If anyone had any doubts about who had been detained and threatened with deportation in places “such as Nicaragua,” that would be me. I had also dragged along one Jack Carrick to serve as body guard/travel companion/professional photographer, so we had the pleasure of bonding over our detainment by the Nicaraguan national police in San Miguelito, state of Río San Juan. To explain the situation, I have been in León, Nicaragua since the beginning of January working on a research project about the effects of the Sandinista Revolution on women’s organizations in Nicaragua. I was lucky to collect about sixteen oral histories from women who had participated in or experienced the revolution and now worked around organizing women in many different capacities. After about a month of doing this work, I began to find myself more and more drawn to the issue that is currently dominating the country: the Gran Canal Interoceánico, or Law 840, approved by the National Assembly of Nicaragua in June 2013. “El proyecto,” as it is referred to in the law itself, is a $50 billion dollar endeavor to be funded and carried out by a privately-held international infrastructure development firm based in Hong Kong, called Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development group (HKND). Proclaiming on their website commitment “to operating according to international best practices in terms of transparency and accountability,” the project is steeped in secrecy and has yet to consult with scientific and environmental experts about the possible ecological impacts of the canal and the other seven sub-proyectos listed in Law 840 including an explosives factory, a dry canal, and two airports.
Wholly endorsed by Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government, it’s difficult to gain an idea of what’s really going on by following major sources of communication, which are controlled by the government. I decided it would be a grand idea to travel to the area that would be affected by construction of the canal, an expanse stretching from Rivas on the Pacific coast to the autonomous indigenous lands of Punta Gorda on the Atlantic coast, and talk directly with the campesinos whose land will be expropriated in the event of the canal’s construction, stipulated in Article 12. I decided on the community of El Tule, in the municipality of San Miguelito, a hotspot for opposition protests and roadblocks, where a children’s march was to occur on the 9th of February in honor of the first day of the school year. Instead of attending school, where kids and parents from the surrounding communities proclaimed the classrooms had been converted into military zones and the teachers into government informants, they took to the dirt roads of El Tule to march, chanting slogans such as: “¿Qué quieren los niños? ¡Que se vayan los chinos!” (What do the kids want? Out with the Chinese!) and “¿Qué quiere la gente? ¡Que se vaya el presidente!” (What do the people want? Out with the president!) Many banners and signs were emblazoned with “Daniel vendepatria” (Daniel sellout) and “Repeta nuestra soberanía” (Respect our sovereignty), while Nicaraguan flags dotted a crowd decked out in blue and white. I was informed early on in the morning that Jack and I were being watched by an undercover police officer, but continued to think that I would be fine as I was only a student, not a journalist associated with the press.
It turns out I should have heeded the warning- as we were on our way back to the town of San Miguelito to pack up our stuff and head on with our journey, we were stopped on the bus and demanded to produce identification. Although there were two other foreigners on the bus who weren’t asked for documents, we were assured that this was a routine procedure and were accompanied back to our hotel where Jack had only a driver’s license and I had a copy of my passport. The lack of original passports served as the pretext to detain us in the local police station for the next eight hours, where we were repeatedly interrogated about why we were at the march, how we had come in contact with local community leaders and members of the Consejo Nacional para la Defensa de Tierra, Lago y Soberanía (National Council for the Defense of the Land, Lake and Sovereignty), and whether we had recorded interviews or taken photos at the event. We were told not to deny anything, as they had proof of our attendance and interactions with several key opposition leaders such as the national coordinator of the Consejo, Octavio Ortega. About two hours into our detainment, we were forced to turn over our cameras and phones and given meaningless receipts in exchange, although I had refused to sign mine. These, we were later told, were to be taken to Auxilio Judicial in Managua, the headquarters of the national police and a maximum security prison that used to serve as the site where political prisoners were tortured during the days of Somoza. After consulting a lawyer, and having heard many stories of “cosas ocupadas” by the Nicaraguan police, we realized there was very little hope of seeing our possessions again. We were supposedly detained for not having actual copies of our passports, but our things were taken to Managua’s police headquarters for “investigation of evidence.”
Our story is not unique. We are only two of many foreign journalists and students who have visited the region only to face deportation and the loss of up to 10,000 euros worth of equipment. This blog is about Cuba, and throughout this ordeal I couldn’t help thinking about the repression faced by foreign journalists and scholars in Cuba, not to mention Cuban writers, artists and thinkers. The last few days served to open my eyes to the lengths taken by local and national government to keep evidence of growing resistance to government from leaving the scene. Both countries have similar histories of socialist revolutions making way for centuries of rule by dynastic leaders with a lack of free elections. I learned from this experience about the delicate ways in which students and journalists must maneuver in situations dealing with government opposition. Comparing coverage of canal protests to events in Cuba, particularly concerning the arts, I kept repeating to myself, “La represión llegó temprano para mí.”