April 2018 Rebellion: What feelings do these images provoke?
By Sunday editors, La Prensa, Abril 14, 2024
From an environmental protest to a social one. These were the events of April 2018 which led to a rebellion against one of the cruelest dictators of recent years in Latin America.
On the morning of Thursday April 12 [2018] a group of students, mostly from the Central American University (UCA) held a march from that house of studies to the Plaza de las Victorias to protest over the forest fire in the Indio Maíz Reserve, due to the fact that the regime, passively and not showing interest in the environmental damage, was not providing a quick response to the disaster in one of the largest environmental reserves in the Southern Caribbean of the country.
This action of the young people to challenge the dictatorship was the preamble to a series of violent acts which the regime unleashed against the population leaving more than 350 people murdered, according to data from the Interamerican Human Rights Commission (IACHR).
On Monday April 16 of that year, the executive president of the Social Security Institute (INSS), Roberto López, announced reforms to Social Security which directly affected the pockets of the insured and the meager pensions of the elderly. On the morning of Wednesday April 18 in the city of León a group of elderly tried to hold a march to protest the unfair reforms to Social Security.
The elderly were accompanied by a group of university students from the city, but in their attempt to express their just demands they received as a response from the regime a violent attack with their shock troops where they beat women, young people and the elderly.
This angered the Nicaraguan population, who in a self-convened way held protests in different points around the country, which were repressed by the Ortega mobs and the Police.
The self-convoked people began to arrive at 4pm on that Wednesday April 18th to the sector called Camino de Oriente where a sizeable group of shock troops of the dictatorship and Police awaited them. The mobs began to insult them, while the young people responded with slogans, “The people united, will never be defeated.”
Violence erupted when suddenly an army of motorcyclists arrived armed with pipes, clubs and stones and, along with the mobs who were there, began to violently beat the protestors and journalists who were covering the activity.
On Thursday April 19 students from the National Agrarian University (UNA) held a sit-in on the North Panamerican highway which was quickly broken up by anti-riot police, but the young people battled the Police for more than 2 hours until the President of the University intervened, Telémaco Talavera. At the same time protests began in Camoapa, Rivas, Estelí, Masaya and in all these cities the dictatorship responded with violence through its mobs and the police.
On Thursday night, Nicaragua was now lit up by protests throughout the country. The first death happened in the city of Tipitapa when the Police opened fire to dissolve a protest. There were several people wounded, among them Richard Pavón who received three bullets to the chest which snuffed out his life at 7:45pm on the corner of a bank where he remained lying in a pool of blood. Afterwards in the sector of UPOLI [Polytechnical University], young Darwin Urbina received a shotgun blast from the anti-riot forces which ruptured his jugular, a few minutes later in the same place died the policeman Hilton Manzanares Alvarado who was a member of the Special Operations Office (DOEP). The following day, Friday April 20, now Nicaragua was submerged in waves of protests by all sectors and the dictatorship responded with violence. That day the boy Álvaro Conrado was mortally wounded , denied medical assistance and bled out.
Ortega mobs try to intimidate students from the UCA who prepared to march and protest over the inertia of the government to the forest fire in the Indio Maíz reserve. The presence of the mobs did not prevent young people from marching from the UCA to the Plaza de las Victorias on April 12, 2018.
Shock troops of the Ortega dictatorship violently attacked women and elderly who were trying to hold a march in the city of León against the Social Security reforms. That day, Wednesday April 18, 2018 the package of reforms which had been announced at the beginning of the week was made official. That aggression against the population of elderly was the straw that broke the camel´s back for the uprisings of Abril.
Ortega mobs and motorcyclists surround the self-convoked people on Wednesday April 18 2018 in Camino de Oriente minutes before violently attacking them with stones, galvanized pipe, clubs and using their motocycle helmets as weapons.
The activist Ana Quirós is treated after being hit by a stone in the head on the part of the Ortega shock troops on Wednesday, April 18, 2018 in Camino de Oriente. Quirós continued supporting the civic protests against the regime which resulted in her banishment from the country on November 26, 2018 to Costa Rica, her country of origin, but Nicaragua had become her country by choice for some 40 years.
Classmates and relatives attend the funeral mass of the boy Álvaro Conrado who was shot in the neck by the Ortega police. Conrado, just 15 years-old, was mortally wounded on the third day of the protests around the Engineering University (UNI). He was denied the right to health care in the hospitals by order of the then Minister of Health Sonia Castro.
Monimbó was not left behind in the protest of April 2018. In the photo a demonstrator wearing a typical mask from Masaya and the flag of Nicaragua, burns a t-shirt with the slogan which the dictatorship uses.
An Ortega zealot passes by brashly and unpunished with a broken bottle top in his hands in the view of the anti-riot police in the city of Ticuantepe during a violent attack against demonstrators against the dictator.
A painful image to recall when the “mother of all marches” was held on May 30, 2018. It was attacked by police and paramilitaries. In the photo demonstrators carry the body of 21 year-old Jonathan Eduardo Morazán Meza when he was shot in the head by a sharpshooter. Morazán lost his life along with 18 other people that fateful day.
A couple of young people greet one another during the march commemorating the National Student Day on July 23, 2018
Barricades and roadblocks were put up in several cities of the country to deal with the attacks from paramilitaries and the police. In this photo inhabitants carry a casket in the midst of barricades in the city of Masaya.
Young people try to persuade an agent of the DOEP who forms part of a police cordon to block the march of “The Flags” which was assailed by government zealots and paramilitaries.
A patrol truck of anti-riot police circulates close to the Jean Paul Genie roundabout on Sunday September 2, 2018 after a blue and white demonstration which was attacked by paramilitaries where several people were wounded. In response, the demonstrators burned a patrol vehicle of the Police.
A demonstrator places the blue and white flag of Nicaragua on the casket of Gerald Vázquez, a student of the UNAN murdered by the police and paramilitaries in the Divine Mercy Church. They attacked the church where the students had sought refuge for more than 16 hours.
Members of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, along with priests and the Apostolic Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, arrive at the minor Basilica of the city of Diriamba where they were attacked by Ortega mobs and paramilitaries who attacked and robbed independent journalists as well.
The murder of Pastor Óscar Pavón and five members of his family in the Carlos Marx neighborhood in Managua received international repudiation and condemnation. This act on the part of the Police and paramilitaries is one of many crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship.
Elements of the special anti-riot brigade beat a citizen who tried to participate in a march against the dictatorship in the sector of Camino de Oriente on October 14, 2018. This repression left several citizens imprisoned.
Student leader Nahiroby Olivas with his mother Jackeline Valdivia when he was received in his home in the city of León after being freed on June 11, 2019 along with several political prisoners.
Funeral of political prisoner Eddy Montes Praslin, killed in the Modelo jail by prison guards on May 16, 2019. The crime against Montes was left completely unpunished. On his casket are the flags of Nicaraguan and the United States, his two nationalities.
Political prisoners Félix Maradiaga and Tamara Dávila are brought to the courts of the dictatorship in September 2022. That month all the political prisoners of the regime were taken to the courts to ratify their sentences by the Ortega judges.
The Ortega police take over the installations of LA PRENSA, steal their building, assets, and jailed their general manager Juan Lorenzo Holmann, in this way putting a gravestone on independent journalism by not letting its printed version circulate and forcing into exile all of its entire newsroom.
Three members of the Chamorro family on the chartered plane which took 222 political prisoners to the United States on February 9, 2023 after being banished. In the photo are Cristiana Chamorro, Pedro Jaoquín Chamorro and Juan Lorenzo Holmann.
Headed to freedom, part of the group of 222 political prisoners who were banished by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship to the United States in the Operation “Nica Welcome”.
Sofia del Carmen Velásquez is the matron and owner of “Variedad La Concheña”, an enterprise of Nicaraguan food which along with her family sustains them in Costa Rica, the country where they were exiled in 2018 after the uprising of April.
The Nicaraguan diaspora located in Costa Rica celebrate the liberation of the 222 political prisoners who were banished by the dictatorship to the United States. Nicaraguans outside the country continue showing resistance and resilience against the regime in different countries of the world.