Children surveilled: the fear which the Ortega Murillo regime imposes leads to the law of silence in classrooms
By Abixeal Mogollón in La Prensa, June 11, 2025
Between love and fear, parents and teachers teach their children to keep silent in order to survive, while state repression undermines childhood and freedom of thought.
In Nicaragua many mothers lived trapped between the desire to raise free children and the fear that one word that their children may say against the regime might put them in danger. “It is a mixture of frustration and constant fear,” pointed out a teacher in a public school who, as a mother, every day faces the dilemma of teaching her son to be silent to protect him.
“Living with the sensation that you cannot express what you think, not even in your own home or with your children, is very hard. You feel like you are raising them with invisible limits which suffocate them,” she says.
Since the April 2018 protests, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo intensified their surveillance in classrooms. Public schools especially were established as places where ideological alignment was required, and any dissidence was punished. In universities even expressing your opinion can lead to expulsion or jail.
In this environment of fear, even children are perceived as potential informers, even though they do not fully understand the weight of their words.
Pain that is not seen
Ruth Quirós, a Costa Rican psychologist who works with exiled Nicaraguans, has treated minors and adults marked by the repression. Many of these adults are what she called “those other children:” people who experienced the dictatorship of Somoza and who now, as parents, are reliving the trauma with a new dictatorship.
According to Quirós, the political control which the Sandinista Front exercises in schools leaves deep wounds. “They are children with a high amount of emotional insecurity, fear of making a mistake or speaking. This creates anxiety in them,” she explained. The consequences are not just emotional: they can be manifested as unexplainable allergies, physical pain, low self-esteem. “All this is part of the emotional repression.”
Since Ortega returned to power in 2007, the educational system has been progressively instrumentalized. School programs exalt the figure of the president and Rosario Murillo, promote party loyalty, and require participation in political events. In many schools teachers as well as students are monitored, and those who express opinions contrary to the regime as punished.
Teaching children to be silent
The teacher interviewed speaks with pain about the measure which she has taken to protect her son: teaching him to be silent.
“I have told him to avoid talking about politics or repeating things that he might hear at home if they are different from what they teach in the school. I explained to him that it is not because it is bad to think differently, but because it is not safe here,” she said. “It is very painful to have to teach him to keep silent, when as a mother what you want is your son to be free,” she added.
Her greatest fear is that her son might say something, “inappropriate” and that might have grave consequences for the entire family. “It hurts to think that he will grow up without the freedom to question or think for himself.”
She also fears about the long term consequences. “Being raised with fear can affect your self esteem, your critical thinking, your interior freedom. You can learn to normalize censorship and silence, and that is very dangerous. But I also have the hope that one day he will value freedom, look for it, and defend it. I only want him to grow with awareness about what is happening, but also with the hope that one day he will be able to speak without fear.”
“It is important to heal”
For the psychologist Ruth Quirós it is vital to recognize that the children that stayed as well as those who live in exile are being affected. Many of them have been separated from their parents or relatives and live with confusion and fear.
“I think about the children who stayed in Nicaragua. They are suffering. And I also am thinking about those who are outside. Both groups need to be accompanied,” she said.
“When the regime ends, it will be urgent to begin a process of healing which would involve the entire country. It is important to include children, help them to understand what they experienced,” she advised.
Age does not matter to the regime
The regime also has not hesitated to turn children into a weapons of intimidation. The report of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua of the United Nations (GHREN) published on April 3 of this year, registered police interrogations of children to get data on exiled family members, and documented discrimination in schools and communities against children of dissidents. According to the report, the harassment perpetuates state control over families and forces many parents outside the country to distance themselves from their children to protect them.
The Constitution of Nicaragua sets penal responsibility starting at 13 years of age and promises a “special justice for adolescents” with separate internment and guarantees against isolation. Nevertheless, the report warns that the authorities violate these safeguards in a systematic way: adolescents share unhealthy cells with adults, deal with prolonged isolation and do not receive independent supervision.
