It was a sad procession that took place in Peñas Blancas last Wednesday. Eighteen nuns from Mother Teresa’s order “Missionaries of Charity” crossed the border post from Nicaragua to Costa Rica on foot, their few belongings packed in bags and bags.
For more than three decades, the “Missionaries of Charity” had done community and social work in Nicaragua. They ran a shelter for abused and rejected young people, a day-care center and an old people’s home. But at the end of June, the parliament in Nicaragua’s capital Managua withdrew the order’s legal personality. A week later, the nuns had to leave the country, accompanied by a police escort.
With the departure of the nuns, a sad chapter in the history of Nicaragua, which is not short of sad chapters, closes. First came the conquistadors, who roamed the Central American country robbing, plundering and murdering. The population was enslaved and those who survived were further exploited under Spanish colonial rule.
Independence was followed by civil wars and the bloody dictatorship of the Somoza clan. For decades he ruled the country staunchly, only in 1979 could the last dictator be overthrown by rebels from the left-socialist Sandinista Liberation Front. She took over the government, organized land reforms, educational programs and free elections. One of their fighters was eventually elected president, Daniel Ortega, mustache, big glasses, sleeves rolled up.
Feared by the US as an alleged Moscow spy, Ortega, celebrated by the global left, has become a figure of hope in Nicaragua. It is a bitter irony of history that he of all people is now leading his country back into the dictatorship from which he once helped to liberate it.
The press is tamed, opposition politicians are imprisoned
After several failed attempts, Ortega won the presidential election again in 2006. Even then, the result was controversial. Actually, according to the constitution, he should not have stood for elections again in 2011, but a court allowed his candidacy. Again there were complaints about irregularities, Ortega won again in the end, and that’s how it went, 2016 and 2021.
Ortega’s party has long controlled parliament, and his wife is vice president. The press is persecuted and bullied, opposition politicians, activists and journalists are imprisoned under conditions that human rights activists describe as catastrophic. “They let them die bit by bit, very slowly,” says the daughter of the imprisoned head of the daily newspaper La Prensa. In fact, earlier this year Hugo Torres Jiménez died in prison, actually a hero of the Sandinista Revolution who once helped free Ortega from the torture prison of the Somoza dictatorship.
If the situation was already tense, it got even worse after nationwide protests in 2018. Just a few days ago, the government used police force to take over the last five town halls, which were still dominated by the opposition. In recent years, laws have been tightened and universities closed. Hundreds of non-governmental organizations have had their work permits revoked, including human rights projects, medical aid services, the PEN association and also the Order of the “Missionaries of Charity”.
In 1988, during his first presidency, Daniel Ortega met with the founder of the order, Mother Teresa. Now his government accuses the sisters, among other things, of not having given enough information about their financing.
Behind this, observers believe, is the conflict between Ortega’s government and the Catholic Church. In the 2018 protests, priests gave protesters shelter in their churches; Clergymen are among the last open critics of the regime today. A bishop has already had to leave the country because of death threats, and in March the government withdrew the accreditation of the apostolic nuncio, which is tantamount to expelling the Vatican ambassador. So now the nuns from the order of the “Missionaries of Charity”.
“Welcome sisters,” wrote the bishop of Tilarán, Costa Rica, on Facebook. On the other side of the border, in Nicaragua, Silvio José Baéz from the Archdiocese of Managua spoke of deep sadness: “Nothing justifies depriving the poor of their charitable help.”