New book describes the resistance of Nicaraguan political prisoners

My brother, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, writes about his year, seven months and eighteen days in the Nicaraguan prison “El Chipote” and under house arrest.

By Carlos F. Chamorro (confidential)

HAVANA TIMES – Destinations for locals (“Inherited Fates”) is the testimony of my brother Pedro Joaquin Chamorro about his ten months and nine days in the infamous ““The Chipote” Prison and the following nine months and nine days of house arrest, when he was transferred after losing 23 kg and his health deteriorating significantly.

It all began as a cruel act of political revenge against him and dozens of other men and women: politicians and citizens, university students, rural activists, business leaders, intellectuals, journalists, priests and human rights activists. And this at a time when the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo decided that imprisoning all opposition leaders was the most effective way to nullify any kind of competition in the November 2021 elections. Otherwise, the dictator was doomed to lose.

The book is also a meticulously detailed narrative by a journalist determined to describe the events he experienced rigorously, honestly and truthfully. I first read this manuscript when Pedro Joaquin – now exiled to the United States – sent me freshly written drafts of all fifteen chapters of the book. I reread it in one sitting, now as a finished book. Its value as a historical document struck me immediately, as did the accounts of his relationships with his cellmates, including Víctor Hugo Tinoco, Arturo Cruz and Jose Adan Aguerri. But above all, it captivated me as a reader because he succeeded in the difficult feat of bringing to life life in the dungeons of Latin America’s worst dictatorship. Moreover, he does so through a narrative that is captivating and seasoned with humor and irony, as a medicine against grief and desolation.

Pedro Joaquín speaks of his experiences without a hint of rancor or exaggeration. He writes exactly like the person he is in his daily life – noble, balanced, politically moderate, a man who loves his wife and family, firmly attached to his Christian values ​​and the heritage of his parents and his nation. And, as he himself confesses, a person who always faces adversity with “naturalness and optimism”.

For example, he describes in a completely natural way, without embellishing the events with adjectives, the torture of being in prison where all reading and writing is forbidden, including access to the Bible. “The only reading material we prisoners had,” he writes, “was the label of a small 237 ml bottle of Ensure, a drink with a long list of vitamins and minerals.”

In the same way, he describes in detail the house arrest under which he was later placed, “on the orders of Companion Rosario and commander Daniel.” This was a huge relief for him, as he was now able to regain his physical and mental strength, but he was also forced to continue the policy of strict isolation and was under constant surveillance by four police officers who took a photo of him at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. to confirm “that I had not escaped from my own house.”

I was particularly moved by the chapter in which he describes the four days that the (now deceased) retired General Hugo Torres Jimenez spent in his cell when the General was already in poor health and close to death. Pedro Joaquin’s humanity and solidarity in becoming Torres’ nurse and fellow sufferer are clearly evident, until his protests finally led to Torres being taken out of prison and taken to a hospital. Through his descriptions, the author bears unique witness to the direct responsibility that Nicaragua’s highest political authorities bear for the deterioration of Hugo Torres’ health and death.

Human fates is also a tribute to the resistance of all the political prisoners who were wrongfully imprisoned and subjected to mock trials in prison itself, without the right to a defence. These trials culminated in prison sentences of eight to ten years for the alleged crimes of “undermining national sovereignty”, “money laundering” or “mismanagement and unlawful appropriation and retention of assets”.

As he explains in his book, Pedro Joaquín maintained his innocence with dignity, like all political prisoners. None gave in. The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship was never able to invent a false confession or admission of guilt for the fabricated crimes it attributed to the political prisoners. They were never able to break them with their regime of torture and isolation, and this moral victory of the political prisoners symbolizes our hopes for the new republic with democracy and justice that we Nicaraguans deserve.

On February 9, 2023, 222 prisoners were released, put on a plane, exiled to the United States and stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship. Among them was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios. With this new act of revenge, these prisoners regained their freedom; however, in the meantime, the revolving door of repression has once again filled the dictatorship’s prisons with 141 political prisoners and over a hundred more are de facto under house arrest. Latin America and the world must not forget them. For the freedom of all Nicaraguan political prisoners, I invite you to read Destinations for locals.

Destinations for locals is available in Spanish in print or as a Kindle e-book from Amazon.com.

Read more from Nicaragua here in the Havana Times.