Mother’s Day in Nicaragua is celebrated on May 30, and this year the National Assembly dominated by Sandinista deputies declared it a national holiday. But 19 young men were killed by government sharpshooters during the May 30, 2018 demonstration, one of the largest in Nicaraguan history. The demonstration was called to show solidarity with 89 mothers whose sons were killed by pro-government forces between April 18 and that fateful Mother’s Day May 30, 2018. For these mothers declaring that day a national holiday is a mockery.
The saddest Mother´s Day in the world
By editors of Domingo, La Prensa, May 29, 2022
Six mothers who lost their sons on May 30, 2018 at the hands of the regime of Daniel Ortega talk about how their sons were born and snatched away from them by the dictatorship.
On May 29, 2018, one day before Mother´s Day, Alejandra Rivera Ruíz met with her six boys and said to them, “Tomorrow I do not want hugs or kisses. We are going to show solidarity with the mothers who have lost their sons.” The boys remained silent.
What at that time Alejandra was not able to even suspect was that 24 hours later she would become another Nicaraguan mother who would lose her son as a result of the bloody repression unleashed by the Ortega Murillo dictatorship, after the protests begun in April 2018.
The son of Alejandra, Daniel Josias Reyes Rivera, then 25 years of age, was murdered by a bullet to the abdomen, when they surrounded the Mother´s Day march on May 30, 2018.
According to the report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), there were 19 young people murdered by bullets that day by Orteguista Police and paramilitaries.
There were also 19 mothers who did not celebrate their day, but lost their sons, most of them with bullets to the head, like what happened to Guillermina Zapata, whose son, Francisco Javier Reyes Zapata, received a shot to the head in the street in front of the UNI. She had to see a video on social networks, where it can be seen that other young people are trying to get her son out of that place on a motorcycle to take him to a hospital, but Francisco Javier´s brain mass was already visible.
In this article six of these mothers share how their sons came into the world, but also how the Ortega Murillo dictatorship snatched them away.
For them, and for all the mothers who lost sons during the repression of 2018, May 30 is no longer a day to celebrate. It is a day of pain. Mourning. And it is a mockery for the dictatorship to declare it a national holiday.
Candelaria López, mother of Carlos Díaz, also murdered that May 30th, wished that the date did not exist.
Yadira Córdoba
“Let´s go Mama, let´s support those mothers”
Orlando Daniel Aguirre Córdoba was only 15 years old, but on the morning of May 30, 2018 he said to his mother, Yadira Córdoba, that he felt the grief of the mothers who had lost their sons at the hands of the Orteguista police and paramilitaries.
“Let´s go to the march Mama. Those poor mothers, they have nothing to celebrate,” said the young man. The mother who had just washed 11 dozen clothes did not have the energy to go.
The night of that same day, Yadira Córdoba was turned into another one of those mothers who had nothing to celebrate on Mother´s Day.
Yadira already had three sons when she realized that she was pregnant with Orlando. She was hoping for “a little girl”, but an ultrasound indicated that she was having another boy. This did not keep her from feeling immense joy. “I received him with love,” she explained to the magazine DOMINGO during a Whatsapp call, since she is now in exile, fleeing the persecution of the dictatorship.
Everything went well with the birth. He was born healthy. “He was a very happy boy, sociable, had good communications with everyone. Charismatic, smiling. He studied music and was the drummer for the church. My son meant everything to me. All my sons are the best gift that God gave me,” said Yadira.
That day when she could not go to the march of the mothers, she received a phone call around 4:15 in the afternoon. “It has been the most painful call of my existence,” she pointed out.
They told her, “don´t get nervous. It is nothing serious. They wounded Orlando.” The call had not ended and she was already crying.
From her home in the Francisco Meza neighborhood by the Oriental market it was difficult for her to get to the new Fernando Vélez Pais hospital. Traffic was slow due to the presence of the police and paramilitaries. She left her home at 4:30pm and did not get to the hospital until 7pm.
They made her wait two hours in the hospital to learn exactly how her son was. Five doctors sat her down in a chair and did not know how to explain to her what had happened. In front of the new baseball stadium, close to the UNI, her son had received two bullets to his right ribcage.
The doctors said that one of the bullets had perforated a lung and that the young person did not survive the operation. Nevertheless, she already knew the truth. Her son had not received proper treatment because the order existed that they should not treat the wounded in public hospitals.
Since then, May 30th is a day of mourning for her.
Alejandra Rivera Ruíz
A day of terror and a night of desperation
Daniel Josías Reyes Rivera was the fifth of six children of Alejandra Rivera Ruíz, today a 56 year old woman. At that time, she says, she was unfamiliar with birth control and got pregnant for the fifth time.
She already had four children, but it did not affect her capacity to be joyful about knowing that she would have another.
The pregnancy was normal and at no moment did she need to go to a hospital or a health center. The boy was born at home. The mother of Alejandra, Tomassa Ruíz, was the midwife on January 5, 1993.
“He was a super beautiful child, chubby and healthy. I was happy. He was a beauty of a baby,” recalls Alejandra.
Daniel became the pride of his mother because he was always obedient. He would not go anywhere without telling her. “He would say, I will come home at such an hour, and he would show up at that time,” stated the mother.
When they killed him, the boy was studying veterinary medicine and animal science. To pay for his studies, he worked in a car wash and at times was a cook´s helper. “His cooking is delicious,” remembers his mother.
Killed in the protests
It was already getting dark on May 30, 2018 when two friends of his came to the house, located in Los Madrigales Norte, near Kilometer 14 on the highway to Masaya. The boys asked Alejandra if Daniel had already returned from the demonstration.
At that moment the woman felt something strange and began to cry. On that occasion her son had not told her that he was going to the demonstration, because other times she had stopped him from leaving the house. She turned on the television, saw what was happening near the UNI, and her heart was beating rapidly.
She called his cell phone, but it was turned off. Desperate, especially because days before she had fallen and could not leave the house, she sent one of her daughters to look for Daniel in the hospitals.
The young man was in the Vivian Pellas hospital, but his sister was not able to find him because, when the paramedics picked him up, in a weak voice he said his name was Daniel Josías, but they understood him to say Daniel García. Daniel had been shot in the abdomen.
Now well into the night on that same May 30th, a friend of Daniel called on the phone and said that they had called from the Institute for Legal Medicine (IML), that she had to go recognize the body of the young man.
Alejandra was not able to believe it. “It was a hard blow. It almost made me crazy. It seemed like a lie. I continue to experience that pain,” she commented.
They were not able to get the body that same day because they needed a document from the Police of Ticuantepe, but the officers said that they would provide it if the family signed a document that disassociated that armed body from any responsibility.
The family did not accept that, and it was not until June 1 with the support of human rights groups that they were able to get the body out of the IML.
Now, every time May 30th arrives, Alejandra does not accept hugs from anyone. “That day they took my son away from me,” she laments. “It was a day of terror. It should be decreed a day of mourning,” she ended saying.
Sara Amelia López
Grief goes to Costa Rica
What Sara Amelia López most remembers on the day that her son Cruz Alberto was born, on October 11, 1994, is that there was a “big storm.” She lived in the community of El Regadío in Estelí, and the rain did not let her get to the hospital.
A midwife, Haydée Cruz, assisted her. The child was born fine, and the midwife showed up every day to take care of her.
Cruz Alberto Obregón López was raised in the countryside. At the age of eight he moved to the city of Estelí, due to the separation of his parents.
He was a “bit behind” in his studies. He had to be told to do his homework. But “when he applied himself, he did it.” The teachers would congratulate Sara Amelia because her son was very intelligent.
The only two children of Sara Amelia, the boy and a girl called Amy, would fight over the love of their mother. “You are adopted”, one would say to the other. She would tell both of them, “both of you are special to me.” Behind this sibling jealousy, there was a relationship of a lot of love between the two.
Cruz Alberto would always say to his mother, “I am going to help you. You are no longer going to have to work, I am going to provide for you.” “He was my future,” Sara Amelia says.
When they killed Cruz Alberto, Sara Amelia was working in Costa Rica.
That May 30, 2018, he called her at 2pm to greet her. Afterwards, she called the house and they put him on the phone. “I will only leave to do a quick task and will come right back,” he said to her, when she asked him what he was going to do the rest of the day.
Sara Amelia was so sure that her son was home that, when her daughter Amy called her to say, “Mommy, they killed Cruz Alberto,” she thought it was a joke. One in very poor taste.
The paramilitaries of the regime killed Cruz Alberto some 70 meters from the park in Estelí. No one saw him leave the house when he went to support his friends. The bullets hit him in the neck, the chest and the back.
“May 30th lost meaning for me. It is a day of mourning. The fact that they declared it a holiday is a mockery,” Sara Amelia said in the end, who returned to Nicaragua after the death of her son, but who now is in exile.
Candelaria Díaz
The result of love at first sight
Candelaria Díaz was 19 years old when she got pregnant with her son Carlos Manuel Díaz. She loved him from the first moment that she knew he was inside her, not just because he was her first, but also because she had conceived him with the man who was her “love at first sight,” Ervin Balitán.
It was her mother, Filomena Vásquez, who was furious with her. She would tell her that the man was “a bum.”
The boy did not have his father´s last name because at that time she was very young and did not pay attention to that detail, but she did live with Balitrán for four years and they had another child, a girl. He left her because he later “bared his claws”: parties, liquor and women.
Candelaria struggled to raise her only two children, Carlos and Claribel. “I struggled on my own. They were everything to me: I gave them everything,” said the woman, who today works in Costa Rica
Carlos graduated from high school, but he did not attend a university. He liked to cook and studied cash register operations.
On May 30, 2018 she left early to go to work and around 9:30am her son called her, “Happy Mother´s Day Mom.” “Thanks my love,” she responded. Later, when Candelaria had already returned home and it was night, he called her again and said to her, “I am going home. This is dangerous.” It was the last time that she spoke with him.
Moments later, around 11:30pm, a sharpshooter of the regime ended the life of Carlos, shooting him right above the right nipple, when the victim was going through the central park of Masaya.
Candelaria was already in bed, but she heard the shots, five in total. She woke up her daughter and said to her, “Listen. And that boy was coming here.”
Minutes later, a niece knocked on the door. “They shot tubby,” she said. Candelaria thought he had been just grazed.
They ran out to the park and were able to see an ambulance. The young people who were there said to the paramedics that they should let Candelaria get in, that she was the mother of the wounded boy.
They had him hooked up to oxygen, but he was not showing any vital signs. They were delayed in getting to the hospital due to the roadblocks.
The 30th of May are the most terrible days. I wish that day did not exist. The holiday that they are making it is a slap in the face,” regretted now Candelaria, who spent this past week depressed.
Guillermina Zapata
The video that showed them carrying her dead son on a motorcycle
Guillermina Zapata has saved it, but she avoids watching it. It is a video where her son Francisco Javier Reyes Zapata had just received a bullet to his head and other young men are trying to take him to a hospital on a motorcycle.
He was the second of four children. “I did it for love,” says Guillermina.
Francisco Javier was born on February 14, 1984. He was a loving son. The mother sold firewood and he would go out by her side to sell. “He would help with everything in the home,” the mother explained.
After graduating from high school, the young man wanted to study accounting, but the cost of the accounting class was expensive. So he studied to be a refrigeration technician.
“He was a hard worker. He had helped me sell clothing for 15 years. I would go to the Rivas province and he would go with me,” Guillermina pointed out.
Mother and son went to the demonstration on May 30, 2018. She was in the area of Metrocentro and he was by the UNI.
Guillermina was near the gas station when she heard the shooting. She did not want to continue to the UCA because she was afraid, and she also saw a lot of people. “If I had gone to the UCA, I would have seen my son get hit,” she says.
In the gas station she recharged the time on her phone and called her son, but he was not answering. She began to feel desperate.
She went back home, but when she was near the Roberto Huembes market a call came in. “On Radio Corporación they are saying that your son was mortally wounded,” she heard a friend tell her.
Nervous, she called home. One of her sons answered, “Mom, they called from the Baptist hospital, that Javier is dead.”
The news was a blow. So she remembered that around 6am she ran into her son in the bathroom of the house. “Happy Mothers Day, Mom” he said to her. And she responded “Why do you greet me so sadly?”
Later, she saw the video, where her son had received a bullet to the head when he was close to the UNI. The rest of the young men try to move him in a motorcycle while Francisco Javier still had in one of his hands a blue and white flag.
That flag, stained by the blood of her son, they later gave her.
Josefa Meza
“I died with my son”
Josefa Meza was 34 years old when her first child was born on January 10, 1997 in the Baptist hospital. He was named Jonathan Eduardo Morazán Meza. “I felt very happy with him,” she recalled.
“My son was a happy boy, like any child. Intelligent. He liked to ride bikes, to ride in the little car he had. He was very studious and applied himself,” stated the mother.
Jonathan did his high school in the Manuel Olivares Institute, and he graduated with a technical degree in Hotel Tour Administration in 2015. He had also taken online courses about computers, because he loved technology. “He already knew how to install software and also repair cell phones,” explained Josefa.
The young man wanted to do more academically, and when they killed him, he was studying graphic design in the Universidad del Valle.
“He was good to people who he knew could not pay him. He did not charge them. He was from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, who we call Mormons,” said the mother.
On May 30, 2018 the entire family agreed to go to the demonstration: Josefa, Jonathan and Kevin, the youngest son.
Josefa was near the sector of the UCA, when she saw that the Ortega paramilitaries were “shooting to kill.” She called Jonathan, but he was not answering.
The news got to her through a call to her cell phone that was made from the Vivian Pellas hospital. “The owner of this telephone was wounded. You have to come in person for us to give you more information,” they told her.
I was not until Josefa got to the hospital that she realized that her son did not have the possibility of surviving. She did not leave there until her son died 48 hours later. “They took away from me what was most precious. When they killed him, I felt that a part of me died with him,” she regretted.
Close to the UNI, Jonathan received a shot to the forehead from a sharpshooter. Like the other wounded young men, they took him to the hospital on a motorcycle.
Josefa now lives in exile, denouncing on the international level the massacre that Ortega carried out on May 30, 2018, and all the crimes committed by the dictatorship since April of that year.
“We mothers remain in resistance, we continue demanding justice,” Josefa ended saying.