Hora Cero
junio 16, 2025
Since mid-July, the regime of co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has unleashed a brutal hunt against opponents and residents of the municipality of Jinotepe, in the department of Carazo (Pacific coast of the country). According to a compilation made by the media, there are eight arrests carried out throughout the department of Carazo, which has created a climate of «great tension,» exacerbated by police visits, harassment with patrol cars and motorcycles of people participating in protests, and roadblocks. However, since the death of Mauricio Alonso Petri, fear has taken hold, resulting in areas of silence or lack of information.
The most brutal case of this repression is that of the opponent Mauricio Alonso, who was kidnapped along with his wife and children in the early hours of July 8 in Carazo. On August 25, the National Police handed over his dead body. His wife was released on July 18, while his son remains in prison.a The whereabouts of both men had remained unknown, and they had been subjected to enforced disappearance, a tactic the regime has leveraged over the past year to increase its control and the prevailing state of terror in Nicaragua.
Mauricio Alonso joined the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), a political group that emerged from dissidents of the Sandinista Front in the 1990s. However, he withdrew from the group in recent years for personal reasons.
“I always remember him as a man of solidarity and commitment to democracy; he was conciliatory and very tolerant. Mauricio is now the sixth political prisoner to die in the dictatorship’s custody,» says Suyén Barahona, a Nicaraguan activist in exile.
Between the night of July 17 and throughout July 18, raids were carried out in Carazo, before the anniversary of the Sandinista Popular Revolution. The event is important for maintaining the cult of personality for Ortega and Murillo. As of August 15, the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners reported the arrest of 22 people in the municipalities of Carazo, Granada, Masaya, and Rivas. In Carazo, these raids occurred after the seizure of the San José School, which has been renamed «Bismarck Martínez» in honor of the worker whom the regime claimed was murdered at the Jinotepe roadblocks in 2018.
Murillo claimed that the school was used as a «torture» center by the «coup» in 2018. In April of that year, protests against the regime erupted and spread across the country. Cities such as Managua, Carazo, Granada, Estelí, and Jinotega organized demonstrations and created protection mechanisms against police repression and the illegal groups operating in collusion with the authorities.
Following the confiscation of the school, the Mechanism organization reported that the operations included warrantless raids with destruction of property and theft of belongings. The arrests have occurred at night or in the early morning. Those detained have included former political prisoners and entire families.
«This pattern confirms the criminalization of the 2018 protest and a systematic strategy of retaliation against exiles, using the state apparatus to punish and silence political dissent,» the Mechanism said in a statement.
On July 8, 2018, the Ortega-Murillo regime carried out a sweep of the city’s roadblocks and barricades. The operation aimed to dismantle the rebellion in Carazo, considered one of the largest and strongest pockets of resistance in the Pacific. The attack began around 5:30 a.m. and lasted nearly 12 hours until the city was taken by the police and paramilitaries.
The Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Nunca Más detailed in a statement in July 2024, on the sixth anniversary of the repression in Carazo, that nearly 2,000 paramilitaries attacked the city, leaving 20 dead and 30 detained.
«Operation Cleanup demonstrates the inhumanity, disrespect for life, and grave human rights violations of the Nicaraguan dictatorship, which preferred to attack and kill the Nicaraguan people using every means and resource possible,» the Costa Rica-based group stated.
Witnesses and opponents reported that the paramilitaries involved were composed primarily of retired military personnel with military training and that the repression was protected and coordinated by the police.
Protests erupted on April 19, 2018, as in other departments across the country. Most of the protests, marches, and caravans of demonstrators against the regime were concentrated in Jinotepe and Diriamba. As the protests grew in scale, repression increased. Initially, the protests targeted municipal workers and public officials, as well as members of the Sandinista Youth, who were employed as shock troops. Later, special forces and riot police took to the streets with weapons. Lethal violence was used.
In the 1970s, the Somoza family dictatorship also systematically repressed the cities of Carazo. The National Guard, under the Somoza regime, carried out arbitrary arrests, torture, and kidnappings against the population. During the final stage of the regime, the repression became more aggressive, to the point that Jinotepe and other towns in the country were bombed in an attempt to suppress the rebellion seeking to overthrow the dynasty.
On November 11, 1960, a group of guerrillas attacked the barracks of Somoza’s National Guard in the cities of Diriamba and Carazo. The action, led by Indalecio Pastora and Leonel Cabezas, was planned to take place in different parts of the country. However, it only took place in those two cities. During that same year, the first cell of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was founded in Carazo. According to the fourth volume of the Memories of the Sandinista Struggle, by former guerrilla commander and historian Mónica Baltodano, groups of young people painted graffiti in the streets of Jinotepe and displayed the red and black flag of the FSLN.
The memoirs also describe the repression carried out by the National Guard against the population, as well as the guerrillas’ response at the time. «The Guard was shooting, shooting at the Grand Hotel, already at night. Many people were wounded, peasants who had a great love for that struggle and carried their little pistols and went out into some alleys, inside»From the Grand Hotel, bang! Bang! They fired at the Guard, and they went in. The Guard answered them with machine guns; the shots ricocheted, so we had a large number of wounded, due to that carelessness or that uneven way of fighting,» Enrique Yico Sánchez recounts in Baltodano’s memoirs.
“Carazo has truly been a department with a history of rebellion. Since the 1954 uprising, with that entire conglomerate of patriots who operated in those territories. They were extremely rebellious. And that explains, in some way, why in 2018 the presence of people with Sandinista history was active and participated in the uprising against the Ortega dictatorship. They were among the places where popular participation was evident,” Baltodano stated in an interview with this media outlet.
In the Memories of the Sandinista Struggle, Baltodano recounts that the Carazo uprising was planned for June 7, 1979. The plan was for the rebel forces to definitively take over the Guardia headquarters. “Diriamba demonstrated a high level of popular mobilization for the uprising, due to the unusual stability of the leadership and the development of political and organizational work in this city,” Baltodano comments.
On July 8, Jinotepe was finally liberated, being one of the first cities where all National Guard positions were occupied. Although it was one of the first cities liberated by the combatants, whose liberation opened the door to the Sandinista revolution, the Ortega-Murillo regime—whose political existence they owe to that revolution—has now taken its toll on its population, committing murders, forced displacement, and persecution.
