{"id":4166,"date":"2023-07-19T11:14:48","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T15:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/?p=4166"},"modified":"2023-07-19T11:14:50","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T15:14:50","slug":"independence-at-a-cost-nicaraguan-political-prisoners-take-refuge-in-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/independence-at-a-cost-nicaraguan-political-prisoners-take-refuge-in-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence, At A Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nicaraguan political prisoners take refuge in Empire<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Jacob Wheeler
Current Contributor<\/strong>

When Sergio Jose C\u00e1rdenas Flores (33) arrived at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City on a quiet winter day in early March, together with three other Nicaraguan political asylees, he looked about him and said, half-seriously, to Reverend Wayne Dziekan with the Diocese of Gaylord, \u201cThere\u2019s no one here. Where are all the people?\u201d

\u201cWell, just wait; in a few months, there will be people everywhere,\u201d chuckled Dziekan, who co-directs the Justice and Peace Advocacy Center, which helps asylees and migrant workers in Northern Michigan.

Now three months later, C\u00e1rdenas and priest Jos\u00e9 Luis D\u00edaz Cruz are living in the rectory at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire. (Two other Nicaraguans\u2014Manuel Antonio Obando Cortedano and Wilberto Artola Mejia\u2014spent two months in Empire but now live in Mancelona.) The asylees see many more people in the small village than they did during the quiet month of March, and the congregation at St. Philip Neri has embraced them.\u00a0

\u201cWe\u2019re offering them a safe place to be,\u201d says Reverend Ken Stachnik at St. Philip Neri. \u201cOur parishioners are offering them meals and taking them to appointments. We\u2019re trying to help them in any way we can\u2014whether that\u2019s learning English or getting them driver\u2019s licenses. We\u2019re following Father Wayne\u2019s lead.

He continues:

\u201cThis is important, because it\u2019s in the gospel. We are watching out for those who are lost and have no place to go. They\u2019ve become part of our community. Our parishioners are happy to have them here.\u201d

The asylees are grateful to have escaped Nicaragua, where the increasingly autocratic administration of five-term President Daniel Ortega has cracked down on dissent and persecuted the Roman Catholic Church, in particular.\u00a0

Catholic clergy in Nicaragua have condemned the government\u2019s violent suppression of protests that began in 2018 and called for democratic reforms since the 2021 general elections, which many deem as fraudulent, according to international news sources. The result has been increasing government hostility toward the Catholic Church, including the detention and prosecution of clergy members and escalating to the exile of other priests and Catholic organizations. Notably, about 90 percent of Nicaraguans identify as Christian, and more than half of those identify as Catholic; the Church also makes up a large portion of Nicaraguan civil society via social service institutions, such as schools, nursing homes, charities, and poverty-relief programs.

C\u00e1rdenas and D\u00edaz, who are from the city of Matagalpa, were among dozens imprisoned for six months in the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua after living under house arrest in their church for two weeks last August. In February 2023, they were among 222 political prisoners flown to the United States after being forced to relinquish their Nicaraguan citizenship.

C\u00e1rdenas, who was a cameraman for the church in Matagalpa, and D\u00edaz are now effectively stateless. They speak minimal English, and their daily lives in Northern Michigan are an exercise in patience, praying, and waiting.\u00a0

C\u00e1rdenas\u2019 wife and two-year-old daughter, Maryam Lucia, fled to Costa Rica, and await papers to join him in Empire. On most days, he bikes, visits the beach, and longs to hold his loved ones, who he has seen only once since the nightmare began\u2014when they made a teary visit to his prison in Managua in early January.

Anti-Catholic Repression Increases<\/strong>
Since 2018, President Ortega and forces sympathetic to his regime have targeted religious institutions critical of his leadership, notably the Catholic Church, with harassment and persecution. The New York Times<\/em> referred to Nicaragua\u2019s Catholic priests as the \u201clast independent voice in the Central American nation,<\/a>\u201d where nearly nine out of 10 citizens identify as Christian.
\u00a0
According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIAF), \u201cthe government has taken harsher measures against Catholic-affiliated organizations, such as shutting down charities and expelling their workers, stripping universities of funding and legal status, shutting down news media, and eliminating non-governmental organizations.\u201d\u00a0

Last June, a priest was sentenced to more than four years in prison on what the USCIAF called \u201cspurious charges.\u201d

Ortega won re-election in a landslide two years ago after jailing his opponents and disbanding their political parties. Since then, according to the United States Institute of Peace, \u201cthe regime has assaulted the Church as part of its campaign to consolidate power.\u201d\u00a0

Ortega was president of Nicaragua from 1985-1990, a period of nationalization and land reform, following the overthrow of the U.S.-backed, right-wing Somoza dictatorship. Ortega\u2019s Sandinista movement suffered a full trade embargo imposed by the United States and attacks from U.S.-backed \u201cContra\u201d rebels. Ortega lost the 1990 election, following alleged U.S. interference, but returned to power in 2006, having abandoned his leftist principles and now embracing an anti-democratic \u201cstrongman\u201d approach, according to The Washington Post<\/em>. His crackdowns on dissent have sent tens of thousands of Nicaraguans fleeing the country, to neighboring Costa Rica and to the United States.

Now, the government is targeting the Church\u2014straight out of the playbook of autocratic regimes.

In August 2022, Nicaraguan police forcibly closed seven Catholic radio stations and detained several clergymen who had spoken out against Ortega. Rolando \u00c1lvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, was detained for \u201corganizing violent groups\u201d and \u201ccarrying out acts of hate against the population.\u201d

On August 4, 2022, C\u00e1rdenas and D\u00edaz were among 12 people locked inside the church and deprived of access to food. They subsisted on the provisions they had, as well as an avocado tree on the church grounds. Then on August 19, at three in the morning, military police entered by scaffolding down ladders from the roof. The dozen detained individuals were forced to their knees until Bishop \u00c1lvarez arrived and surrendered to the authorities.\u00a0

C\u00e1rdenas, D\u00edaz, and others were blindfolded and taken by bus three hours to Managua, where they were placed in small cells and kept there until February 2023. C\u00e1rdenas and Luis D\u00edaz were both charged with \u201cconspiracy to undermine national integrity\u201d and \u201cpropagation of false news\u201d and were sentenced to 10 years in prison<\/a>.

Exile Abroad<\/strong>
On February 9, C\u00e1rdenas, D\u00edaz, and hundreds of other political prisoners were once again woken in the middle of the night and driven to the capital\u2019s airport. Deprived of an opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones, they were forced to sign papers, stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and exiled to the United States. They were flown first to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., then later to Miami. (Bishop \u00c1lvarez refused to leave Nicaragua; he has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.)

\u201cToday, the United States welcomes 222 individuals who had been imprisoned by the government of Nicaragua for exercising their fundamental freedoms and have endured lengthy unjust detentions,\u201d U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press statement on February 9<\/a>. \u201cToday\u2019s development is the product of concerted American diplomacy, and we will continue to support the Nicaraguan people\u2026 The individuals released from Nicaraguan custody include political and business leaders, journalists, civil society representatives, and students.\u201d

C\u00e1rdenas smiled when he recalled the mood aboard the airplane as they left Managua for what would be his first trip outside of Central America.

\u201cWe were joyful. We were singing. We were going to the United States. We were free,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we were unable to call our families to say goodbye. We had no phones. We had only the clothes we wore in prison.\u201d

C\u00e1rdenas and D\u00edaz spent three days in Washington and nearly three weeks in Miami, which is home to nearly 120,000 Nicaraguans, the largest Central American community in Florida.

Sister Churches<\/strong>
When news broke on February 9 of the flight coming to the United States, Dziekan of the Gaylord Diocese learned that 10 from the church in Matagalpa were on the plane. Matagalpa and Gaylord are sister dioceses, and the priest figured he knew some of the asylees from his many visits to Nicaragua.\u00a0

Dziekan contacted Bishop Jeffrey Walsh in Gaylord, who offered to sponsor and find housing for them in Northern Michigan. Six of the 10 had family or close contacts elsewhere in the United States or in Costa Rica; the other four came to Empire and Mancelona, where Dziekan has helped them with residency paperwork, dental and medical care, and immigration requests to bring their families here.

In Empire, C\u00e1rdenas waits for his wife and daughter to get State Department approval to leave Costa Rica and join him. They talk nearly every day on WhatsApp.

\u201cShe laughs, she\u2019s walking now, she\u2019s always happy,\u201d C\u00e1rdenas says of his two-year-old daughter. \u201cBut she doesn\u2019t understand the situation.\u201d

Bit by bit, he is learning English.

\u201cI can\u2019t say much beyond \u2018Hi, how are you? I\u2019m fine. Where is the bathroom?\u2019\u201d

C\u00e1rdenas boasts a joyful, extroverted playfulness, and four-word conversations do not satisfy his need for human interaction.

\u201cI miss my country, my family, the joy that I share in my place. It\u2019s a small country, but it\u2019s my country,\u201d he says.

He continues:

\u201cTo the American people, I say \u2018thank you.\u2019 I can\u2019t pay you back, but I can offer a prayer of thanks. My goal now is to continue forward. I don\u2019t know where but to continue.\u201d

A version of this article first published in the <\/a>Glen Arbor Sun<\/a>,<\/strong> a Leelanau County-based semi-sister publication to The Betsie Current.<\/strong><\/em>

Featured Photo Caption:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Father Jos\u00e9 Luis D\u00edaz Cruz (left) outside the rectory at St Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire; Sergio Jose C\u00e1rdenas Flores (right) at Clinch Park in Traverse City. Photo courtesy of the Glen Arbor Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicaraguan political prisoners take refuge in Empire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[269,41,43,278,198,191,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Nicaraguans-JoseLuis-Sergio-845x321-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3TDCr-15c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}