Four women, four battles: this is how women are facing the crisis in Nicaragua
By Nayira Valenzuela/Alejandra Padilla in Confidencial, March 8, 2021
On international women´s day, Nicaraguan women do not have the possibility of demonstrating in the streets without being repressed, due to the de facto police state imposed on the country. Political persecution, police harassment, economic crisis, increase in gender violence and the impact of the pandemic are issues that worry Nicaraguan women. Confidencial talked with four women who narrate in first person what it means to be a woman in a country like Nicaragua. They are an opposition leader, a survivor of attempted femicide, an entrepreneur and a public health worker in the midst of the COVD-19 pandemic.
“Nothing compares to this stage, everything is exacerbated: persecution, harassment and that sense of being watched.”
In 2021 so far, at least 30 female opponents have been the victims of harassment, persecution and house arrest in the de facto police state. Ivania Álvarez has been an opposition activist for more than 12 years. Because of getting involved in the April 2018 protests, she has been persecuted, besieged, and jailed.
At the end of 2019 she has spent 47 days in prison as a political prisoner of the regime of Daniel Ortega. Her crime was taking water to the mothers of political prisoners who were holding a hunger strike in Masaya. Ivania remembers how her history as an activist began and how she is dealing with the de facto police state in Nicaragua.
The first protest that I attended was to put pig heads on the National Assembly, we did marches and even threw eggs at the Supreme Electoral Council, because we were against the regime and its institutions.
I joined the April 2018 protests in my territory, Tipitapa. I went to a march like the rest of the citizens. Seeing the sense of struggle of the young people was what most encouraged me. From April until now I got fully involved in the protests, we created the Tipitapa April 19 Movement, we support the mothers of political prisoners who are staked out in the entry to El Chipote, and today I am part of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB).
Because I am a female opponent of the regime, the Police follow me, hassle me and even jailed me in November 2019 for trying to take water to the mothers of political prisoners who were holding a hunger strike. I was in jail for 47 days, but the worst part was, being enclosed, they attacked my home with stones, my Mom suffered through all of that. I hope that there is justice.
A dictatorship has been brutal to my family, the hardest part is the harassment, repression and jailing, and also on the economic side the local authorities have attacked the way of life of nearly all my relatives. In these three years of social and political crisis, I have had the life of a nomad, I am living in different cities and homes. I have been on the run.
I have spent many years in activism and there was always violence; they made us retreat, they took us to El Chipote, and later they would free us, but nothing compares to this stage, the persecution of your nuclear family and you yourself does not compare to what we experienced when I was young. What is experienced today is completely exacerbated, the persecution, harassment and that sense of being watched.
For me, being a woman in a country like Nicaragua means being under constant harassment, not just for the fact of being a woman, but also now for playing a role of opposition that turns me into a target.
“The protective equipment for the pandemic has been scarce…and they want us to maintain a selective silence.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, some 17 female Health Care professionals have been fired for demanding biosecurity equipment or for being opposed to the poor management of the health care situation in Nicaragua, according to the COVID-19 Citizen Observatory.
“Marcela” is a health care worker in the public sector, who has treated patients with COVID-19. She shares what her experience has been but asks that her identity be protected out of fear of reprisals.
I have been a public health care worker for seven years. Being part of the Ministry of Health is synonymous with hardworking, self-sacrificing women in the work sphere as well as in the community and family.
We have great amounts of work, we have to do our duty, be responsible, because we are women, at work everything is fine when you produce and do your duty, but when the process of pregnancy comes, there is always that negative environment, above all when the details come of having children, being on leave.
Our salaries are very low, with that we have to juggle life and we have to try to cover all the areas of our lived experience. When the pandemic came to my zone equipment was very scarce, to not say non-existent, most of the implements that I have is because I paid for them. I bought my own protection equipment: my gown, protective lenses, head protector and gel alcohol, everything was on my account, at least in my area.
I was in the COVID area in the last weeks when there were then less patients, there were only four, but in the weeks prior there were 45 patients, 15 in critical condition and 30 intermediate condition. Most of my fellow workers got infected because in the beginning they were going house to house without protection.
If a health worker wants to keep their job, they have to remain overwhelmed with work, be a discrete person who only does their job. It is better that they see you working and working before they let you speak out and show what you are really thinking. They want us to maintain a selective silence.
“He told me that the only way I was going to leave the house was in a black bag…He would threaten me and then apologize.”
In 2018 46 women were murdered in Nicaragua, and another 50 survived attempts of femicide. Lucy Palmer is one of those survivors. Lucy is from Bluefields in the Southern Caribbean, one of the zones with the highest levels of violence against women in Nicaragua. She eluded being killed by her partner with whom she had lived for four years.
The data for 2021 are even more alarming. Between January and February 11 women have been murdered and 24 have survived attempted femicides.
I am a survivor of an attempted femicide, my former partner tried to asphyxiate me. It was a four-year relationship, but one of constant violence; once he wounded my arm with a shiv, I still have the scar.
He always told me that the relationship was going to end when he wanted it to, and once he threatened me with the fact that the only way I was going to leave was in a black bag and that I would be fertilizer for the cemetery. He would threaten me and then apologize with the excuse that he was a like a matchstick and temperamental.
The trigger that made the relationship come to an end was once in my house, I told him a joke and out of nowhere he pounced on me and was strangling me, my Mom was there at that time and she is the one who got him off of me. That day I told him that everything was over and that he should let me leave peacefully.
I was afraid, but one of my friends pushed me to go and denounce him, I did not want to do it, because when a woman is attacked and goes to file charges they do not pay attention to her. So I said that the same thing was going to happen to me, and that is what happened. This happened in 2018 and my attacker is still not in jail and nor does he have a restraining order against him. He could do something to me at any moment. Three times I have run into him on the street.
The Police only took my denouncement, they revictimized me, they ask you and ask you, they send you to the forensic doctor and he asks you the same thing and then to the psychologist who asks you the same questions, it is a very tiring process. If you do not show up with a big scar or a black eye or better said dead, they do not do anything, they wait until the woman is dead to start to act.
“Women have opened space more forcefully, with less fear…don´t let anything turn off your light”
30% of Nicaraguan enterprises are led by women and more than 50% participate in the economic activities of the country; but obstacles persist for entering the labor market, and many women are looking at how to open up new spaces.
In August 2020 the Nicaraguan painter and musician, Elsa Basil, along with a group of partners, inaugurated “Shawarma”, a Food Truck of Arabian food. This has been her experience with the enterprise and her passions.
My life is music and painting. For me these are two parts that provide the substance of who I am. I could not cook if I did not do music, and if I did not paint. It is my entire existence. When I feel exhausted there is music, when I feel upset there is painting.
I studied music, and I thought that music could provide me a more stable economic solvency, but because of the situations of the country in which we live, it did not happen. My mind little by little was looking for resources to get ahead. In August 2020 along with some Arab friends we inaugurated “Shawarma”, a food truck of Arab food.
In the beginning things got complicated for me a bit, but I adapted to the circumstances. I was a bit afraid, that whole issue of the pandemic had raised my fear of bringing that disease home and infecting my Mom or myself.
I have had several projects, really. I had one that was called “Basil Lunch” that also was a restaurant of Arab food…I also did a small project that was called “Matraca”, of traditional Nicaraguan candies, and that I closed down because of the situations that occurred in 2018.
In the area of gastronomy, I have not suffered much discrimination, nevertheless, I believe that at the beginning of my career as a musician I did feel a bit of it for being a woman, but one makes one’s way, and you do not allow all these things to shut you down. I feel that was how it was, and I invited women who are watching me to continue forward and not to let anyone shut down their light.
I feel that at this time women have opened a path, maybe in contrast to my generation, more forcefully, with less fear of opening up, of showing themselves and being committed to what they are dedicated to.
I think we women have many barriers in many things, not just in being entrepreneurial, but is it not something that is impossible either.
I think that part of the struggle of women is that, giving ourselves that space, looking for that space, and I think that we have many examples of women on the national level who have gotten ahead.