products for the home. In reality, her days are passed in a flat and serene way between the kitchen and domestic tasks. It they had not killed her son, she could be living a quiet retirement, full of peace.
It is true that peace will not come to her until the crime against her son has been clarified. With the passage of the years her grief is not forgotten, but just becomes something more bearable. “There are moments when I fall into like a depression because I remember everything about him. I remember the moments when I was happy, that I spent with him happy. It is like it was yesterday,” she states
II. Resistance in Masaya
In 2018 Masaya was a mixture of fatality and beauty. Marimba music and dancing was heard in the midst of the barricades, the shooting and the contact bombs. The old legends of virgin and saint protectors emerged in droves, as people looked to something to hold on to. The resistance was such that it took the regime several weeks to gain access to the heart of that rebellion, an indigenous neighborhood that bears the name of Monimbó.
That name was made immortal in the history of Nicaragua because of the bravery of the people that were born there. More than 40 years ago the parents and grandparents of many of the youth who came out in 2018 confronted a cruel dictatorship that governed the country for decades. The Sandinistas were those who fought to free the people from the dictatorship of those years, and all of Monimbó took to the streets to accompany the urban guerrillas that fought against the National Guard, the army of the Somoza family.
For that reason, many things were activated in the memory of María Andrés Escobar when she began to see the contact bombs made in Masaya in the streets, and whose recipes became coveted knowledge, just as before. “I had already experienced this in 1979,” she said from her home located in the neighborhood with indigenous origins. “I felt a lot of pain on seeing the deaths. How many young people are going to die because of this disproportion of weapons,” she asked herself at the beginning of the protests.
Her son Darwin Ramón Potosme would be one of those murdered on June 18, 2018.
María Andrés is a nurse, so the first thought that she had when they shot her son was that he could be treated, that it would not be as fatal as death. She wanted to hold on to this. A group of young people called her to go to recognize “Comandante Fafo” as he was called in the struggle.
“ I did not want to recognize that my son was dead, for me, my son was alive, and when I arrived, I saw a bunch of people running with the gurney of the Red Cross,” she recalled.
The mother tried to fix the features of his face, which were left disfigured as a result of the impact of the bullet. It went directly into his head, with a precision that she believes only a sharpshooter would have. They shot to kill. The regime showed it had no interest in containing the protests, but in eradicating them, in eliminating dissidents at gunpoint without regard to the pile of cadavers that it left in its path.
“Comandante Fafo” was one of 17 citizens, between the ages of 31 to 60, who were murdered in Masaya during the civic protests of 2018, according to the database developed by DIVERGENTES.
“I started to prepare his body, to stick cotton in him to keep him from falling apart. Then later I said to my brother in law that we should go and see where we are going to bury him,” she added.
The forces of the regime in those days launched an offensive to subdue the city with the purpose of liberating Commissioner Ramón Avellán, who at that time was the police chief of Masaya. Also, so that Ortega might be able to hold the celebrations prior to July 19th, the day of the Popular Sandinista Revolution.
The operation began in Ticuantepe, a nearby municipality that had a roadblock that closed access to the highway to Masaya. The population responded with what they had within reach to disperse the forces of the regime. Most used stones, slingshots, mortars and homemade bombs. But the arsenal of the police and paramilitaries was much more lethal.
Darwin went out into the streets as did thousands of young people who, like he, were angry over the reform of Social Security that the regime had prescribed. He did not want his mother to pay for the hoped for retirement with more years of payments. They built several barricades throughout the entire city and took charge of collecting provisions, utensils and food for the people in the barricades.
“He wanted another Nicaragua. I am going to defend this, was the only thing that he was saying to me when I expressed my concern to him,” said María Andrés.
Darwin worked on making shoes in a homemade workshop in the city. He had studied computers, but after the death of his father in 2005 he joined the National Police with a friend. His mother was concerned about him because she was afraid that something might happen to him.
Once they sent him to a surprise operation in Rivas, a mission where he had no idea about what he might confront, but which consisted in capturing some drug traffickers. He came out of it fine but convinced that he ran a lot of risk. He resigned from the institution in 2012 to work in craftmaking and soccer, his principal passions. In addition to making shoes, Darwin did paintings.
During the protests, María spent most of the time thinking about her son. She admits that the police training he had gave her some level of confidence. She felt that it could give him some margin of experience in the face of danger. But no knowledge protected him from bullets from the paramilitary groups. Darwin was not armed. What was most commonly used were homemade bombs.
In those days, he would take home bags full of food which people donated to those who were in the barricades. He would come home and ask his mom to make plates to give them to other people who faced more difficulties.
Four years since those events have not stopped the tears of María, that run from her eyes every time she remembers her son. What she has the more than anything is time. With her recent retirement, she spends her days beside her two daughters while she runs a modest nacatamale business (cornmeal with pork, rice, potatoes, and other ingredients wrapped in a banana leaf, very popular in Nicaragua). She could not contain her fury when she heard the words of Daniel Ortega this past January 10th on stating that “a clean slate” would be imposed on the country.
“That does not make sense, because our sons are not just anything. It is not something that you can erase when you want,” stated the mother.
III. Fleeing to save lives
More than a month went by before Masaya was taken by the regime. A month of death, grief and wounded. A month in which all those involved in the protests would face persecution, if the city fell. All without exception. Even those who had limited themselves to carrying out humanistic and life saving tasks.
Berta realized the seriousness of the situation when she could no longer tend the wounded, because the wounds were so serious, so dangerous that the medical post in the home of a relative was not enough. They were not simple sutures, stitches, shrapnel wounds, scratches or slight burns. They were wounds to the head, chest, to the back. Wounds that required the urgency of a hospital and a surgeon.
“I will never forget when a wounded person arrived with a shot in the head. I was left…I was only able to say that we could not treat him. We could make his situation worse. As of today I do not know what happened to him,” says Berta, even though, of course, that is not her real name. She agreed to tell her story anonymously, with the fear that citizens have that still remain in a Nicaragua in dictatorship.
“That day I also saw two people seriously wounded people whom I told were out of our hands,” continued the former health worker, who confirmed that she was present when they brought in the body of Junior Steven Gaitán Hernández, a 15 year old adolescent, to the medical post that operated in the priest´s house in the San Miguel Church.
According to the database of DIVERGENTES and NICARAGUA INVESTIGA Junior was one of five minors who were murdered during the civic protest of April. The 15 year old adolescent was in high school, he liked playing soccer and working with his father in a bike shop.
“I arrived that day to ask for medicines. And suddenly I saw that the rest of the young people brought in a wounded person. When we got close to look at him he had his face covered with a cloth. There was a circular hole in his abdomen. He was no longer breathing. His mother arrived to recognize him, and I can still hear those cries in my memory. It was terrible,” she recalls.
Berta joined the protests as a health worker. She has some knowledge of first aid that came out when she saw the repression. First, she turned her home into a place for collecting medicines and pharmaceutical instruments, but later it became such a situation that she decided that it was best to go out in search of the wounded and not wait for them to show up.
With a group of volunteers she would go to the plazas and churches, places where the wounded would go to be treated. The Catholic church opened the doors of the churches in order to treat in a humanitarian way those injured by the repression.
The attacks intensified as June turned into July. In those times Berta noticed the change in places of the wounds and knew that many of them simply were out of her hands. On the 16th rumors began to fly that the paramilitary forces would enter the last strongholds of the resistance. On the 17th they were now in the streets in a cruel attack against the population. That day Berta and her family knew that they had to flee to save their lives.
“From the morning we were hearing the machinery removing the barricades,” said the woman. Her home, like that of many opponents and volunteers, was marked. One of her neighbors, a party supporter, pointed her out when the Sandinista forces entered the neighborhood.
She had to jump the wall of her house to fall into another property where several young people were also hiding. But the paramilitaries also advanced on that home. As if it was a game of cat and mouse, Berta returned to her own home. Later, she decided to abandon the place with the help of some women who were walking among the streets of the town with produce.
Before fleeing she had to make everything in the medical post disappear. She could not leave any “evidence”, even though it was a humanitarian task. The regime of Ortega and Murillo did not allow even that.
Operation Clean up ended with heart wrenching images like the video where a man appeared named Marcelo Mayorga, on top of a pool of blood and next to a slingshot. He was killed in the ferocious attack. In the images his spouse is rebuking the anti-riot police where, in the corner of the street where he lay, they looked at her without doing anything.
Berta saw that video again and again. She remembers each person who she treated during the time in which she served as a voluntary paramedic. She was not able to process the cruelty of a Government to maintain itself in power. While she walked with the women who were carrying produce, she cried in a veiled way with a strong feeling of impotency.
Of the 34 mortal victims recorded in Masaya, at least four were officials of the National Police, one State worker and the rest civilians who were protesting against the Ortega-Murillo regime.
All the victims died between the months of April and July 2018. Beyond that date there is no data that reflects other deaths in the context of the protests of that year. Of the 34 killed, 12 were from the indigenous neighborhood of Monimbó.[interactive map of Masaya where the 34 victims were killed]
Berta was able to leave the city without the police, Sandinista sympathizers and paramilitaries recognizing her. Other neighbors abandoned their posts in the barricades and went down to the Masaya Laguna to flee the cruel attack. That July 17th five people were killed: two adults, two youth and a 15 year old adolescent.
“We left by the highway, and we did not return to Masaya for a long time,” says Berta nearly four years after that escape. ”In the town my Mom was left, my small cousins, my aunts. They harassed them, it was horrible,” she says.
Berta does not live in Masaya. She cannot because she is afraid that her neighbors would denounce her, just as has happened with some political prisoners in that city who were arrested by the Sandinista regime up to five months after they returned to their homes. She does visit her family from time to time, but she has to be careful to not spend much time in the home or on the street.
In Monimbó the state of police siege is ongoing. At least five police patrols do rounds throughout the neighborhood and city. There are checkpoints in the principal entrances and exits to the city. And the Sandinista followers continue with their task of vigilance to prevent resistance uprisings from multiplying.
Even though the police and paramilitary presence is ongoing, the people of Masaya have arranged things to continue resisting. At times bombs explode at a certain points in the city without anyone knowing who did it. They also make piñatas in the streets that show that critical thinking has not died.
“Walking in Masaya is not like it was before. There is a lot of tension because of the Police, but the police officers themselves know deep down that they cannot subdue Masaya. They believe they have control, but we realize that they are not governing, “ Berta concludes.