News about Mons. Álvarez from La Modelo: He is in isolation in El Infiernillo [little hell]
By DIVERGENTES May 16, 2023
After the US State Department presented their report on Religious Liberty where they denounced the persecution of the Church and the imprisonment of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sources from the Penitentiary System confirmed for DIVERGENTES that the priest is in a maximum security cell known as El Infiernillo [little hell] in the La Modelo jail. He is isolated and watched 24 hours a day, but does get medical attention and access to packages which his family sends.
Mons. Rolando Álvarez is in cell 19 in Module 3-1 in the maximum security section known as El Infiernillo in the La Modela penitentiary in Managua. A source inside that penitentiary system confirmed for DIVERGENTES the exact place where the priest is being held, complementing the information that some national media had published about the confinement of the bishop since February of this year. The source within the prison stated that Álvarez is watched by guards 24 hours a day and his cell is searched on a daily basis, to ”prevent any communication with the rest of the prisoners of La Modelo.”
Mons. Rolando Álvarez was sent to La Modelo jail on February 9 of this year, after he refused to go into exile, along with 222 additional political prisoners, to the United States, in an operation which the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo coordinated with the US Embassy. On the next day Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in jail for the crime of “betrayal of the fatherland”, a designation approved in 2020 by the Sandinista Front to try dissidents. He was stripped of his nationality, they imposed a fine of 58,000 córdobas on him, and prohibited him from running for public posts and popular elections for perpetuity, according to the resolution of the Judicial Branch. The priest was apprehended in August 2022, and his judicial process was done under the figure of “house arrest” until then.
On March 26 of this year, after 47 days of no public exhibition of Mons. Álvarez, the Ortega-Murillo regime presented the prelate through photographs and videos during a dinner with his family in a room within the prison. With this exhibition, the government tried to show the good state of health of the priest, but the images showed the opposite: he looked pallid, thin, with pronounced bags under his eyes. For weeks different sources of Nicaraguan dissidents, human rights organizations and the international community demanded a proof of life of the bishop, after more than a month and a half of silence about his whereabouts.
During the dinner, Álvarez was accompanied by his sister Vilma and his brother Manuel Álvarez Lagos. The regime put together a complete montage: the fixed up a room within the prison, arranged a table and filled it with food and drink for the bishop to share with his relatives, while the propaganda media recorded the moment.
Blinken: “Unjustly detained”
In their annual report on Religious Liberty in the world, presented this past Monday May 15th, the State Department reiterated their denouncement about the violation of religious liberty in Nicaragua and the imprisonment of Bishop Rolando Álvarez. “Human rights defenders are sounding the alarm about attacks on the Catholic Church on the part of the regime of Ortega and Murillo in Nicaragua,” said Antony Blinken, chief US diplomat. Blinken described Álvarez as a person “who is unjustly detained.”
On February 9 Daniel Ortega said that Álvarez refused to be banished when he was at the point of boarding the plane. “He was in line, and he got to the steps and began to say that he was not going to go. That first he would have to meet with the bishops and demanded a meeting,” recounted Ortega. “I don´t know what this man was thinking. That in the face of a decision of the Nicaraguan State he says that he is not obeying. A resolution of the tribunal of justice which is ordering him to leave the country. He says he is not obeying,” he added.
According to Ortega, the bishop wanted to talk with the priests who had already boarded the plane. “So, we were not able to force him who did not want to leave to get on the plane,” said Ortega, who added that for that reason they sent him to jail in the La Modelo prison.
The president said that under the house arrest regime that Rolando Álvarez had been treated “in an incredible manner, like no other prisoners in the history of this country.” According to Ortega, in the house where Álvarez was “they made him special meals every day, doctors would come twice a day, sisters to cook for them. He lived in a mansion.”
Isolated in El Infiernillo
According to the sources of La Modelo, Álvarez is in El Infiernillo, one of the six modules that exist in the maximum security section called the 300, because approximately 300 prisoners fit there, in some 156 cells. The cell of the bishop is the same as the rest of the prisoners: three meters long by three meters wide, with two cots in each and a hole in the floor for the prisoners to be able to do their physical necessities.
The unique thing about the Infiernillo is the position of the cells, located from north to south, getting sun all day and without space for the air to move. A suffocating heat is felt of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to prisoners who have been there. Since September 2022, after the visit of the Red Cross, the political prisoners there were transferred to the other modules of the 300. Since then, the cells of El Infiernillo have been assigned to the maximum security prisoners who have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Nevertheless, Álvarez was transferred to that place since February of this year.
“Mons. Álvarez receives preferential treatment in comparison with the rest of the prisoners of the 300,” says the source. Álvarez receives medical attention at least twice a day, he is allowed to receive packages (that his family brings him) and they give him time in the sun. “They take pictures of him nearly daily to have evidence that supposedly he is in good health conditions,” added the source.
On May 7 Mons. Silvio José Báez, Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, said that Mons. Rolando Álvarez is being “reviled” within the jail. Therefore, Báez demanded his “immediate liberation.”
In March of this year, Pope Francis said that the couple in power of Nicaragua “is imbalanced” and it would seem that they want to “install the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitler one of 1935.”
“The news that comes from Nicaragua has grieved me a lot, and I cannot but recall with concern the bishop of Matagalpa, Mons. Rolando Álvarez, whom I love very much, sentenced to 26 years in jail, and also the people who have been deported to the United States,” said Francis in February, when he learned of the sentencing of the bishop.
Mons. Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and Estelí, up until his detention was the most critical voice against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo within the Catholic Church. After the forced exile of Mons. Silvio Báez, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, and Edwin Román, the pastor of Masaya, the homilies of Álvarez became the only ones within the Nicaraguan territory where the authoritarianism of the presidential couple was criticized.