In La Prensa, July 13, 2026
Eight years after the murder of the student Gerard Vásquez, his mother Susana López says, “I only ask God to return to Nicaragua and see justice done.”
A bullet entered the forehead of young 20 year old Gerald Vásquez López on July 14, 2018. His mother states that the shot was done by a sharpshooter at the service of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. That day the paramilitary forces of the regime truncated the dreams of the student, who aspired to graduate as a civil engineer and contribute with his knowledge to the development of Nicaragua.
From several flanks the paramilitaries attacked the Divine Mercy Church, located in Villa Fontana in Managua, where several students were sheltered. “It is a damned government and all its generations are stained in blood,” Susana López, the mother of Gerald, stated categorically.
This July 14, 2026 will be eight years since the crime perpetrated against the student. Hungry for justice, his mother has not lost faith in the fact that the murderers will pay for the crimes ordered against the civilian population in 2018.
Although the pain over the loss of her son has been a profound blow, Susana is firm in her fight to achieve justice. She also encourages the other family members of the victims of Ortega and Murillo to not desist and continue demanding responses for the crimes committed against their loved ones.
From exile, imposed because of her demand for justice, López, a member of the Association of the Mothers of April, promises she will not rest until seeing Nicaragua free and able to return to her country. She trusts that the nightmare caused by Ortega and Murillo will reach its end and that this stage will be left recorded in history, so that new generations will know what happened and not allow it to be repeated.
“There are many people responsible who have not yet paid”
López said to La Prensa that “starting in June 2018 Operation Clean up began in Nicaragua, which ended with the massacre in the Divine Mercy Church, where they murdered my son, Gerald Vásquez, and Francisco José Flores, known as Bear.”
Eight years since both murders she states that the mothers of the victims hold firm in their demand for justice. “We have always said that we were going to take this to the bitter end, until achieving transitional justice. What we wanted since 2018 was that the Government would recognize what was happening in Nicaragua, but it did not do so. What it has tried to do is erase that memory and the history of the country through the closure of symbolic spaces. One of them was the Central American University (UCA), and then they continued closing others,” she said.
López recalled that July 14, 2018 while the country was still facing the consequences of the massacre, the regime held a march for Flag Day.
She emphasized that “there are many people responsible within the country who still have not paid,” but she trusts that divine and earthly justice will come. “As mothers we are going to continue demanding justice.”
She is waiting for a trial of the State of Nicaragua
With hope López stated that she has maintained her search for justice, and that the case of the murder of her son Gerald Vásquez is now in the Interamerican Court of Human Rights in a process accompanied by defense attorney Wendy Flores from the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective.
“The last thing that they told me was that the case had already gone through all the filters and that we were awaiting the trial against the State of Nicaragua,” she explained.
According to López the admission of the case provoked reprisals on the part of the regime, because “when the news came out that they had accepted the case in the Court, the reprisal taken by the government was to destroy the tomb of my son,” she recalled.
Looking back over these eight years, Susana López laments that the dictatorship of Nicaragua has not responded to international justice for the crimes committed during the repression of 2018. “They murdered in cold blood and, unfortunately, human rights organizations counted 355 people murdered,” she said.
For López, the pain of the mothers is not limited to the murder of their children, but that it has been prolonged with exile, family separation and the impossibility of fulling experiencing the grief.
“Apart from the fact that they killed our children, we had to leave the country. We have our families separated and they did not allow us to experience our grief. We have, as they say, been wandering through several countries, experiencing a lot of needs. We have gotten sick and have gone through so many things, but we continue demonstrating to the government that we as mothers are never going to stay quiet and we are always going to continue demanding justice,” she said with certainty.
18 hours of attack that are not forgotten
Susana recalls that on July 13, 2018 the university students were negotiating the turnover of the installations of the UNAN-Managua, where they remained entrenched. According to her testimony, while the conversations were taking place, paramilitary and police forces attacked the campus with heavy weaponry.
“On July 13th the university students were at the negotiating table to turn over the university. Unfortunately, Ramona Rodríguez, who at that time coordinated the UNAN-Managua, practically speaking turned them over to the paramilitaries. The Police and the Army arrived with heavy weaponry and attacked the university,” she recounted.
In the face of the attack, the young people sought refuge in the Divine Mercy Church, where priests and members of the Catholic Church tried to protect them. López recalls that the siege lasted throughout the entire evening. “The massacre began. There were more than 18 hours of shooting. They cut the electricity and all supplies. On the early morning of July 14th was when they murdered my son,” she recalled sobbing.
During the night of July 13th, several people tried to get to the university to support the students, but López remembers that the Police blocked the area surrounding the campus. “The young people did not have any way out nor opportunity to protect themselves. Really the only protection that they had there was that of God, because all the university students who were inside the Church could have died,” she stated.
Gerald Vásquez López was killed in the early morning of July 14th in the perimeter of the Church. His mother maintains that he was shot in the forehead when he was in one of the trenches close to the entry of the priest´s residence.
“He died in the church. They took him to the priests’ residence and put him on a table. I will never forget that. It was difficult for the boys to recover the body of Gerald. There are videos and a lot of evidence that shows that it was not the students who killed him,” she related.
López states that the Government tried to blame the university students themselves, in spite of the fact that she states they were not armed.
“The Government wanted us to change our story and say that it had been the students themselves, but the students did not have weapons, they didn´t have anything. The university was attacked with heavy weaponry. All the surrounding area of the church was left bullet-ridden and bullets went through the walls,” she recalled.
Gerald´s mother insisted that the shot was made from one of the positions close to the Church. “In one of the trenches which was on the side of the Church, close to the entrance to the priests’ house, was where they made the shot. It was one shot. A sharpshooter shot him in the forehead. The shot was on target,” she stated.
Francisco José Flores, known as the Bear, also died in the area around the Church. López recalled that it was difficult to retrieve his body, even though finally the students were able to do so.
“I know we are going to get justice”
Gerald´s mother thinks that international pressure on the dictatorship of Nicaragua has continued and trusts that it will contribute to achieving justice.
“On the international level a lot of pressure has been applied. The most recent thing is that they did not win in SICA (Secretariat of Central American Integration). Organizations have continued working and even though they closed many in the United States, Europe has continued supporting Nicaragua,” she said.
López also maintains that there was foreign participation in Operation Clean Up. She remembers that, when she travelled from Masaya to Managua on July 14, 2018, she saw in the entrance to Masaya people she identified as Cubans, with green berets and a red circle. “I will never forget this. They have wanted to change history, but as a mother I am never going to forget what happened to us and what continues to happen,” she stated.
In spite of the exile and the difficulties encountered during these eight years, she keeps the hope alive of returning to Nicaragua and obtaining justice. “I came here without anything (the country where she is in exile) and I do not know whether I am going to return. I just ask God to return to Nicaragua and see justice. I took the case of Gerald to the Interamerican Court not just for my son, but also so the other mothers can obtain justice. We have not kept quiet for eight years and we have continued in the struggle. I know that we are going to obtain justice,” she reiterated.
López states that nor has she lost the hope of seeing a free Nicaragua. “Faith is the last thing that is lost. I said it in 2019: the light will shine on the darkness, and we are going to have justice.”
This July 14th she does not have a special activity planned for the anniversary of the murder of her son, because she is still recovering from an accident which kept her in bed for more than three months. “All the tendons of my right arm were ruptured and I am in therapy. I was not able to move and I thought that I was going to die, because when I received the impact I could not breathe. I only asked God to live because my hope is to return and be with my own,” she related.
Part of her family remains in Nicaragua and others of her children are outside the country. According to López, her older daughters had arrest orders issued and that persecution, along with the destruction of the tomb of Gerald, was incorporated into the report presented to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights.
“Afterwards came the persecution against my daughters and they have undergone many things. They thought that by destroying the tomb of my son, they were going to make me fall apart, but no. I have said that they were not going to silence me and they will not silence me,” she maintained.
Gerald was the oldest of her five children. He was studying to be a senior construction technician at the UNAN-Managua. “It is sad to see how they murdered a son who had a dream. He wanted to finish his major and be a civil engineer,” she recalled.
López states that the members of the Mothers of April will continue demanding justice for their murdered family members. “They did not silence us nor will they silence us. We are going to continue demanding justice for our murdered children: justice, truth, reparation and non-repetition. This is the slogan of the Mothers of April.”
