Solidarity Networks: Trajectories of Nicaraguan Political Refugees in Costa Rica

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

In the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences

2020 by Gracia Silva B.A. Central American University, 2017

Committee Chair: C. Jeffrey Jacobson, Ph. D. Committee Member: Leila Rodriguez Soto, Ph. D. ABSTRACT

This work tells the stories of young Nicaraguan people that fled to Costa Rica to escape political persecution within the context of Nicaragua’s political violence and repression, which began in April 2018. Through these stories, I want to shed light on the psychosocial impact of political violence and forced migration and contribute to improve people’s empathetic understanding of the realities of refugees.

My aim was to understand the personal and collective meanings that these refugees give to their experiences during the protests using a social perspective based on Martín-Baró’s liberation psychology. I also became interested in understanding how Nicaraguan refugees were creating networks of support to survive and heal in Costa Rica.

To conduct my fieldwork, I spent three months in Costa Rica serving as an accompanier and conducting participant observation in collective houses inhabited by young political refugees, with whom I also conducted individual interviews. I was really interested in listening to the trajectories of their lives since April 2018 and I was really surprised when I discovered they were also interested in telling me their stories, not just because I was asking, but because they had been waiting for someone they could trust and who was willing to listen to them. For this reason, I felt that my most important task as an accompanier was to be a witness of the things that happened to them.

I came to realize that their motivations to participate in the protests were rooted in the search for justice that awakes solidarity. During the protests, they were spurred to act against the political repression and to resist by working together. The company of others in similar situations has helped them make sense of what has happened to them and to cope with dire

i circumstances. Nowadays in Costa Rica, they are facing other series of difficulties such as feelings of frustration, xenophobia and labor discriminations, and once again their work as a community has helped them resisting by taking care of each other.

iii

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the memories of

Michael Humberto Cruz Sánchez

and

Bryan Aburto “Comando”.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to thank all my co-researchers and all the Nicaraguan refugees who in one way or another supported this work. Thank you for your interest and for your time.

My most sincere appreciation to my thesis committee for your support and contributions to this work. I am also grateful to my friends Sarah Terheide and Caleigh Richissin for their company and support during these two years of studies.

I am thankful to my family, especially my mother Marta Silva Pérez, my aunt Ada Esperanza

Silva Pérez and my grandma Mercedes Pérez de Silva, who taught me to think about others, to fight for what I think is fair and to follow my dreams.

I would also like to thank the people who helped me while I was in Costa Rica. Thank you to the CENDEROS team in San José, who were a huge support for me during 2018 and 2019, especially to Yadira López Centeno, Cristina Valerio and Eduardo Bolaños. And also thanks to the Mok-Porter family who took care of me during my time in Costa Rica.

My deepest thanks to Yerling Aguilera, Enrieth Martínez, Jessica Martínez, Marissa

Olivares, Fiore Bran, and Yalani Caldera, for showing me how to be strong and for listening to me. To my group of “Nicas y Eduardos”. As a safety measure, I do not mention your names but I carry all of you in my heart, and I would have never survived the separation from my country and my family if it was not for you.

I am grateful to my beloved partner, Ulises Tadeo Munguía Fonseca. I am glad that it was with you with whom I escaped the attack of the night of April 18, 2018. Thank you for always being present since that day.

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 NICARAGUAN 2018-2019 WAVE OF PROTESTS ...... 6 METHODS ...... 19 SOLIDARITY AND LIBERATION PSYCHOLOGY ...... 30 MOTIVATIONS FOR JOINING THE PROTESTS ...... 34 Abril ...... 34 Dámaso ...... 36 Slam...... 38 Reflections...... 40 IMPACT OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE ...... 45 Alissa ...... 45 Karen ...... 47 Lyris ...... 50 Police Abuse ...... 53 Reflections...... 55 LIFE IN COSTA RICA ...... 59 Jorge ...... 59 Flor de Luz ...... 62 Accumulated Distress ...... 65 Reflections...... 68 CONCLUSION ...... 75 REFERENCES ...... 80 APPENDICES ...... 85 Appendix A: Co-researchers information ...... 85 Appendix B: Spanish quotes ...... 87

INTRODUCTION

On the night of April 18, 2018, I was in front of the main entrance of the Central American

University in Managua, Nicaragua, protesting against the social security reforms the government had just approved, when pro-government shock groups arrived. A group of motorcycles started running on the street from one side to the other threatening us with bats and guns, right in front of the police. Then, they threw a rain of rocks at us, and we ran inside the university to take cover. I was one of the last to get inside and some guys behind me closed the door. I did not know where my friends were but I was inside the university and I felt safer. A couple of minutes later I heard a huge noise and people screaming that the shock groups were inside, so I felt frightened and ran, trying to find a place to hide. You could hear mortar noises and something that sounded like gun shots. I was never sure if they were real bullets. You could hear people running and screaming. I remember later that night when I finally arrived to my house I talked to one of my friends on the phone and I told him that at one moment, when I was running, I thought they were going to kill us. I felt relieved talking about this as if it were an exaggerated thought. I did not know the killing was going to start the next day.

That night marks the beginning of the ongoing socio-political crisis in Nicaragua, during which the government has used various repression strategies to respond to protestors in an effort to crush and silence any trace of dissent. Among these strategies prevail the disproportionate use of force and criminalization of participants and supporters of the protests, which left more than 300 people dead and thousands injured (Office of the United

Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. OHCHR 2018).

Less than two months after the start of the protests I found myself leaving Nicaragua, leaving my family and friends, and trying to stay safe in the neighboring country of Costa Rica. This was also the case for many other Nicaraguans who were forced to flee in 2018, 2019 and even 2020. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that a year after the April 18 uprising, approximately 62,000 Nicaraguan people had fled the country, with Costa Rica being the most popular destination (Sánchez 2019).

Due to the short distance, shared culture, and job opportunities in agricultural production, housekeeping and construction, Costa Rica has historically been an important destination for economic migrants from Nicaragua (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019).

However, after April 2018 the motives of Nicaraguan migrants received by Costa Rica changed. They were now in search of political stability. The total number of Nicaraguans who have entered Costa Rica due to political violence is unknown, but it cannot be much less than the 68,638 asylum seekers reported by the Directorate General of Immigration and

Foreignness in June 2019 (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019).

During my time in San José, Costa Rica, before coming to the United States, I heard many stories from different Nicaraguan refugees and I kept thinking that people needed to hear about why we ended up in this country, about what happened in our country. I started thinking about ways to approach these stories, ways to understand what happened. Finally, I decided

I wanted to present migrants´ stories in a way that allowed their voices to be heard and their faces to be imagined, in an attempt to prevent their dehumanization and to make their resistances visible.

In most of my conversations with the Nicaraguan refugees during those few months before coming to the United States, I noticed how, despite being in Costa Rica, their minds and hearts were focused on Nicaragua, and I saw how the episodes of political violence that they witnessed or were victims of continued marking their motives and opportunities. They were trying to survive in their new conditions and make sense of their new realities by supporting each other. To start exploring this situation I proposed two questions: 1) What are the personal and collective meanings that refugees give to their experiences during the protests?

2) What kind of activities and practices are used among refugees to build support?

To conduct my fieldwork, I lived in San José, Costa Rica, from mid-May to mid-August

2019, conducting participant observation and interactive interviewing, and listening to different stories of Nicaraguan refugees. I worked with Nicaraguan political refugees who had already applied for the refugee status in Costa Rica, who actively participated in the

Nicaraguan protests, were between the ages of 18 and 35, and lived in the province of San

José in the company of other Nicaraguan refugees. This is the largest age group among the

Nicaraguan refugee population (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019;

Fundación Arias Para la Paz y el Progreso Humano 2019) and according to data from the

Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (2019) more than 90% of Nicaraguan refugees live in the company of other Nicaraguans, ranging from just one other person to up to 10 people. For these reasons, I believe my co-researchers are a good representation of this population.

They talked about Nicaragua, about their daily lives before the protests, their families, and also talked about painful and dangerous situations. To a lesser extent, they also talked about their lives in Costa Rica. The ideas of Martín-Baró and his liberation psychology guided me

3 in understanding the motivations behind their actions and the meaning they gave to their involvement in the protests. Martín-Baró was a Spanish scholar who earned his Ph.D. in

Chicago and is perhaps best known in North America for being one of the Jesuits of the

Central American University of El Salvador that were murdered in 1989 because of their roles as “intellectuals, researchers, writers, and teachers in expressing their solidarity with the poor” (Hassett and Lacey 1991, 2). Martín-Baró was “the vice-rector of the UCA, the director of its public opinion institute (IUDOP), and the editor of Revista de Psicología de El

Salvador1.” (Hassett and Lacey 1991, 11).

During the 80s, he tried to understand the Salvadoran reality, thinking of it as paradigmatic of oppressed peoples everywhere, but especially in Latin America (Aron and Corne 1994).

His writing allows for a better understanding of the need for social sciences to address contemporary social problems from Latin and Central America. He also argued for social scientists to being a part of the search for a preferential option for the oppressed majorities and for a way to deal with the injustice of social reality (Burton 2013).

My hope for this work is that it contributes to improve people’s empathetic understanding of the realities of refugees by reflecting on these life experiences. In this sense, this research serves the mission of liberation psychology by trying to awaken critical consciousness

(concientización) about the psychosocial impact of political violence and forced migration lived by young Nicaraguan refugees who fled to Costa Rica due to political persecution during the ongoing sociopolitical crisis in Nicaragua.

1 Psychology Journal of El Salvador. 4

In chapter one, I situate the reader in the context of the Nicaraguan protests, which is the frame of the stories we are going to read. In chapter two, I describe the methodological approach of this research, which was based on the construction of horizontal relationships with several groups from the Nicaraguan refugee community. Chapter three presents the co- researchers´ motivations for joining the protests. The next chapter presents stories about the consequences of acting in solidarity with the protests and how the government´s harassment and persecution was such that it forced them to leave Nicaragua. Chapter five addresses the problems and challenges they are facing in Costa Rica and their ways to overcome them.

Finally, in the conclusions I reflect on how the ideas of Martín-Baró are still in force to understand the effects of political violence on the social tissue and why some people continue helping others and pursuing justice regardless of the negative consequences this can bring to them.

NICARAGUAN 2018-2019 WAVE OF PROTESTS

International media portrayed the protests that started in Nicaragua in April 2018 as something that happened suddenly, leaving many people speechless. However, the reality is that the country was struggling with sociopolitical conflicts long ago because different groups were not happy with the Ortega administration. In this chapter, I briefly describe some of the factors behind the political discontent and explain how and why the 2018-2019 protests were able to spread around the country. I also describe the Ortega administration's response to the protests, showing how repression strategies have changed through time and how the actions of dissent had to adjust to the reality of political violence.

Most of the sources I refer to in this chapter come from national and international newspaper articles, but my most important sources were the reports from the United Nations High

Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (2018; 2019) and Amnesty International (2018a;

2018b) about the situation of human rights during the protests. I also rely on the work of

Nicaraguan sociologist Sergio Cabrales (2019) who did an extensive job monitoring the development of the protests and sociologist Elvira Cuadra (2019) who explained the different phases of state repression during the Nicaraguan protests.

Since the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional,

FSLN) reached power in 2006, with Ortega as president, Nicaragua´s democratic framework had gradually started to weaken because of the concentration of the different state powers in the hands of the ruling party. According to the OHCHR “This has contributed to reduced civic space, lack of independence of the judiciary and the national human rights institution,

6 recurrent allegations of corruption, electoral fraud and media censorship, and high levels of impunity amongst other issues” (2018, 12).

Ortega´s government managed to maintain obedience and compliance among the population by establishing alliances with potential opponents such as the economic elites represented by the Superior Council for Private Enterprise (COSEP), one of the most important business chambers of Nicaragua (Martí í Puig 2013), as well as a clientelist strategy that presented supporters with “scholarships, goods, assistance programs, judiciary sentences or jobs”

(López 2020, 157)2 and opponents with “criticism, intimidation, defamation and exclusion, if not crude and open persecution” (López 2020, 157)3. But beneath the surface, social frustration and anger were growing exponentially and episodes of social and political discontent started to take place over time through numerous protests “which were often repressed by the authorities and resulted in deaths, injuries, arrest and detention” (OHCHR

2018, 12).

In a research conducted by Cabrales (2019), he recorded the protest events carried out in

Nicaragua from January 1, 2016, to July 31, 2019, by monitoring four of the most important national newspapers. He states that Nicaragua had an average of thirty protests per month.

But in April 2018, the negligent actions of the government to stop the progress of a forest fire in the Indio Maíz biological reserve, one of the main rainforest reserves in Central

2 Original Spanish passage: “becas, bienes, programas asistenciales, sentencias judiciales o trabajo” (López 2020, 157). 3 Original Spanish passage: “crítica, intimidación, difamación y exclusión, si no abierta y cruda persecución” (López 2020, 157).

America, followed by the perception of an economic threat gave rise to the 2018-2019 wave of protests (Cabrales 2019).

When the Indio Maíz fire started on April 3, 2018, the Rama-Kriol indigenous government and the environmental organization Fundación del Río asked the government for help, but it took more than 72 hours to start mobilizing resources, and by that time, the fire was already out of control (Salazar 2018; Salinas 2018). This particular environmental issue and the perception that State institutions were not responding to social demands appealed to the consciences of students with diverse experiences and backgrounds who started organizing demonstrations at different university campuses in support of the demands of the environmentalist organizations.

Right after this issue, on April 16, 2018, Roberto López, the president of the Nicaraguan

Social Security Institute (INSS) announced reforms to the social security law. Some of the main adjustments were an increase in the contribution rate of workers and employers, a reduction in the maximum percentage of average salary to be received by retired people, and a five percent deduction from retirement pensions in order to cover for the sickness and maternity program expenditures (Alvarez and González 2018). In response, the following day, the COSEP issued a statement that evidenced the rupture of alliances with the Ortega-

Murillo administration starting a conflict between economic and political elites which, as

Cabrales (2019) argues, created an opportunity for social mobilization.

On April 18, 2018, while some citizens protested against the reforms, they were attacked by violent groups commanded by the state and protected by the police. The attacks took place in the primary cities of Managua (in front of the Central American University UCA and at

8 the Camino de Oriente shopping center) and León, (Outside the HEODRA Hospital) and the main targets were the college students who organized the protests. These attacks were portrayed in photographs and videos in social media and the independent press, making many people feel outraged. These images took the blindfold off the Nicaraguan society and put an end to collective conformism. As a result, the next day more people joined the street protests that continued for several months.

By all accounts, the protests were spontaneous, without a specific organization or structure.

People called others to take to the streets using social media, group chats, independent media, and word of mouth, which resulted in the coalition of different groups with different identities and grievances, and without a plan, but linked together in their search for justice and condemning the state repression. Because of this, two popular keywords that people used during the protests are solidarity and self-organized.

In their 2018 Human right violations and abuses in the context of protest in Nicaragua. 18

April-18 August report, the OHCHR recognized this as the first stage of the protests, which was characterized by “the State’s repressive reply to public demonstrations and by protests spreading across the country in different formats (including barricades and roadblocks)”

(OHCHR 2018, 7).

During these first days, the demands from the street were focused on rejecting the social security reforms. But with the increased violence and the government´s use of police forces and pro-government shock groups to threaten and dissuade protestors in the streets, the demands started to change, and by April 20, the protest events started demanding the

9 resignation of President Ortega and several officials of his cabinet, as well as condemning the repression (Cuadra 2019; Cabrales 2019).

The massive support for the different acts of dissent presented a threat to the government which on April 22 was forced to cancel the implementation of the social security reforms and call a dialogue with different groups, inviting Nicaragua's Roman Catholic Conference of

Bishops as mediators (Loáisiga 2018). This was known as the National dialogue and it started on May 16, 2018. The counterpart of the government was the Civic Alliance for Justice and

Democracy, “a group of diverse and heterogeneous organizations and citizens, including students, members of the business sector, peasant movement, human rights activists and citizens of autonomous regions.” (Alianza Cívica n.d, para.1). Despite The National

Dialogue, protests continued denouncing the acts of political violence and clamoring for justice against the repression. The government´s new strategy was “to call up and deploy paramilitary groups, including skilled snipers, who took to the streets in mid-May and began to employ a much higher level of force and lethal violence than in previous weeks” (Cuadra

2019, para.8).

The ongoing political violence intensified people´s outrage, thus the demonstrations continued all over the country, trying to adjust to the new level of repression. “Thousands of neighborhoods began to erect barricades or ‘blockades’ (tranques) across roads as a sign of protest, to defend themselves from attacks on the civilian population and to exert pressure on the authorities by restricting road traffic” (Amnesty International 2018b, 3). Barricades had started in a spontaneous way on April 19 in the oriental neighborhoods4 of Managua but they

4 This is a popular name for a group of neighborhoods on the eastern side of Managua. 10 became more widespread. Blockades started at the beginning of May and consisted of the closing of roads. The peasant movement was the first to close some of the main roads in

Lóvago, el Tule and Nueva Guinea, and they were imitated by groups in other parts of the country. To understand the scope of this form of protest Cabrales states that “in May, 327 blockades were registered, 667 during June, and 180 on July”5 (2019, 10).

The government´s repression catalyzed the protesters’ demands, which became more revolutionary and more focused on claims for justice and for the complete replacement of the

Ortega government. These demands became even stronger after the National Dialogue was suspended on May 23 due to its incapacity to channel the demands from the street (Cabrales

2019).

The second stage of the protests recognized in the OHCHR (2018) report began during the middle of June and continued to July. The repression increased even more with the government’s Operation for Peace which was popularly known as “Operation Clean-up”

(Operación Limpieza). “This consisted of destroying the barricades by forcing and confronting demonstrators with combined forces of pro-government armed groups and

National Police officers in sophisticated, well-organized attack operations that made widespread use of military-grade lethal weapons” (Amnesty International 2018b, 3).

According to Cuadra (2019) the government concentrated their efforts on focal points of civic resistance such as the cities of Masaya and Carazo. One of the most heinous attack was the

“UNAN-Managua attack”. The attack took place on July 13, 2018, against the National

5 Original Spanish passage: “en mayo, se registraron 327 tranques; en junio, 667; y en julio, 180” (Cabrales 2019, 10).

Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) main campus which was occupied by the students and other supporters of the protests.

Operation Clean-up culminated on July 23, 2018, when the city of Jinotega was attacked and the last barricades that were standing at this point were removed (Amnesty International

2018b). The end of Operation Clean-up marks the beginning of the third stage recognized by the OHCHR which consisted of “the criminalisation and persecution of those who participated in the demonstrations or are otherwise perceived as Government opponents”

(2018, 7).

As part of their report, Amnesty International collected testimonies about the climate of terror lived in some communities and by some supporters of the protests. Those who participated in the protests are facing stigmatization, harassment, detention and criminalization by the

Ortega´s government and their supporters (Amnesty International 2018b). The persecution has been such that many protesters, human right defenders, and journalists have been internally displaced or have been forced to hide or leave Nicaragua (OHCHR 2018).

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by March

2019 approximately 62,000 Nicaraguan people had fled the country and around 55,000 of those were in Costa Rica (Sánchez 2019).

The criminalization of the protests continued with the government´s creation of laws and extraordinary decrees to stop dissent. Examples of this are the anti-terrorist law which was passed on July 16, 2018, by the National Assembly, which has a Sandinista majority. This law was used to single out protesters as terrorists for exercising their civil and political rights and to hide abuses by saying they are anti-terrorism measures (Borger 2018). They also

12 restricted the right of peaceful assembly. In September 2018, the National Police banned public demonstrations by any group not aligned with the government. In the cases where they could not stop a demonstration, they conducted arbitrary arrests of peaceful protesters and used different threats to inhibit protests (OHCHR 2019).

Other human rights violations reported during this period of street demonstrations include obstruction of access to medical care, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and instances of torture and sexual violence in detention centers (Amnesty International 2018;

OHCHR 2018). As a result, by August 19, 2018, the OHCHR estimated “thousands of victims, including approximately 300 deaths and 2,000 persons injured” (OHCHR 2018, 7).

The numbers reported by other organizations are even more shocking, and according to the

Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (Asociación Nicaragüense Pro-Derechos

Humanos A.N.P.D.H), up until October 20, 2018, 528 people murdered in the context of the protests have been registered, as well as 4,102 injured people and 1,609 kidnapped of which

1,486 are still missing (Estrada 2018).

Amnesty International also points out how the strategy of repression included the “official statements that denied and sought to conceal the repression and its consequences, as well as the vilification, by those at the highest levels of government, of those who took part in public protests […] and attempts to control the press in order to conceal the reality of the situation and limit freedom of expression” (Amnesty International 2018a, 9). The Ortega administration has been trying to build an official image and official speech that sustains a narrative that categorizes the protesters as coupists (golpistas) or terrorists who break the normal order of civil society.

An example of this is when vice-president Rosario Murillo blamed the protesters for inciting terror and for making up that people had been murdered. She declared to the official media that the protesters:

seem as vampires asking for blood. [...] It's those tiny groups, those small, toxic souls, filled with hatred. [...] It's those petty beings, mediocre beings, tiny beings, those beings filled with hatred that even have the nerve to make up deaths. Fabricating deaths, committing fraud by playing with life is a sin. (Murillo n.d. quoted in Caparrós 2018, para.10)6

This example demonstrates how “the Government has attributed the responsibility for all violent actions to those who participated in the protests […]. It has not acknowledged any disproportionate use of force or illegal action by police agents” (OHCHR 2018, 8). At no time have they recognized responsibility for the crisis. Instead they have blamed social leaders, media outlets, and human rights defenders for the violence (OHCHR 2018).

Furthermore, Ortega even began to refute the data and the numbers that international organizations presented about the crisis (Amnesty International 2018b).

Cabrales (2019) mentions that the conclusion of street demonstrations happened abruptly in

October; and from 2,000 events of protest between April and September 2018, we see only

51 events during the last three months of 2018 and the first two months of 2019. He has characterized this as an artificial process because the demonstrations only stopped due to the overwhelming repression.

6 Original Spanish passage: “parecen vampiros reclamando sangre. […] Son esos grupos minúsculos, esas almas pequeñas, tóxicas, llenas de odio. […] Son esos seres mezquinos, seres mediocres, seres pequeños, esos seres llenos de odio que todavía tienen la desfachatez de inventarse muertos. Fabricar muertos, cometer fraudes jugando con la vida es un pecado.” (Murillo n.d. quoted in Caparrós 2018, para.10).

According to Cuadra (2019), from October 2018 to January 2019 the government was trying to decapitate the civic movement. For this reason, “the selective imprisonment of civic movement leaders intensified, as did the persecution of journalists and the closing, searching and arbitrary confiscation of media and nongovernmental organizations and their equipment”

(Cuadra 2019, para.11). The segment of the population that faced the most persecution, besides other types of intimidation such as smear campaigns and seizure of their assets, have been human rights defenders, media workers, journalists, peasants, members of the LGBTIQ community, students and members of the Catholic Church. During November and December

2018, the legal registration of nine important civil society organizations was cancelled by the

National Assembly. Also, media outlets that were opposed to the government experienced cyber-attacks, confiscation of printed materials, among other things (OHCHR 2019).

This process of criminalization and persecution influenced the appearance of new popular demands such as liberty for political prisoners, electoral reforms and democratization

(Cabrales 2019). People are still calling for these at this moment.

During the first half of 2019, different acts of protest were registered such as pickets, hunger strikes, and a national strike. But Cabrales (2019) mentions some characteristics that make them different from those in 2018, showing how protests have been adapting to the government´s threats and the ban on public demonstrations: they happen in more private and secure spaces such as temples and shopping centers; they are brief (these have been called express pickets) and are recorded and then posted on social media; they do not have a high number of participants but they have ample support expressed on social media site.

In February 2019, negotiations were resumed between the Government and the Civic

Alliance for Justice and Democracy. A negotiation agenda which included “truth, justice, reparation and non-recurrence” (OHCHR 2019, 12) was adopted in March 2019. However, the government adopted several unilateral measures to address these issues. For example, in

January 2019, the National Assembly adopted Law 985 the object of which is to promote solidarity, reconciliation, security and preserve peace without making any effort to take responsibility or address the multiple human rights violations caused by the repression

(OHCHR 2019). In May 2019, the Law of Comprehensive Care for Victims was adopted.

This law “refers to the willingness of the authorities to respond to the damage caused by the

ʽfailed coup d’étatʼ to victims, implying that opponents to the Government during the 2018 protests were perpetrators of the failed coup, rather than victims” (OHCHR 2019, 12). On

June 8, 2019, the Amnesty Law was adopted. This law has been criticized because it continues to criminalize dissent and creates a legal frame for the impunity of crimes and abuses committed by the government and paramilitaries (BBC 2019).

During this phase of negotiations, the repression in the shape of restriction of peaceful assembly, surveillance, and harassment continued. “There were also selective kidnappings, mainly conducted by the police” (Cuadra 2019, para.13). This lack of conditions for a dialogue, in addition to the outrage caused by the murder of political prisoner Eddy Montes

Praslin on May 16, 2019, when he was in La Modelo prison (Munguía and Miranda 2019), caused the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy to leave the negotiations on May 20,

2019, because they considered the agenda of negotiations and agreements was not being carried out, especially in relation to the liberation of the political prisoners (Alianza Cívica

2019).

During the first half of June the Government released 492 political prisoners who were detained during the 2018 protests. One hundred six of these political prisoners were released under the Amnesty Law. The release of political prisoners under the Amnesty Law and other unilateral measures from the government creates impunity for human rights violations because it does not establish accountability and does not guarantee reparation for the victims.

Also, they were imposed without consulting all stakeholders and do not follow relevant international principles (OHCHR 2019).

Even after the government announced the release of all political prisoners, “Civil society organizations refuted this claim and indicated that, as to 28 July 2019, 118 men and two women remained deprived of their liberty, including two individuals who had been previously released under the Amnesty Law” (OHCHR 2019, 8).

After the release of this group of political prisoners, it appears that the main objective of the government´s repression is to keep protest leaders inactive. Surveillance and the banning of public demonstrations continues. According to Cuadra (2019), some of the most notable actions to repress dissent include the extensive police deployment in cities and important urban centers; police kidnappings of released prisoners and citizens suspected of participating in different forms of protests; reorganization of paramilitary groups in different cities; police and paramilitary harassment and threats against former political prisoners and their families; kidnappings and selective executions of social leaders in rural zones by paramilitary groups; and paramilitary and criminal actions aimed at generating insecurity and fear.

This account ends in July 2019 but, as Cabrales warns, because no response was given to people´s demands, “these still persist and can be exacerbated by the increase of new threats, such as the accelerated economic deterioration, the unresolved rupture of elites and the growing social discontent” (2019, 24)7. I want to highlight that although the government has made a significant effort to crush and silence their opponents, as well as to hide the numbers of people murdered, injured, disappeared and displaced, at the moment I write this in April

2020, people continue to imagine new political actions that show dissent.

7 Original Spanish passage: “éstas aún persisten y pueden exacerbarse ante el incremento de nuevas amenazas, como el acelerado deterioro económico, la irresuelta ruptura de élites y el descontento social cada vez más amplio” (Cabrales 2018, 24).

METHODS

In this research I was trying to describe individual experiences while connecting them with a broader socio-historical context and with the stories of other people which are interwoven and overlapped with them (Sautu 1999). In this chapter I describe the methodology followed during this process. I also talk about the challenges I faced, about elements that facilitated it and others that made it difficult. My aim was to use the refugees´ testimonies to illustrate their motivations to participate in the protests, as well as the consequences of both the political violence they were victims of, and the challenge of moving and adapting to Costa

Rica.

To do this work, I lived in Costa Rica from mid-May to mid-August 2019 getting to know different Nicaraguan refugees with a diversity of stories. Accessing the refugee population was a little bit difficult at first because they are a vulnerable population that can be very cautious of talking to strangers. Therefore, I used snowball sampling, a non-probabilistic sampling technic in which a member of the population is asked to provide referrals to other people with the same characteristics. The advantage of asking refugees for help with recruitment is that you have peers referring you to their peers which generated trust and allowed a relatively easy and rapid recruitment (World Health Organization 2013). With the help of Costa Rican colleagues and some refugee friends, I started contacting people, introducing myself and my research. When I connected with a refugee who was open to talk with me and wanted to support my research, I asked them to refer another young Nicaraguan refugee. Ultimately, this resulted in a chain of recommendations in which they validated me as a person who could be trusted.

This process of recommendations and references allowed a kind of complicity between the refugees and me, which made it easier to establish a horizontal relationship in which they could consider themselves co-researchers. This horizontal relationship was important to me because I wanted to hear their voices guiding me toward what was important to them, and to abandon a position of expertise from which the researcher takes control of the research process. Instead, I wanted to create a process in which everyone is co-researcher and co- participant (Gupta 2018).

Being open and honest about my own experiences participating in the protests and leaving

Nicaragua to go to Costa Rica in 2018 was fundamental to this process. Many of the people

I was able to access were willing to talk to me because they knew I had a similar experience.

I did my best to answer all of their questions and to tell them about myself and my motivations to do this research, because I felt they were going to share a lot of important memories and opinions with me and I had to honor that trust.

I tried to take the role of accompanier, being a reliable and consistent presence who makes respectful visits to them. Accompany means “standing alongside people, working with them, seeking to develop collaborative relations that recognize power inequities within the relationships as well as within the contexts in which one is working, and seeking to transform them when the people themselves see that as part of the transformative task.” (Comas-Díaz,

Lykes and Alarcón 1998, 779). Following the advice of psychologist Mary Watkins (2015) about what a good accompanier should do, I had to adjust to the life of the community and be open to dialogue and to hear what was important for them in a respectful and thoughtful manner. I tried to value the needs and resources of the community and not to determine the agenda or usurp their knowledge. I did my best to create a horizontal relationship with my

20 co-researchers, but it is important to acknowledge that our life circumstances created a difference, and they knew it. This can be appreciated when Flor de Luz, one of the co- researchers, told me: "I know that you experienced a situation similar to mine. The problem is that in the power relationship between the two of us, you are in another position at this moment, and I need to tell you these kind of things.”i

I came to learn that young Nicaraguan refugees were living in groups and supporting each other to pay rent and to cover their basic needs such as food and personal hygiene items.

Because of this, after gaining their trust, I started spending time at some of the refugees’ homes familiarizing myself with them and building trust to serve as an accompanier. This provided me with an opportunity to observe and, out times, participate in the group dynamic in a similar way to anthropologists conducting participant observation. I noticed that most of the people at the refugee homes were young adults, but there were also teenagers and people in their middle adulthood. Most of the homes were inhabited by groups of unrelated persons, except in the case of the people in their middle adulthood who usually were the parents of some of the younger people. I decided to limit the study to people who identify themselves as Nicaraguan political refugees, who had already applied for the refugee status in Costa

Rica, who actively participated in the Nicaraguan protests, who were between the ages of 18 and 35, and who lived in the province of San José in company of other Nicaraguan refugees.

I wanted to answer two main questions: What are the personal and collective meanings that refugees give to their experiences during the protests? What kind of activities and practices are used among refugees to build support? To answer these questions, I spent time in three homes and invited 13 young refugees to tell their stories in detail during individual interviews in Spanish. This number allows for an in-depth retrospective exploration of a variety of

21 individual’s lived experiences. In the end, I completed 12 individual interviews and did one incomplete individual interview.

When I was taken to a home by one of the home members I always started introducing myself to the group that lived there and talked to them about my purpose as a researcher. Once I had already talked to a possible co-researcher, explained my research and when he or she had agreed to conduct an individual interview, we set a date and a place. The interviews took place at various locations in accordance with them, sometimes it was at their residence, a coffee shop, a park or a location at the University of Costa Rica.

It is important to acknowledge that the use of snowball sampling is prone to sampling biases

(World Health Organization 2013), and in this case, this is exposed in the homogeneity of the co-researchers who are a majority of women in their twenties who were living in Managua at the time the protests started. Their ages correspond with the largest age group of the

Nicaraguan refugee population and were from one of the cities that expelled more refugees

(Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019; Fundación Arias Para la Paz y el

Progreso Humano 2019) but they are not a representative sample of the Nicaraguan political refugees in Costa Rica.

During the interviews, I went through all their important experiences starting in April 2018.

First, I asked about their involvement in the protests and their decision to flee Nicaragua.

Finally, the most important part was to know about their process of adaptation and integration in Costa Rica being refugee population, their struggles and how they faced those struggles.

Before the start of the interview I read them an information sheet (in Spanish) and asked them to read and sign a consent form. I also supplied them with printed copies of all these forms.

I answered all the questions they had before beginning the interview and encouraged them to ask more questions if they arose during the interview or once we were finished. I highlighted the fact that their participation in this study was voluntary and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Following the International Organization for Migration (2010) strategies for data protection, I made sure the language used in all the forms was easy to understand. To ensure anonymity and to safeguard their identities, I also explained to them that they had the option to sign with an x and that they could choose a pseudonym that I would use while telling their stories.

I was surprised when most of them asked if they could not use a pseudonym. Nine of the thirteen interviewees decided they wanted to use their real names. They explained that they had been supporting the protests and that the people who represented a danger to them already knew all the details about their participation that could represent a threat. Also, some of them had participated in grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, and social movements. Because of this, they were already deeply involved and argued that their stories did not make sense without their names and the name of the organizations where they participated. After hesitating a little I realized this was a political decision that I had to respect and that they knew better than I what could harm them or not.

I took into account the idea of feminist sociologist Sylvanna Falcón (2016) that the interviewee should receive a stipend or a gift of appreciation as an act of reciprocity for their time. After consulting with some colleagues in Costa Rica and talking with some refugees who are friends of mine, my perception of this matter was that the co-researchers would have felt this was a payment for their testimonies which would have broken our horizontal relationship and created a hierarchical relationship. What I did to show my appreciation for

23 their time was to invite them to eat with me while we talked. Two of them resisted that too and even told me that they did not want anything from me, they just wanted to contribute to my project because they felt it was important to tell their stories.

The information that comes from the interviews is the most valuable one and most of my data come from here. Sustaining one on one conversations allowed me to dig deep into the two

“turning points” I was most interested about: the experience of these young people during the 2018-2019 Nicaraguan protests, and the experience of being a refugee in Costa Rica.

With “turning points”, I am referring to moments of immense importance for the life of the subjects, moments that mark a “before” and “after” (Denzin 1989). I wanted to talk about what these turning points meant to them both at an individual and social level.

I consider these testimonies to be significant because they narrate personal experiences that are part of collective events, and I am sure they are similar to and represent the experiences of many other people. I try to make sense of these stories while keeping in mind that what the co-researchers present to us are conscious and unconscious selections and evaluations of the historical reality. They represent their perception based on their life experiences and their present interpretations and expectations (Sautu 1999). “This revelation of facts and interpretations is explicitly or implicitly filtered by the beliefs, attitudes and values of the protagonist” (Sautu 1999, 24)8.

The important thing here is not knowing what happened. As we saw in the previous chapter, there are plenty of human rights reports, newspaper articles, and academic research about the

8 Original Spanish passage: “Esta revelación de hechos e interpretaciones explícita o implícitamente está filtrada por las creencias, actitudes y valores del protagonista” (Sautu 1999, 24). 24 socio-political crisis and the crimes against humanity that have been committed since April

2018. The truth that I wanted to know is how these refugees feel about these experiences, what impact do these experiences have in their lives, how are they going on with their lives and what meaning they give to all these changes.

While doing this I tried to maintain my role as an accompanier and to provide individual and community witnessing and support. “This witnessing is a particularly crucial antidote when the events or conditions suffered have been repressed or denied by the wider culture. The creation of opportunities for testimony enables those who have suffered violence and social exclusion to exercise their agency and to bring their experience into the public arena to be acknowledged and witnessed.” (Watkins 2015, 327-28). Through their voices I witnessed the horror of the repression, and the difficulties of migration. Their experiences are important, and for this reason, I wanted to share them with others.

To insert myself in this matter, I followed some of Falcón´s (2016) ideas and proposals about ways in which to break with privilege in the practice of research by conducting interactive interviewing and reconciling community and research needs. Interactive interviewing practice “challenges the dominant research model that distances academics from non- academics” (Falcón 2016, 183). One must be ready to create empathetic relations with the community and to openly answer the questions they want to know. The experience of interactive interviews of Cuban sociologist Marta Núñez Sarmiento (n.d. quoted in Falcón

2016) has shown that an approach in which the researcher is not guiding the interview but rather creating a free flow of ideas allows a deeper collaboration between co-researchers that can lead to the modification of interview questions and the consideration of topics and ideas that one may have not considered before. For this research, I had some questions in mind and

I made a good effort to remember all the topics I wanted to talk about instead of putting a script on the table and reading a series of questions. I tried not to stick to a preconceived idea and instead create a deep conversation. When I felt it was appropriate I shared some of the memories from my experience which helped them to trust me more and to be more open to talk.

Reconciling the needs of the community with our needs as researchers depends a lot on the context in which we are immersed. In this case, I tried to do this by acknowledging that the story all these people wanted to tell me was the story of the way they participated during the protests and the circumstances that forced them to flee the country and they did not want to talk much about their lives in Costa Rica. I decided to try to understand why the part of the story that happened in Nicaragua was more important to them than the part of the story that is happening in Costa Rica, why did they want to tell me about this and what were they expecting about their contribution.

The interviews lasted between 50 minutes, the shortest, and 180 minutes the longest. All the interviews were recorded and notes were taken. They were transcribed using Express Scribe.

In my transcriptions I tried to capture the intonation of their voices by using commas and periods. I also kept the grammar mistakes and the changes between grammatical tenses.

Following the data protection strategies established by the International Organization for

Migration (2010), I replaced the names in the transcriptions and field notes for participants who chose to use pseudonyms. People´s names, except for public figures, and certain places were changed, and sensitive personal information was erased. I read each interview at least

4 times and started the analysis focusing on common issues and themes.

After reading all the interviews I organized the information according to repetitive themes

(Giménez and Mallimaci 2006). I decided to organize the topics on the following thematic cores: awakening of critical consciousness, political violence and persecution, and life in

Costa Rica. These stories are examples of solidarity, this is repeated in all the testimonies, thus solidarity is used as the central axis to understand these processes.

After being immersed in the more than 200 pages of information that came from the interviews, I felt overwhelmed and did not know how to proceed and tell the stories. Because

I could not present everything everyone said, I decided to work with eight of the interviews and to use a select number of episodes to talk about each of the main topics. I selected the stories that I considered were not addressed in other works, such as the reports of international organizations. I decided not to talk about big events that were already covered in those reports or in the news and instead talking about personal experiences. Some of my co-researchers also guided me in this decision by explicitly telling me which pieces of their stories were the most important to them and stating they wanted me to include them on my work so someone else could know what happened.

To talk about their motivation to join the protests I use three stories which provide an idea of the diversity of people who decided to join. The next four stories talk about the violent situations they experienced and political persecution they faced, which show how people with diverse backgrounds and who participated in different ways during the protests were forced to make the same decision, leaving Nicaragua. To talk about their life in Costa Rica I chose 3 stories in which we can see how living with other Nicaraguan refugees can be a strength in some cases or can cause more stress in others.

I realized that these biographies and testimonies, which were focused on this important sociopolitical event, this collective crisis, needed to use a less academic and more literary approach. Some researchers, such as psychologist Nisha Gupta, have proposed to use the arts

“as a powerful vehicle with which to disrupt this amputation of seeing and restore compassionate witness. Art can make the invisible become visible, […] Art can create a tangible memorial that declares the truth of injustice inflicted upon marginalized communities” (Gupta 2018, 13). With this in mind, I took inspiration from the work of social researcher Jessica Martínez (2014), in which she presents narratives of rural women in

Nicaragua as a way to talk about and understand poverty and happiness in the country and decided to write the refugees´ stories as vignettes. My aim was to portray “a creative intermingling of lived experiences, field data, methodological reflections, and cultural analysis by a situated and self-conscious narrator” (Sluka and Robben 2012, 20).

During my writing, I adhered to my co-researchers’ testimonies. I use extended quotes from the interviews to make sure that you hear them, and I also assume an omniscient voice to narrate some parts without quoting the whole interview. Any judgment on my part is made explicit in the text. I want to recognize that although my intention is for the reader to listen to the voices of these refugees, this process of selecting the quotes, writing the stories and organizing the chapters is mediated by my interpretations and what I considered more important (Martínez 2014). The translation process is another filter that mediates the messages of the co-researchers. I translated the interview quotes into English. It was a challenge to ensure accuracy when dealing with colloquialisms, slang, and different references to the Nicaraguan culture. I reproduced as accurately as possible the original speech and tried to express the meaning of what they were saying in the best possible way

28 that I could think about in English (López et al. 2008). The original Spanish quotes can be found at the end of the document.

Last, I want to mention that being an insider in this situation made it easier for me to understand what happened and to transmit this to others who have no relationship or knowledge of the history of Nicaragua. However, it also determined my position and the fact that I am taking the side of protesters. I want to acknowledge that I am deliberately leaving out the stories and versions of government supporters. Nevertheless, Given the context of

Nicaraguan protests in which protesters experiences are denied through an official narrative that criminalizes them, it was important for me to open a space for them to talk about the things that were happening, and continue to happen, in Nicaragua.

Positionality is important because “it not only directly influences how the research is carried out but also determines the pre-vailing outcomes and results” (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller

2014, 628). My position determined how I approach to the theory, how I presented myself to my co-researchers, and which stories we selected. Taking one side may be seen as a limitation by others, but for me it is just natural because as Martín-Baró argued: “The fact that something is biased does not necessarily mean it is subjective; bias can be the consequence of interests, more or less conscious, but it can also be the result of an ethical choice.” (1994,

29).

SOLIDARITY AND LIBERATION PSYCHOLOGY

During my time in the Nicaraguan protests, and while talking to Nicaraguan refugees in Costa

Rica, I observed how one of the most important and the most constant motivators to maintain the struggle was the commitment to support others. The stories kept mentioning moments where people received help from strangers, or established new relationships and networks for material and emotional support. In my search to understand the motives behind this, I found the work of Jesuit priest, Ignacio Martín-Baró. In the context of the cruel Salvadoran

Civil War full of people who disappeared or were murdered, and facing cruel strategies such as scorched-earth, Martín-Baró noticed how “Along with terrifying killings and acts of horrific terrorism, there are also continuous displays of solidarity, as well as acts of profound altruism” (1990, 299)9.

Martín-Baró criticized his discipline because “psychology has created a fictionalized and ideologized image of what it means to be human, based on its own ahistoricism and bias toward individualism. This false image presents the individual as bereft of history, community, political commitment, and social loyalties.” (Aron and Corne 1994, 5). In contrast, he proposed a different paradigm for psychology, liberation psychology, a conceptual school that has been dealing with the consequences of social conflict, and the effects of the trauma of institutionalized violence (Martín-Baró 1994) since the 80s.

Liberation Psychology is inspired by Liberation Theology, which is an interpretation of

Christian faith from the viewpoint of the suffering and struggle of the poor and a critique to the ideologies and institutions (the church included) that sustain an unequal and unjust society

9 Original Spanish passage: “junto a matanzas espantosas y actos de horroroso terrorismo, hay también continuas muestras de solidaridad, así como actos de profundo altruismo” (Martín-Baró 1990, 299). 30

(Berryman 1987). Martín-Baró was inspired by the ideas of Paulo Freire about a praxis that transforms reality and his work in building a pedagogic model that initiates a transforming action (Hassett and Lacey 1991; Aron and Corne 1994).

In a context of psychosocial trauma, like the one in which Martín-Baró was immersed during the 80s in El Salvador, where aberrant and dehumanizing social relations become crystallized

(Martín-Baró 1994), bodies and minds suffer the impact, and the social fabric breaks down.

However, these kinds of traumatic situations can also bring the best out of some individuals and “reorient their lives toward a new, more realistic and humanizing horizon” (Martín-Baró

1994, 199).

To understand this behavior, Martín-Baró (1990) discusses about prosocial behavior, which he defines as the actions that benefit other people. Among prosocial behaviors, he identifies acts of cooperation, solidarity, and altruism. Following his definitions, solidarity can be triggered in response to a situation that is perceived as a problem needing fixed, and can be motivated by a rational or emotional process:

Solidarity represents an effort to get out of the framework of restricted individual responsibility and assume a broader parcel of social responsibility, bearing the consequences of what others need and do. With solidarity, the narrow schemes of institutionalized responsibility are objectively overcome, and by supporting the weakest and neediest sectors of society, a situation of greater justice is fostered (Martín-Baró 1990, 335).10

The meaning given to solidarity by Martín-Baró is connected to the classic meaning of solidarity, which comes from the Latin legal expression “in solidaridum caviar” and was used

10 Original Spanish passage: “la solidaridad representa un esfuerzo por salir del marco de la responsabilidad individual restringida y asumir una parcela más amplia de responsabilidad social, cargando con las consecuencias de lo que otros necesitan y hacen. Con la solidaridad, objetivamente se logra superar los esquemas estrechos de la responsabilidad institucionalizada y, mediante el apoyo a los sectores más débiles y necesitados de la sociedad, se propicia una situación de mayor justicia” (Martín-Baró 1990, 335). 31 to express the legal obligation that makes every individual within a group of debtors responsible for their own debt, while at the same time everyone in the group is responsible for it, because each one of them answers for the entire debt. The basic meaning of solidarity can be found here in the idea that “each one of us is responsible for everyone and everyone is responsible for each one of us […]. Thus solidarity expresses two things at the same time:

1) the union or link between people and 2) the reciprocal individual and personalized responsibility towards each and every one as a whole” (Amegual 1993, 136)11.

To better understand what solidarity is, economists Arnsperger and Varoufakis (2003) made an extensive effort to explain solidarity as an analytical category and to differentiate it from other kinds of generosity. According to them, solidarity is a kind of generosity based on the identification with someone else´s condition. Solidarity exists because “people are capable of responding sympathetically to (or empathizing with) a condition afflicting ‘others’, irrespectively of who those others are or whether one cares for them personally.” (Arnsperger and Varoufakis 2003, 157). This condition-specific disposition marks a difference with

“altruism and natural sympathy (which turn the interests of specific others into one’s own), or team-reasoning (which applies exclusively to members of some team), or Kantian duty

(which demands universalisable principles of action)” (Arnsperger and Varoufakis 2003,

157).

The motivation for solidarity can co-exist with the motivation for these other kinds of generosity, but it is a different kind, and it exists even in the absence of these other sources

11 Original Spanish passage: “cada uno es responsable de todos y todos lo son de cada uno […]. Así solidaridad expresa al mismo tiempo dos cosas: 1) la unión o vinculación entre las personas y 2) la responsabilidad recíproca individual y personalizada respecto de cada uno y de todos en conjunto” (Amegual 1993, 136). 32 of motivation. Solidarity allows contingency, the possibility to identify and have a sense of duty with a group of targeted people and not with another. The target group is identified on the basis of an adverse condition shared by its members. The condition which generates empathy is not determined by universal logic, but rather has an emotional component

(Arnsperger and Varoufakis 2003).

Arnsperger and Varoufakis (2013) also indicate that in cases where the group that is the target of our solidarity is unfortunate as a result of social injustice, solidarity turns radical. For radical solidarity to take place, one must be conscious of the structure and conditions whose arbitrariness makes a group of people unjustly disadvantaged. Thus, radical solidarity is consciously directed to those living under the structural social power of others. The reaction is the disposition to make sacrifices on their behalf.

The stories I am presenting in the following pages are good examples of solidarity and radical solidarity in the sense that Martín-Baró, and Arnsperger and Varoufakis understand them.

The situations we find in these stories are situations where people are acting against an unjust situation even when they do not perceive any personal benefit as a result of their actions.

MOTIVATIONS FOR JOINING THE PROTESTS

Abril

When you wake up to the idea that they do not mind killing you, you get the idea that what this is is a regime, that it really is a dictatorship, that they are no longer respecting anything. You see? And if I stay silent about the things that are happening, What can I ask from others? I was terribly scared, it was horrible, what can I say, it was like the circumstances called for it, because if I went back, I knew other people were going to say ʽNo, it scares me, I better stay at home.ʼ So, I had to go out for those people who were not going to join the battle. It was like… I felt it was a duty.ii

Abril is thirty, but she is small and looks younger than she is. She has big, innocent eyes and short, curly hair. We are sitting in her bed, looking at each other while we talk. Her room does not have any furniture other than the bed, but she keeps all her possessions organized inside two suitcases and a couple of backpacks. It is night already and, although the bedroom light is not working, the house is full of people and this is the only room where we can talk in private so we are using our cellphone’s flashlights to be able to see.

She tells me that after April 18, 2018, when she saw how the young people who were protesting at the Central American University (Universidad Centroamericana UCA) and

Camino de Oriente shopping center were beaten by government supporters in front of the police without their intervention, she thought the situation was unacceptable. She decided she had to support the people on the street who were trying to protest.

For several years, Abril had been looking at her country and realizing that the reality of what the government said did not correspond with the reality of what she perceived. This realization was difficult for her because she comes from a Sandinista family, and breaking with the loyalty to the revolution and to the socialist project that the FSLN once stood for is

34 a difficult task in a country where there is no political alternative that represents the interests of poor people.

Inspired by her mother’s stories about her involvement in the student movement during the

70s and 80s and her work during the revolution, Abril felt eager to fight for a better society and she sought for a space to organize with like-minded people. She thought that she had found this space in the Sandinista Youth (Juventud Sandinista), which she joined when she was 17, and in the Nicaraguan National Student Union (Unión Nacional de Estudiantes de

Nicaragua UNEN) which she joined while she was getting her degree in Managerial

Economics. She spent some years participating in these organizations, but she started moving away from them because:

I began to see things that did not seem right for me, as a woman and a citizen, things that I thought were not right. I did not feel that this space was independent, or that it was truly aware of what was happening in the country. I was there doing things that were not of an active young person. I mean, other than meeting people and messing around, as we say, there was no other form of participation that was actually inclusive for all other sectors. Everything was totally arbitrary.iii

Over several years, she distanced herself little by little from the Sandinista Youth. One of the things that she repudiated the most happened in 2013, with the repression against the Ocupa-

INSS protest:

During those protests, I remember that there were guys12 who were ordered to beat those people who were organized there, to rob them, and they told this story as if it was an accomplishment, as if they had done something important by hitting young people. So, those were situations that were obviously not right, so that was the reason for my withdrawal.iv

12 She is referring to members of the Sandinista Youth. 35

On April 19, 2018, she saw on the news how students from different universities were occupying the university campus as an act of protest against the government repression. She decided that she was going to get off early from her job in the small business she owned with her sister and that she was going to join the students in the Polytechnic University of

Nicaragua (Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua UPOLI). Her mom told her to take lemon and sodium bicarbonate13, because things were getting dangerous, but Abril dismissed that advice, telling her mom that she was exaggerating and that everything was going to be okay.

That moment was the last time she was at her home.

Later that day she was with a friend on a street next to the UPOLI, putting up barricades to protect themselves from the police. They saw a group of guys trying to tear the zinc sheets from a bus stop roof to use them as shields. They exchanged a few words, and each one of them continued in their tasks. A couple of minutes later the police came shooting, and Abril saw one of the guys falling to the ground and others grabbing him and taking him out of her sight. When everything was calm again, she and her friend went to ask how the guy was and found out that he was dead. This had a huge impact on her:

I never thought it was going to reach to the degree that someone died that day. I mean, it was a protest, people were going to be there, but that someone was going to die, that such a confrontation was going to happen, I never imagined it. […] After that it was like, well I can no longer go back to my house, close my eyes and say everything is fine, that tomorrow it will all be fixed.v

Dámaso

I am talking to the LGBTIQ+ activist and trans-woman, Dámaso, who has been part of the

National LGBTIQ+ Nicaraguan Board (Mesa Nacional LGBTIQ+ Nicaragua) since its

13 Sodium bicarbonate diluted with water or lemon is used to repel the effects of tear gas.

36 creation in 2012. We are eating cookies and laughing. We have just realized that we spent one day together in April 2018, when the protests had already started. We did not know each other but had some friends in common, and that day, I drove with her and two other girls to the market to buy gas masks and food, and then we went to the National University of

Engineering (Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería UNI) to help the students. At that moment we did not have a chance to talk, and it took a while after we met in Costa Rica for her to realize that I was the driver from that day.

Dámaso has kind eyes, a sincere smile and long, beautiful, dark hair. She tells me her activist friends told her about the protests they were planning at Camino de Oriente shopping center on April 18, 2018. She decided to support the protests because she thought the social security reforms were unfair, especially for elderly poor people who receive a small pension after working their whole life.

That first day of protests, when the people in the street were just a few, and no one had died yet, Dámaso experienced the horror of being attacked by pro-government shock groups, right in front of the police who did not do anything to protect her. She remembers she felt:

really powerless, really, really, really powerless, and also a lot of pain because they were a bunch of boys, guys my age, some younger than me, some even looked like children, ranging between 10, 14, 15 years old, armed and attacking us, and some of them did not even know why.vi

The next days she continued her involvement in the protests supporting students in the UNI and UPOLI. She also continued her activist work as part of the National LGBTIQ+

Nicaraguan Board, which started focusing on supporting protesters. Not surprisingly, when

I asked why it was important to participate in the protests she answered:

Because every voice counts, to begin with. The nation-state of Daniel Ortega is totally perverse. And it is also my awareness of the actual need for freedom and democracy. Knowing that I have lived all my life in Nicaragua being oppressed by my gender identity, knowing that in Nicaragua it is a lie that there are rights for everyone. In Nicaragua, sovereignty is completely determined by who has more money, who has more... who has more power, who has more contacts, who is straight, who is white, so I lived all that, all those oppressions I lived, and how could it be possible that there was a civic revolution where young people went out to the streets to say, ʽThey are killing us. We are poor and they are killing us for being poor. They are killing us for thinking differently, for being differentʼ, and that I was not there. I mean, for me it did not make sense that I had been an activist for 12 years and has not participating in this revolution.vii

For several years Dámaso had a strong commitment to justice and in this particular situation, she held firm to her convictions and ideals assuming the consequences. She even had to abandon her family home because her Sandinista parents were Ortega´s followers. She mentions that her dad was a founding member of the Sandinista Popular Army (Ejército

Popular Sandinista), that he is an alcoholic and sometimes becomes violent. He would turn violent against her and her sister anytime they were watching the news about the protests or listening to protest songs, so the house had an implicit prohibition against anything related to the protests. At the time of the interview, Dámaso had cut off any relationship with her parents and had not spoken to them in months but thinks it was worth it.

Slam

The youngest of the research participants is “Slam”, who is 18 years of age. He says he is

“self-organized” and does not belong to any movement. He is a sweet boy with cheerful eyes and eager to tell his story, so we laid on the living room floor and talked while we waited for a huge storm to pass.

Slam tells me he knew about the social security reforms and thought that it was not right. His first encounter with the protests was the night of April 18. One of his friends from the

38 neighborhood asked him for help, and they went to the UCA to pick up two girls from the neighborhood who were trapped inside the university after the protest at the front door was attacked by pro-government shock groups.

He thought the protests were fair because, “the country´s economy is not good, the education system, the medicines and things like that, they are not really good, things are getting more expensive all the time.”viii So he felt he had to take this seriously and help the people that were taking to the streets. He lived in a neighborhood next to the UPOLI and he knew the students were protesting and the police were trying to stop them, so on April 19, he decided to try and hold the police before they reached the students:

I started burning tires in the corner near my house because police cars were arriving close to the UPOLI. I started taking tires from the ground and burning them, throwing signs so they could not pass, […] while being at the UPOLI, after 5 minutes they started, the police, throwing some bombs and we started to… in a word, to defend ourselves with rocks.ix

During this first moment, the way he supported the protests was creating networks in his neighborhood and with other neighborhoods next to the UPOLI:

The 19th I go back to my house to sleep, and I start to organize more, I call for a meeting with several people from my group and I start telling them that we have to get the neighborhoods together and that we have to start building barricades because... so they would not enter the area near the UPOLI. We began to organize and to erect barricades in Villa Progreso. The people from Villa Progreso spoke with those of the Georgino, Carlos Marx, Primero de Mayo and Nueva Libia14, and made a peace truce... between gangs, in order to have all the people united, and that was when we synchronized and began to erect barricades.x

14 Villa Progreso, Georgino Andrade, Carlos Marx, Primero de Mayo and Nueva Libia are all names of neighborhoods close to the UPOLI. 39

After a few days, he and his friends decided to support from inside the UPOLI and to permanently stay inside the campus because they felt safer together, inside. Some friends of their friends also joined, and some people from other cities also came to the UPOLI, so they created a group that was in charge of manufacturing molotovs, slingshots, and to defend the campus from the attacks of the police keeping them away from the other protesters inside the university. He made some new friends there and he mentions that, "there I knew who were my true friends, and my family began supporting me, and my friends were no longer just friends, they became like my brothers in life and brothers in arms, because they also fought alongside me."xi

Although it made him become closer to some of his friends from the neighborhood, this was also an experience that broke the relationships in Slam’s community, which is something we can imagine from the fact that, for one reason or another, people took opposing positions:

“There were guys from the neighborhood who had roles as paramilitary, but we did not do anything to them because we knew that the party15 was forcing them, that they had been threatened, and they did not do anything to us either.”xii Although he decided to support the protests, I think Slam understood better than many that things were not black and white.

Reflections

These stories exemplify three of many possible trajectories to become involved in the protests and they illustrate the diversity in protesters´ backstories. Dámaso was already an activist who worked in topics of social justice and had identified the FSLN government as a dictatorship for several years. Abril, who used to support the FSLN government, had already

15 He is referring to the FSLN party. 40 realized that their actions were wrong and jeopardized the safety of people who were not aligned with them. However, after she abandoned the Sandinista Youth and UNEN she did not find any other space for political participation, and she kept her complaints to herself.

Both Dámaso and Abril recognized how the government was taking away civil rights and liberties, and how government supporters were granted impunity. On the other hand, Slam did not think about this as much. He was not satisfied with the country´s situation, but he did not reflect too much on this, and did not act on it until it started to affect his social context in a more direct way.

Dámaso, Abril and Slam experienced different levels of awareness of injustice. Dámaso named it very clearly when she talks about the different oppressions she faced, but when

Abril talks about “things that did not seem right,” or when Slam complains about the education and health system, they are also identifying situations that threaten their survival and their understanding of what is fair. Nevertheless, it was not until they witnessed the disproportionate violence with which the government attacked protesters that they felt the necessity to act.

The repression and the new levels of political violence they were experiencing raised their unconformity and pushed them to do something. They were now facing a limit situation and felt the need to act in support of the protests. Martín-Baró borrows the concept of limit situation from another Jesuit priest, theologian and rector of the Central American University,

Ellacuría, who had borrowed it from the German psychiatrist Karl Jaspers. A limit situation is brought on when a problem emerges in high relief, mobilizing evil forces but giving rise to positive forces that were not previously evident (Aron and Corne 1994). Therefore, the concept of limit situation emphasizes the specific conditions of structural and physical

41 violence that mark peoples´ lives and choices, constraining them but also creating spaces of possibility (Martín-Baró 1994). In their stories, we can see how these young people felt danger in a more tangible way than ever, but they also found the impetus to change a situation they perceived as a hazard against their society.

To better understand this reaction, I use the ideas of social psychologist, Melvin J. Lerner

(2003), who presents two ways in which people react to justice-related events. The first one is the heuristic reaction, motivated by moral intuition, which happens when there is a familiar cue in the situation that automatically triggers the awareness of an injustice: “That rather immediate response includes the appraisal of who or what is to blame and the imperative to reestablish justice with virtually no consideration of the circumstances.” (Lerner 2003, 389).

The second one is the systemic reaction, motivated by moral reasoning, which happens after serious consideration of the circumstances: “These include the assessments of what someone deserves, the extent to which the person's outcomes fail to meet what he or she deserves, the attributions of responsibility and culpability to possible agents of the injustice, and various courses of action” (Lerner 2003, 389).

I argue that both the heuristic reaction and the systemic reaction are present in the stories we just read, as a repugnance to the suffering created by political violence and an acknowledgment of the validity of protesting against the unjust social security reforms. This generated different examples of radical solidarity, which can be seen in how Dámaso, Abril and Slam decided to join the protests and face the pro-government shock groups and the police, demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice their wellbeing on behalf of a targeted group of people whose welfare they considered important. Just like what Arnsperger and

Varoufakis (2003) explain happens during expressions of radical solidarity, they dismantled

42 the networks and privileges that kept them safe from police brutality and unaffected by the reforms to take the streets, even though this carried enormous risks.

However, their encounter with the limit situation is not the only thing that propelled their reaction. This encounter was accompanied by a process of awakening of critical consciousness (concientización). Critical consciousness is the awareness of the nature of our own oppression, which is crucial to the emancipation from sociopolitical oppression (Gupta

2018). “To Freire, consciousness is inherently relational, social, political and economic, rather than confined to the privacy of internal experience. Therefore, a change in

‘consciousness’ happens within, and with respect to, these contexts.” (Afuape 2016, 405). In these stories the awakening of critical consciousness took place once they identified the oppressions they faced on a daily basis and the violence of the limit situation as results of the same source of injustices, personified in the pro-government shock groups, the police and the government. They started to question these oppressions and to challenge their social situation. But the most important part is that they saw other people raising their voices and taking to the streets, and realized they were not alone in this feeling, but that others were also outraged.

I believe this is why the protests were so spontaneous, and the profiles of the people who joined the protests were so diverse, because they were reacting against an injustice, reacting against the pressure of an oppressive political structure and against the limit situation that broke the way they lived their lives and created an “extreme, inescapable, psychobiological suffering” (Chaudhry and Bertram 2009, 300). Once they perceived this, they could not go back and ignore it, they were pushed to act, to help others and to help themselves by fighting against a situation they believed was unfair. They were not participating as part of any

43 organization, they were just in the company of other people who shared the same emotions and the same sense of duty. When they decided to take care of others, to protect others, to take risks alongside others, their objective was to challenge the structure that allowed the injustice with no deeper plan.

IMPACT OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Alissa

Alissa is 34 years old. She is a lawyer who acts as a human rights defender and currently, she spends time denouncing the Ortega dictatorship and their crimes against humanity at an international level. For several years before the outbreak of the protests, she participated in a youth organization. She started to work as a pro bono human rights defender on April 20,

2018, at the UPOLI. One of her friends was inside the campus with the other protesters and asked her to come. Protesters had already witnessed the murders that took place on April 19, and he asked her to come to the UPOLI campus to talk to the students and to file lawsuits.

During the next weeks, she continued her mission as a human rights defender filing lawsuits.

Because of her formal job, she traveled to other cities. Friends and other contacts asked her to file lawsuits for people in different cities, so while she was traveling she also met with people who had suffered abuses and crimes at the hands of the police and paramilitary, and she filed lawsuits on their behalf. This was the way she discovered how to use her knowledge and abilities to help others.

Alissa was punished for this work. She started receiving threats on social media with messages such as “We will find you. We already know that you are helping those motherfuckers.”xiii She decided to ignore them, it was not the first time she was threatened by FSLN´s supporters, and she thought that threats through social media were not real threats, that nothing was going to happen, but the threats continued. She started receiving anonymous phone calls and audio messages, but she always ignored them and carried on with her work.

As we are listening to the sound of water flowing, sitting on a bench, under a huge and beautiful tree at the University of Costa Rica, she tells me that early in the morning of July

12, 2018, at 3 am, the police came to her house. She was awake when someone knocked on her door. She went to the door and the police told her they wanted to talk to her. She asked for a search warrant and they did not have one, but they did not care, they came in anyways.

They violently opened the door and “started searching for things and got inside my office, where the legal papers were.”xiv Luckily she had been cautious and she did not have any documents about her work at her home, no laptop, and no personal documents such as her passport. They continued searching in her belongings and she continued to oppose this violation of her rights:

I did not make it easy for them, they beat me. They broke two of my teeth. They… I was raped. They attacked me. They were already taking me prisoner, but the neighbors got up, because I live in the suburbs, and when the next-door neighbor saw the police, she started calling all the other neighbors, but they were already going to take me in.xv

Her neighbors were crucial at this moment, they did not allow the police to take her, they fought for her. The police did not arrest her but they threatened her before leaving: “When they let me go, they left and told me they were going to keep me under surveillance, that I should be careful of doing wrong shit because you already know what can happen to you.

And they left.”xvi

Some of the neighbors started asking her, “What did they do to you? What happened?” but

Alissa did not tell them what happened:

Well, as a woman I tell you, honestly, what they do to you when they rape you is like ʽI don't want you to pity me.ʼ You lock yourself completely, like I am done. My mind was blocked. For me it was like I do not want to talk about that experience, nor do I want to be asked. It bothered me. And it is until now that I

speak about it. I mean, I put a lock on my mind to that experience and I said that I did not live it. According to my psychologist, because I am going to a psychologist, today I went, by the way, she tells me that with these issues it is like that. She says that the person gets blocked, and that releasing that is like guilt, because my mother always told me that I should stay away from those issues, to stay away from politics, that one day they were going to harm me. So, I did not speak and did not want my mother to find out, so she could not tell me ʽSee! I told you!ʼ So I blocked it.xvii

After this experience, she left her home and started living in a safe house, and she started considering the idea that she had to leave the country. She could not stay there anymore, not when she knew that the threats were real, that they could come back. Her eyes are strong and sincere when she tells me all of this. I am glad that she is sitting here with me at this moment, under a big tree at the University of Costa Rica, and that she is sharing her strength with me.

Karen

Karen’s gaze is strong but calm. She is the only research participant who did not experience the protests in Managua. She was born and raised in Nueva Segovia, a city in the north of the country that shares a border with Honduras. She is a founding member of the Segovias women’s movement (Movimiento de mujeres segovianas) and a member of the National environmental movement against industrial mining (Movimiento nacional ambientalista frente a la mineria industrial). When the protests started she was working at the Segovias

Leadership Institute16 (Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias).

When the protests against the social security reforms started, she became involved at a personal and professional level. She helped organize different kinds of demonstrations such as marches and pickets, and she collected donations for the protesters, especially for the

16 An NGO that focuses on training in leadership and citizenship with a human rights approach, and that supports social movements such as the environmental movement and the feminist movement. 47 people that were in the blockades in Nueva Segovia. Also, she supported the work of the

Segovias Center for Human Rights Promotion and Defense (Centro de Promoción y

Defensoría de Derechos Humanos en las Segovias CEPRODHUSE), helping a human rights lawyer to file lawsuits.

Karen´s work had repercussions, and she received constant threats. Her coworkers and her boss also received threats and were harassed by Ortega´s supporters. Her boss, Haydee

Castillo, was even incarcerated for a few days. As a result of this harassment, in July 2018 she stopped sleeping at her home. She mentions:

The threats came from members of the Sandinista Youth of the municipality, I managed to investigate that… and there were also threats that came from the deputy mayor of Mozonte17. On several occasions, they told me I should quit, to leave the battle, and I said no, because this was something that I liked, it was my job, I was passionate about it, to fight for human rights, to fight for the territory. And I told them that if they were going to kill me, I would always continue in this battle. But by December the threats kept coming and coming. The surveillance was constant, day and night, they did not leave my mother alone.xviii

After months of being persecuted, on December 12, 2018, the Segovias Leadership Institute was occupied by the police. Their bank accounts were frozen, their equipment stolen, and their legal registration was cancelled. However, they had been cautious and there was nothing that could endanger other people´s lives in the office. All the important information was backed up in a secure place.

Karen did not feel safe, so she told her mother she was leaving and went to Honduras.

However, she did not feel good in the neighbor country. She felt scared, so after a week she

17 Mozonte is a municipality in the city of Nueva Segovia. 48 returned. Back in Nueva Segovia the police continued to intimidate her, and police cars were constantly in front of her house.

Then, I decided to move to Costa Rica. On January 3rd, I made the decision to come here. I talked to my mom, to my brother, and I say ʽLook, I cannot be here anymore, I am scared.ʼ Because lately I was scared. And then, with what little I had, because we did not ... we did not had time to withdraw our severance or our last payment, because the accounts were frozen. So, with 100 dollars that I had in my savings, I moved to Costa Rica. On January 3rd, I pack my backpack with clothes only for two days, with my passport, my ID, and with that, I came here. I left that same night, the 3rd, from Mozonte to Ocotal18. I left at about 1 am, because the neighbors could tell someone that I was going to leave. […] the 4th I leave Ocotal to Managua. I arrived to the Mayoreo market at 8 a.m. I was just arriving when the bus to San Carlos19 was about to leave, so I came with the human rights defender, we both came here, the two of us from the organization.xix

In the Mayoreo market, she and the CEPRODHUSE human rights lawyer met 3 other people who were running away for the same reason. They were from the cities of Estelí and Jinotega.

None of them had a Costa Rican visa so they decided to cross the border together through a blind spot. They went to a place called El Naranjal, and they found a coyote who charged them 80,000 córdobas (around 2,300 dollars) for crossing the border.

We were waiting, because the Costa Rican police were surrounding the area, and we could not cross it. It was 9 pm and we continued in that place, afraid of mosquitoes and such. But it was late and I was afraid to cross. So, we did not know if we should wait for the next day, but in a moment when the police left, the coyote tells us, ʽI think it is time to cross.ʼ So, we decided to cross. It was an exhausting journey, crossing, because it was like 20 minutes, I think, just running, at night. We did not carry a flashlight to guide us. I fell on two occasions. I had to pay attention to this guy, because he has vision problems, the human rights defender. It was quite complicated because, crossing, not knowing ... knowing if the police will catch you, if they will return you.xx

18 Ocotal is the main municipality in Nueva Segovia. The buses connecting Nueva Segovia with Managua depart from Ocotal. 19 The main municipality of the city of Rio San Juan. It has a border with Costa Rica. 49

Once in the border town of Los Chiles, in Costa Rica, they took a taxi to the city of Ciudad

Quesada. They slept there for one night and the next morning they took a bus to San José, the capital. In San José, they did not know anyone, nor did they have any relatives. Together they managed to pay for an empty room for a week and sleep there, on the floor. After these five days the group went separate ways.

Karen contacted the Lutheran Church of Costa Rica, who were constructing a shelter. She explained her situation and they told her that she could sleep there but they did not have furniture yet. She did not care. She stayed in the shelter for one month and after that, she went to live with a Nicaraguan refugee family she met at the shelter. This family received support to rent a small house and they refused to leave Karen at the shelter.

Looking at Karen now, in the middle of the living room of the hostel where she is currently living with other refugees, while they study a diplomado from the Latin American Faculty of

Social Sciences20 (FLACSO), it is hard to imagine that just a couple of months before she did not have a place to live. It is hard to imagine that all of this happened to her. I can just be glad that she met good people who took care of her and that she received an opportunity for continuing her studies and her activism.

Lyris

Lyris thought the social security reforms were unfair, but she did not grasp the seriousness of the situation until her neighborhood was disrupted by the protests on April 19. At her house, she watched the news and saw how the police were shooting at protesters. Her eyes,

20 An international autonomous organization from Latin America dedicated to research, teaching and spreading of social sciences. 50 smart and steady, stay on me for a moment as she continued, “I just said, ʽOkay, I do not know what is going on, but this is not right and I need to help in some way.ʼ”xxi

She started participating on street demonstrations such as marches and pickets. With other students from her university, they decided to find a way to organize in order to discuss and try to understand what was happening, so they created the Movement for University

Autonomy (Movimiento por la Autononomía Universitaria). When I asked her why she decided to participate in the protests and to start getting involved in social movements she answered:

“Clearly, it took me a long time to be able to analyze why I did it, and I think it was like it burst my bubble, well, I mean, […] until I saw what was happening in my university and my neighborhood, I said like: ʽWow, something is happening here, it is affecting me and it will continue to affect me.ʼ It was until I could see, with my own eyes, how there were people from my neighborhood who were wounded, or how there were people shooting and such, so it was not until it affected my immediate circle, that I opened my eyes.”xxii

During the next months she continued participating in this movement, then, the movement became part of the University Coordinator for Democracy and Justice (Coordinadora

Universitaria para la Democracia y la Justicia CUDJ) and they started making alliances with other groups such as the Articulation of Social Movements (Articulación de Movimientos

Sociales). Her face was becoming familiar, especially after she participated at the National

Dialogue, and she started receiving threats. Her personal information was made public through videos on social media where she was labeled as a “coupist”. Her family was constantly harassed by the police, who stayed in front of her house. She had to abandon her studies and started to live in safe houses.

On August 25, 2018, Lyris and a group of student leaders were heading to a march when their vehicle was stopped by the police. They were identified and moved to the nearest police station before being transferred to “El Chipote21” jail in Managua. They were lucky to be released that same day. She was already living at a safe house, but after being arrested, and after the police examined all her belongings, she did not feel safe to go back there. From that point onwards, her life was going to be completely different: “That felt quite awful, actually.

To be used to live in a certain way, and then have the crisis turn that around, to begin with, and then, even within the crisis, experiencing another change even more abrupt.”xxiii

With the support of her new network of social activists, she started moving from one safe house to another. When I ask about this period she tells me:

I felt like time did not pass. I mean, I felt that day and night passed and I was doing absolutely nothing. […] They would not let us make calls, we barely had contact with what was happening outside. And we lived like that for two months. I mean, I counted the number of houses we were in. We were in 10 houses in two months. I feel this affected me a lot because it was completely unstable. The first three days I used the same clothes I was wearing when I was arrested because I had nothing else. And it was not until after those three days that they brought my backpack with some of the clothes they could take from the other safe house. So, it was really awkward because, simply, I mean, I could not even unpack the things that were in my backpack because I knew that a few days later I was going to have to move again. So, it was the instability of having nothing and being unable to contact anyone, I was not doing anything. I felt like I was losing control, I don't know. Sometimes I slept all day and all night and did not eat, I did not get hungry, until I reached the point where I said ʽI cannot. I can no longer. I cannot continue like thisʼ and I returned to my house. I returned to my house by the end of October.xxiv

At her home, she did not feel safe. The neighbors kept asking if she was there. So she moved in with a girl from the student movement and stayed there for a couple of weeks until her

21 El Chipote is a prison that served as a torture center during the Somoza dictatorship and nowadays under the Ortega dictatorship. 52 mom convinced her to move with her and her little sister to the city of Jinotega, where the rest of the family was. She was staying at an aunt´s house, but people there recognized her and threats started to come to her aunt. As a result, her family told her she needed to leave the country. She knew she could not have a life in Nicaragua, that staying meant to be in safe houses, so she agreed.

Lyris returned to Managua to obtain her Costa Rican visa. Right after she received the visa, she left. She did not know what she was going to do, but she at least had the certainty that someone was going to give her a place to sleep. She came to Costa Rica and started living with a friend and his family, who are also refugees. She was trying to find some kind of stability after all her reality was shattered.

Police Abuse

Slam participated in the UPOLI and the UNAN-Managua occupation. He felt safer living there with his friends because they could be together and they had the company of other young people who were also trying to stay safe. He was living inside the UNAN-Managua campus when one day he went out with a friend to visit their families. They stopped at a park in their neighborhood to greet some friends and at that moment the cops and paramilitary appeared and took Slam and his friends. At the police station:

They started putting all of them in prison cells and out of nowhere they took out a machete, a big machete, and claimed that we had brought that with us, and said that we also had a gun, that we were supposedly going to kill some policemen. They took me to another place, alone, they began to interrogate me, they began to interrogate me, I did not want to... I did not speak and they told me, trying like some psychological torture, saying that my partners, the ones who were kidnapped with me, that they said that I was from the UPOLI, that I was supposedly a leader, and such. And I just said that it was not true, I denied it, denied it. […] they got angry and started ... they took me to a dark area on the

side of the Ajax Delgado22, which they had prepared, and around 4 hooded officers came in and together, with another of higher rank, they hit me with AKs, then hit me with a tonfa, they put the loaded AK in my face. Then, they put the AK inside my mouth, it was loaded, and told me that they were going to shoot me. I told them to do it if they were going to, that anyways, people already knew I was there, and they said that nobody knew I was there. Then, I tell them that they already knew, they already know that I am at the 4th23 anyway, and I told them that they had no excuse. Then I... then, it seemed they were thinking and they realized I was right and that everyone was going to know it was them, so they left me. They took me to a prison cell. I arrived there and my friends helped me because they saw I was beaten and such. While I was there, at dawn, they took me out again, and they took my fingerprints, and they put... before taking my fingerprints they put a gun in my hand, so that my prints were there, and they started making the fingerprint research and such.xxv

Slam spent four days in jail suffering abuses from the police. He did not receive food during these four days. All his other friends were released after one night. The others boys told

Slam´s mother that he was in jail and she went to the police station to tell them he was underage and that they were violating his rights, but they did not care. She sought the help of a lawyer, and in court they were told Slam was going to be released the next day. The police were going to take Slam back to the police station but they agreed that the next day his mom and his lawyer could pick him up. At the police station, Slam was beaten again. The police officers injected him with something and they released him without notifying his family. He does not know what was in the injection:

I honestly don't know, I just know that after a while I could not walk anymore and I started vomiting blood. I felt that I could not take it any longer, and a lady helped me, a caramel vendor helped me, she was close, and took me to the hospital. They did not want to give me attention at the hospital, but some doctors came and they treated me secretly.xxvi

After he was released from the hospital, he went home in a taxi. Then, his lawyer moved him to a safe house before his friends came to take him to the UNAN campus again. He only felt

22 Ajax Delgado is the official name of the police station of the 4th district of Managua. 23 This is how the police station of the 4th district of Managua is popularly known. 54 safe around other people like him who were facing similar situations. He stayed there until the brutal attack against the protesters at the UNAN-Managua campus on July 13, 2018, which ended the occupation.

The next four months after they were forced out of the UNAN, Slam and his friends lived at three different safe houses. They were scared that the police would find them. They could not work, they could not do anything, they did not feel safe, and they were frustrated. Slam received threats to his phone and on social media: “They said ʽYou don't want to see your little cousin dead, you don't want to see your mother dead, right?ʼ They sent me photos of them outside my house with weapons, and it was not the police, they were paramilitaries who told me, ʽWe are outside your house, that they were going to kill me.”xxvii

Things only got worse when the police placed an arrest warrant against Slam and two of his friends, accusing them of terrorism. They decided to leave. They asked Abril, who was already in Costa Rica, for help, and she helped them find a Coyote. In December, they crossed the San Juan river from San Carlos to Los Chiles. Once on Costa Rican ground they went directly to San José. They could finally stop fearing being unjustly imprisoned.

Reflections

After facing a limit situation, one cannot go back to the life one had before. To endure the limit situation, Alissa, Karen, Lyris and Slam had to “reconfigure their lives as well as their relationships to the world and others in drastic ways.” (Chaudhry and Betram 2009, 305).

They identified and reconfigured their arenas of action and their networks of support, in a process of opposition against the menace that was oppressing them and others.

Depending on their abilities and the connections they had prior to, or made during the protests, they participated in the protests in different ways. Alissa and Karen were recording and denouncing the political violence and repression the country was suffering by filing lawsuits. Lyris and Slam were trying to call attention to this situation through their participation in demonstrations such as pickets or the occupation of university campus. Also,

Lyris did it through the Movement for University Autonomy and her participation in spaces such as the National Dialogue. By reading about the way their actions were punished, we can see in a more explicit way how as Arnsperger and Varoufakis (2003) argue, radical solidarity often combines opportunities for progress with enormous risks.

The stories we read in this chapter are examples of the way that political violence aims to destroy bodies and minds. We have read how protesters witnessed physical violence and even murders, and how they experienced physical, psychological, and sexual torture, and were harassed until their capacity to resist was broken. Alissa, Karen, Lyris and Slam were direct targets of the repression, and we can imagine how these kinds of actions were also used to paralyze other people who may have supported the protest. The atmosphere created by the government was one of terror and insecurity. This insecurity in particular “corresponds faithfully to an objective social atmosphere which requires people to disengage, and which is created intentionally by those who hold power unlawfully” (Martín-Baró 1991a, 311).

This situation of sociopolitical oppression acted as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality” (Erikson 1976 quoted in Gupta 2019, 153), and provoked significant ruptures within their communities. An example of this is when Karen mentions she had to leave her home during the early morning because she could not trust her own neighbors. Other

56 examples are the stories of Lyris and Slam, who were forced to hide, to leave their families and communities, and cut off communication with the outside world. These precautions were necessary because they knew they were being chased and that danger could come from anywhere, so they could trust no one.

Despite the social ruptures they were facing, they were bonding with other people and trying to regain a sense of community. We see this with Slam who only felt safe with other young people who were facing the same risks and a similar persecution, or Lyris who started interacting with other students like her. Both of them were trying to organize and find a space and a network of support to fight a dictatorship. These new communities helped them make sense of what they were experiencing, made them feel connected with others and helped them assimilate to their new situations.

The way they built small communities has similarity with what social psychologist Mary

Watkins and philosopher Helene Shulman calls communities of resistance. These communities create a physical and symbolic space of resistance against the dehumanizing attacks of the dominant groups. In these stories we see these kind of communities as spaces to accompany others and to organize to act, even if was only in an incipient way, and they served as spaces to “support the development of critical consciousness, the strengthening of dialogue, and the nurturing of imaginative practices of representing history and conceiving the future.” (Watkins and Shulman 2008, 210).

The stories mention other actions of solidarity such as the existence of safe houses where

Alissa and Lyris spent time hiding. These spaces exist because other people offered their homes to protect them and took care of them, assuming the risks of helping them. We can

57 imagine that although they felt lonely and “losing control”, there was a group of people backing them, taking care of them and keeping them safe.

Even though they tried to fight the repression by collaborating with others, helping them and receiving help in a dynamic of solidarity, in the end, survival became the most important thing and the limit situation pressured them into exile, leaving Nicaragua, their family, friends, and everything they knew, to continue alive.

LIFE IN COSTA RICA

Jorge

In the center of San José there is a plaza, the Plaza of Democracy (Plaza de la Democracia).

I think it is ironic that Jorge asks me to have our interview here. Ironic because the rupture of the illusion of democracy is what catapulted us out of our country. But it is 2019 and we meet here to talk and eat chips under a tree.

Jorge is kind and has tender eyes. He was studying an English course and working in a call center when the protests started. He was part of the UNAN-Managua occupation until the occupation ceased after the UNAN-Managua attack. When the protesters were expelled from the UNAN campus Jorge decided to flee the country. First he went to the city of Chontales, then to Nueva Guinea, a town in the South Caribbean of Nicaragua, and from there he walked three days to Costa Rica.

On August 3, 2018, he had arrived to Los Chiles, on Costa Rican soil, and he went to the

Migration Office to apply for asylum. He did not have a plan and did not know what he was going to do: “I did not know anyone in this country, so I did not have a support network. I did not know what organizations worked here. I did not know anything."xxviii During the first days he went to Upala, a city close to the Nicaraguan border, and stayed with some friends of a friend who gave him a place to sleep. Then, he continued his path alone, searching for opportunities to survive in Costa Rica. He ended up asking a family in Upala if they could give him a place to live and they accepted. He worked every day in exchange of food and a place to sleep.

A month later, while he was in San José, the capital, for his first migration appointment, he received a job offer on a farm. He was told that on the farm he was going to have a place to sleep, food, and he would get paid 20,000 colones24 per week. He decided to take the offer and move to the province of San José and started working at the farm in mid-October.

Unfortunately, things did not go as he expected and he did not receive a fair payment, they only gave him 1,000 colones per week. He mentions he did not act on this because “I knew that I was being exploited, but seeing the violence and xenophobia that exists in this country,

I could not report it, because I did not have a network to count on.”xxix Jorge tried to look at the bright side and was grateful to have a roof over his head. He continued working there but combined it with other small jobs:

When I had to work, because I did not have a work permit, I was going to clean houses, once I had to clean for 3 days and they only gave me 7,000 colones. Another day I cleaned for two days and they only gave me 5,000 colones. And I knew they were exploiting me, but those were 7,000 colones and 5,000 colones that I did not have.xxx

One day, after returning from cleaning a house, he found a note saying he had to leave. Later he realized the reason he was kicked out was his sexual orientation, because he is gay. He states that the most difficult part of this period was:

the emotional aspect, because coming to a country where you do not know anyone, where you do not really know if the friendship you are being offered is sincere, that you will have the support of that person. I mean, you come from Nicaragua, where you have a support network, and come to a place where you have nothing, you have no place to sleep, not even clothes, because I came with clothes just for two days, and not having a hug from someone who really loves you, to hear from someone you care that they love you and everything will be fine. So, on an emotional level, you are destroyed, you left your family, and to find limitations. And you start wondering if it was worth leaving everything behind for that, if it was worth leaving your family, and not being able to say goodbye or hug your loved one [...] And also, having limitations like

24 Around 35 United States dollars. 60

xenophobia, discrimination, diversophobia, and it is not victimization, but it is the reality of this country. People do not have the sensibility, at this moment they do not have the sensibility to understand that this migration was forced.xxxi

After he was kicked out, he lived with some friends that he met in the city of San José, and started selling plants on the street. One day, he and a friend went to sell plants at the Migrant

Social Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Sociales del Inmigrante CENDEROS), an NGO that works to empower migrant populations in Costa Rica. One of the CENDEROS’ workers started chatting with him and, after hearing his story, she helped him to collect the data and documents needed to move to one of the CENDEROS´ refugee homes. From here, things began to improve for Jorge. He lived at the refugee house for almost two months. Other

Nicaraguan refugees who were also members of the LGBTIQ+ community were living at the refugee house. At this time, he started receiving individual and group therapy. He feels this is something important because:

there are too many griefs that I have to heal in order to understand this exile, to understand this whole trip. Because before, I locked myself, I said, at this moment I have to be present here because I am all by myself, and I have to get ahead. […] at night I felt depressed, I cried, for hours, I could not sleep. The first week I could not sleep. And then, when I came to San José I could not sleep either. I listened to the bullets of the Divina Misericordia25, I had flashback to that. At that moment I listened to the bullets, even if I was in the day to day. But I understood that it was part of the trauma, that at some point I was going to heal, that it was going to become less important.xxxii

With the other Nicaraguan refugees he befriended at the refugee house, he created a group of five and got a house together. They all work in different fields: one works in construction, another one is a seamstress, beauty stylist, another one works in cleaning, and Jorge started working giving massages, but only one of them has a formal job and a fixed salary. Living

25 The UNAN-Managua attack ended with the siege of the students who sought protection inside the Divina Misericordia (Divine Mercy) church, which is next to the campus. The police and paramilitary attacked the church for over 15 hours, killed two protesters, and injured several more (Partlow 2018). 61 with other refugees is a huge source of support. Emotionally: “because you get home and even if you do not have money, if you have nothing, but you have a person who is becoming fond of you, who loves you, who is going to hug you, and who will be able to read through you and say, ʽHey, are you alright?ʼ”xxxiii And also economically: “With a small contribution, bringing tomatoes, bringing some bananas, bringing something, knowing that we are making a small contribution to the house. So, that way we have got our backs, because it is hard not having money and being hungry.”xxxiv

Flor de Luz

One of the reasons why I accepted this interview, and being part of this research, is because I need to say many things. You know? And I don't know if this is the time, I am very superstitious or credulous, I do not know what, but I believe in something, I do not know if this is the time, but at some point, I needed to say things to someone, someone besides my psychologistxxxv

Flor de Luz stares at me without blinking, with those powerful and honest eyes. He wants to talk and I want to listen. I like to think that we both learn a lot from this interaction. He tells me he had already graduated from college when he decided to be a part of the occupation of one of the universities in Managua. He always advocated for peaceful ways to protest and one of the main reasons he decided to leave Nicaragua was due to the growing spiral of violence. He crossed the border through a blind spot close to the border post of Peñas Blancas and went directly to Upala where he stayed with a paternal uncle.

His uncle and his uncle´s wife took him to a place where he could apply for asylum. He received the support of the CENDEROS’ office at Upala, which helped him in this process.

He spent three months in Upala trying to find a job. He has experience as an educator and as an artist, and his dream was to find a job as an art teacher. Pretty soon he realized that dream

62 was not going to be a reality. He tried to work in construction, but quickly discovered he wasn’t cut out for heavy physical labor. Then, he worked in a couple of things he could find, like taking care of houses.

He had a good relationship with his uncle but not with his uncle´s wife: "My relationship with my uncle's wife was really complicated because the lady is white, with blue eyes. She is xenophobic, because my uncle told me, he did not tell me that she is xenophobic, he told me that his wife did not like nicas26 very much.”xxxvi Thus, he decided to leave and try his luck in Cartago, where he had a cousin. He stayed in Cartago for a short period because he did not feel comfortable at his cousin’s house. He was grateful for the support from his cousin, but her husband was violent and the family had a lot of tension and problems: “I felt great with her, but then I began to feel rejected by her husband. It was like, ʽShit, what am I doing here? I have no job, I have nowhere to go, I have no way to go anywhere else.ʼ”xxxvii

In the end, he returned to Upala but just for a short time because he could not stand the humiliations and mistreatment by his uncle's wife.

He had no Costa Rican friends and he was avoiding talking to Nicaraguan people because he was afraid they were going to be supporters of the FSLN. He avoided people of Nicaragua until acquaintances and friends started to come. When one of his friends and her family moved to Ciudad Colón, a town in the province of San José, he decided to go and live with them. But once again, the environment was tense.

The CENDEROS’ office at Upala referred him to the San José office and through them, he got monetary support from “Relief & Resilience through Education in Transition” (RET), an

26 “nica” is slang for Nicaraguan. 63 international NGO that promotes the development, participation and integration of vulnerable refugee population. The psychologist who was seeing him suggested that he should find another place to live because he needed a quiet space to heal. Since the protests had started he spent some months feeling bad. When I ask about his emotional wellbeing he mentions:

Just imagine that I got the flu three times, because I came from Nicaragua without wanting to talk, I had somatic symptoms because of the repression, I mean, directly in my body, I had somatic symptoms. I was sick like a month and a half, counting all the time I was sick. I started to heal when I went to the psychologist and started talking.xxxviii

With the money from RET he started renting a house with some other Nicaraguan people.

He thought things were going to get better, but the stress continued: “I am very depressed because I want to leave the house where I am living, because in the house where I live, people do a lot of drugs, they are not responsible people.”xxxix I asked him to explain more about the difficulties he is experiencing, and he told me he feels conflicted because he does not like to live with the people he is living but he cannot afford to leave. He does not have the support from RET anymore and he is worried because: “I have to find a way to make my own income, and to do that I need some peace of mind. If I left Nicaragua it was to live in a quieter environment that allowed me to do other things, because I no longer wanted to be part of the protests.”xl

Flor de Luz is trying to find a job so he can rent a place with a friend. He has not had any stable work since he came here. His father and some friends have sent him money a couple of times. RET provided him with funds for a short period, and sometimes he manages to find a place to present his theater work and he earns some money from that too. He is always

64 trying to figure out a way to make an income, and right now he is selling a comic book, a product of one of his artist friends.

He now has some friends from Nicaragua, and he has found the support of people from Costa

Rica:

I have found a lot of support, especially from Costa Ricans, actually. I struggle with my own share of xenophobia and with the xenophobia that we carry, and I fight with the people who play Alejandro Mejía´s song Nica en Costa Rica27, and with all the xenophobia crap because the truth is that I have found many great Costa Ricans. Sure, they do not understand, because they do not understand at all, or just understand half, but they want to support you, they believe you.xli

Despite the support he receives from Costa Rican people, he does not feel good: "I feel that

I have not been able to move forward and suddenly I say to myself, no, do not worry, you have not moved forward because you are alone, because you have not figured out how to do it. […] I suddenly feel I am a failure.”xlii But although he is tired, he wants to continue his work as an artist. This is his dream, and while he knows it is hard, especially being a refugee, he wants to continue pursuing what makes him happy. I respect him deeply for that and I hope he succeeds.

Accumulated Distress

After being harassed by Ortega´s supporters and receiving several threats to her and her family, Abril´s family pressured her to leave the country. She said goodbye to her protest friends at the UNAN and went to a relative´s house to be with her family during her last 48 hours before departing to Costa Rica. Her mother was worried that the road to Costa Rica

27 “Nica en Costa Rica” can be translated as “Nicaraguan in Costa Rica” and is the title of a popular song associated with the experiences of marginalization of Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica. 65 was going to be too dangerous because of the blockades and the police surveillance, so they collected money to buy her a plane ticket.

On June 18, 2018, Abril landed in Costa Rica. All she knew was she was coming to a NGO and they would help her. At the airport, she was received by a member of the CENDEROS team. They gave her room at a refugee house, they also gave her psychological attention and helped her to apply for asylum. At the beginning, she did not trust anyone at the refugee house, but then she started making friends: “While I was in CENDEROS I met wonderful people, not only the people who worked there, but also my peers, who, like me, were going through the same situation, who were also refugees. And it was a situation where I felt more comfortable because I had someone to talk to.”xliii

Supported by the money she received from RET she left the refugee house and started living by herself. She did not like this experience. She could only pay for a small room and had to share the bathroom and kitchen with several people. She did not have her work permit yet and the money she received barely covered her rent and food. She felt frustrated and lonely, so she moved in with two other Nicaraguan refugees that she met when attending a support group for refugees. The experience was good not only because they split the housing expenses, but also because: “again, I had someone with whom to interact, with whom to communicate and share experiences, stories, to talk if I was feeling bad, and such.”xliv She was happier living there, but in December 2018, when her friends with whom she lived at the

UPOLI occupation came to Costa Rica, she decided to move in with them.

She found a great support system living with them:

I pay for the house, my friend pays for the food, we split it up. I mean, she has her room, I have mine. She usually, because I have been the one who has worked the most because she did not even have the first ID card28 yet, so, she prepared the food. Since I left early and came really late, then, she made the food, cleaned, and I came, ate and went to bed. [...] we talk and we are like the güegüense29, we make fun. We give ourselves that kind of support in which we try to make fun of what is happening to us, you know? To avoid being so stressed. We do go out, sometimes, not that much because our budget does not allow us to. Or sometimes, it is like, at least we go eat some ice cream or at least we go to the park.xlv

Though she feels better living with her friends, she is still dealing with stress and depression:

Look, I think my stress gets accumulated. Not only do I have the stress of what happened and what is happening in Nicaragua, but I have the stress that I am here and I have to solve problems here and now. So, everything gets together. There are like two parallel moments, but in the same context, I mean, in the same experience. I mean, I am here and now, but trying to know what is happening in Nicaragua, remembering things that happened to me, but I also know that I have to solve problems here, that I have to search for work, that I have to find a way to pay bills, and such.xlvi

Abril tells me she is always looking at news and worried about the things that are happening in Nicaragua because her family is still there, and that she can tell in her mother´s voice, in her sister´s voice that they are worried, that they are not okay. This puts her under a lot of stress. The other stressful situation she is facing has to do with money. Sometimes they do not have enough money to buy basic food and hygiene products. She has had multiple jobs, such as waitress, kitchen assistant, store attendant, but none for more than a couple of months.

Most of the money she gets is from her family in Nicaragua, even when she knows her family is struggling there and also need the money. She thinks labor discrimination is the mayor difficulty she is facing: “Some people look at your papers, and it is all good until they see

28 This ID serves as a work permit. 29 The Güegüense is the main character of the Güeguense theatrical play, one of the most important satirical drama of Nicaraguan folklore. Because there are different attributes given to this character I asked her what she meant and she told me that she is always making fun of the bad situations she finds herself in.

67 your ID card and then return them to you and said, ʽGirl, the thing is that we only hire residents or nationalsʼ”xlvii

When I ask about her thoughts and emotions she says:

I have mixed feelings, if this really, if this really happened, you know? Like, why? When did things mess up? When did I get here? And such. And also, leaving my studies, and starting from zero. I mean, there I already had a life plan, I already knew where I was going. Instead, here, it is like making another new life plan. How long will I be here? These are the questions I constantly ask myself. Sometimes it is hard for me to concentrate, it is hard for me... yes, I mean, there are days that I have trouble concentrating. There are days that I just want to sleep, and I just start thinking and thinking, and I cannot sleep. Or maybe I go to sleep and I do not want to wake up. And I do not want to do anything.xlviii

Abril cannot imagine her future right now. She does not know what to do now. She mentions she talks with her friends but that they ask why she is sad and she does not have a clear answer to that, she just feels sad. She says this is why she talks to me, because I am not asking why. I think to myself that I do not need to ask why, I can think of several good reasons why she feels unhappy. So, instead, I ask if she is still going to therapy and the answer is no. Abril stopped receiving therapy after she left CENDEROS. Then she received therapy with Doctors

Without Borders, but she stopped when she started her last job because she did not have the time. I can only hope she finds the help she needs to move on.

Reflections

In this chapter we have seen how the trajectories of these refugees were different from one another. Abril had the support of an organization, Flor de Luz had family where he could stay, and Jorge was by himself since the beginning. Each story is unique, however, I noticed

68 how the characteristics of the refugees with whom I worked, their struggles and worries matched the ones presented by the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (2019) in their study of mixed migration flows of Nicaraguan people in Costa Rica between April

2018 and June 2019. This study was based on focal groups, interviews and surveys, and represents the largest and most representative study conducted to date of Nicaraguan refugee population in Costa Rica.

According to the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (2019) Nicaraguan migrants´ biggest worries are sources of income, access to food, and access to medical assistance. During my time at refugees´ homes, and through the interviews, I could observe how the lives of these migrants was mostly focused on their struggle for survival. They were trying to secure access to basic needs. The most common thing they mentioned was their difficulty finding a decent job according to their capabilities and formal education. When they did find a job it usually was under precarious conditions, with an income below the minimum wage and with no benefits.

Conversations about labor exploitation were common among them. This is unsurprising given that the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones highlights that while 74% of the refugee surveyed population had a job in Nicaragua, only 42% had found a job in Costa

Rica. Most of the time, the job they could find was not related to their formation and had worse work conditions. Also, a lot of Nicaraguan refugees with higher education were earning less than the minimum wage (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones

2019).

The lack of access to decent jobs and the unfair working conditions they mentioned are related to labor discrimination. Abril and Jorge shared specific episodes of labor discrimination linked to sexual orientation and immigration status discrimination. This is a common problem, and the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (2019) states that many of the Nicaraguan refugees in Costa Rica are finding that their work permit from the

Directorate General of Immigration and Foreignness is not recognized in many private work places and labor discrimination is mentioned as the primary reason Nicaraguan refugees cannot find a job.

In an article of psychologists Ager and Strang (2008) they offer a conceptual framework to understand what integration means for the resettlement of refugees. They state that employment is one of the most important factors for the wellbeing of refugees because:

“Employment has consistently been identified as a factor influencing many relevant issues, including promoting economic independence, planning for the future, meeting members of the host society, providing opportunity to develop language skills, restoring self-esteem and encouraging self-reliance” (Ager and Strang 2008, 170).

In the stories of Abril, Flor de Luz, and Jorge we notice how the difficulty in finding a job is frustrating for them. Abril and Flor de Luz already had experience in their fields of study and were used to working in their areas and to had plans for their future. When I met them in

Costa Rica, they were working in anything they could find, but it was hard for them to adjust to the working conditions they were facing. They were forced to accept these working conditions because, as we could see in the stories, they needed the money to pay rent, and buy food and basic hygiene products. The need to find a job has even marked their paths

70 inside the country as we can see with Jorge who has moved to different cities in pursuit of better labor conditions.

The burden of not having an income that secures them access to housing and food combines with the stress caused by xenophobia. All my co-researchers mentioned having experienced discrimination. Even Flor de Luz, who characterizes his interactions with Costa Ricans in a more positive way, talked about the difficulty of dealing with the xenophobic behavior of his uncle´s Costa Rican wife. Similar feelings of discrimination were perceived by all the refugees with whom I talked, and according to the Organización Internacional para las

Migraciones, this is a common situation and “40% of the [surveyed] population indicates having experienced discrimination in Costa Rica, the majority related to their nationality”

(Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019, 93)30. We can see that the perception of my co-researchers is that many Costa Rican people lack empathy and sensibility towards their immigration status.

Despite these negative perceptions, Abril and Flor de Luz mentioned they have met “great” and “wonderful” Costa Ricans who have supported them. This positive connection with

Costa Ricans is important and should be cultivated because creating social bridges with the local community contributes to making refugees feel safer and has a positive impact in their quality of life perceptions. Based on research with refugees in the United Kingdom Ager and

Strand mention that “Friendliness from the settled community was very important in helping refugees to feel more secure and persuading them that their presence was not resented” (2008,

30 Original Spanish passage: “40% de la población indica haber sentido discriminación en Costa Rica, la mayoría relacionada con su nacionalidad” (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019, 93). 71

180). In the case of Flor de Luz, who did not feel happy living among other Nicaraguan refugees, establishing good relationships with Costa Rican people has helped him feel better.

The relationship with Costa Ricans is an important factor in how refugees feel in their new setting. Establishing social bonds with co-nationals is associated with improvements in quality of life, independently of their involvement with the local community, and it contributes to effective integration (Ager and Strang 2008). For Nicaraguan refugees in Costa

Rica, a source of support to deal with the frustrating circumstances they face in Costa Rica has been the company of other Nicaraguan refugees. Abril and Jorge had to live with other refugees because they needed each other to pay rent and buy food. It was easier to share resources than to live alone. But living together, interacting with people with similar experiences with whom they can talk, people with whom keep company and get their minds off their problems also has the benefit of acting as an emotional stress relief.

Shared houses serve as spaces for communities of resistance because as Watkins and

Shulman explain, there is an expectation that “members will work toward the common good and while enjoying the support for their own development, they will offer their own support to others” (2008, 216). Facing great uncertainties, they find “more humane ways of being together” (Watkins and Shuman 2008, 209). They are together because they need each other but by working together they are also nurturing an atmosphere of extended family based on solidarity ties.

However, this does not erase the memories they have about the things that happened to them or that they witnessed, the worries they still have about the situation of Nicaragua, or the complexity of the emotions associated with their situation as refugees. As Abril says, their

72 minds keep thinking about the past and the present, about Nicaragua and Costa Rica. One cannot see the effects of the political violence they suffered and the effects of their experience as refugees as two separate things, because one connects with the other.

I see the experiences of young Nicaraguan as similar to the experiences of Salvadorian kids during the civil war, in the sense that they experienced two kinds of damage, the experience of violence caused by a context of cruelty and horror, and the experience of physical separation from the people and the lives they had (Martín-Baró 1994). both violent experiences have kept the lives of these young people on a break and impeded the pursuit of their plans, creating a situation that makes them “unable to freely determine and give expression to their own history” (Martín-Baró 1991b, 333).

After hearing these stories, my impression is that their worries about a lack of job, of feeling stuck or feeling like they have to start over, in worse conditions, when they already had a life plan in Nicaragua are the ones affecting them the most at this moment. Therefore, it is necessary to guarantee access to favorable conditions of work for refugees and to meet their most pressing needs. Likewise, it is important that these young people have psychological support. By contrasting their stories with the data from the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones it is clear they have been lucky to have access to a psychologist because

“71% of the surveyed population indicated that they suffer emotional distress that prevents them from conducting their daily tasks. […] Out of this population only 19% has sought assistance, mainly through non-governmental or civil society organizations” (Organización

Internacional para las Migraciones 2019, 85)31. Nonetheless, the fact that some of them, like

31 Original Spanish passage: “71% de la población encuestada indican que si padecen de malestar emocional que les impide llevar a cabo sus tareas cotidianas. […] De esta población, solamente un 19% ha buscado asistencia, principalmente, a 73

Abril, have to stop going to their therapy sessions because of the need to work illustrates the complexity of their difficulties and the fact that solutions must take into account multiple aspects of their wellbeing.

Furthermore, because the experience of repression and persecution was collective and is a result of the social structure of a society, it is necessary to think about a therapeutic approach that treats them as a collective and seeks a change on their social conditions (Comas-Díaz,

Lykes and Alarcón 1998). Such is the proposal of liberation psychology and other social psychology approaches. The damage inflicted to the social fabric of Nicaraguan society needs to be understood, reparations need to be established as a collective, and trust needs to be restored within the community.

través de organizaciones no gubernamentales o de la sociedad civil” (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones 2019, 85). 74

CONCLUSION

This work started with the narration of a violent event. Throughout the different chapters we see how violence is present in various forms: physical, psychological, sexual, and symbolic.

Violence started with the repression and criminalization of protesters by the Ortega administration in Nicaragua and continued in Costa Rica with the xenophobic discrimination experienced by the Nicaraguan refugees.

Getting a group of refugees to talk to me about their violent and painful memories was a difficult endeavor. I was able to accomplish this thanks to referrals from other refugees, and because I took the time to build a relationship with the community. I constructed this relationship by positioning myself as an accompanier, which required a big emotional investment and took several months. I spent time with them, I listened and shared with them, but most importantly, I let them talk freely about whatever was relevant to them and gave importance to their experiences and opinions. This process and the bond that resulted from it is what allowed for such honest and deep testimonies to emerge.

One of their biggest needs was to talk about what happened to them in Nicaragua. I was impressed because not only were their memories full of details, but they also remembered the dates and times of specific events. For this reason, I felt that my most important task as an accompanier was to be a witness. They wanted to highlight that they did not choose to leave Nicaragua. They also wanted for others in Costa Rica to understand they are just trying to survive and need access to decent work. I believe they did not talk as much about their lives in Costa Rica because they felt there was not that much to say. They are in a standby phase, so while they did talk about the biggest problems they were facing in Costa Rica, such

75 as xenophobia and labor discrimination, they did not share that many memories about their time in there. They keep thinking about Nicaragua, and with just one exception, all of them want to return.

To make sense of what they were telling me, the ideas and proposals of Martín-Baró and his liberation psychology were key, especially the use of the concept of “limit situation”, demonstrating that three decades after his death his theory is still relevant. This concept emphasizes the specific conditions which led to the outbreak of the protests and explains how government repression created a situation that restricted and jeopardized them but at the same time outraged and motivated them to rebel against the forces that oppressed them. This is exemplified when Slam explains he wanted to support the protests because the situation in the country was bad and the social security reforms were unfair. In the end, this situation provoked a rupture, propelling them out of Nicaragua and changing their lives so drastically that they felt like they were living another life, one that was missing most of the things they knew. The best example of this is Abril, who does not adjust to her new reality and is frustrated because, as she mentions, she already had a life plan in Nicaragua and she does not have anything now.

Additionally, another important concept is the “awakening of critical consciousness”, which guided me in observing how they connected their anger in the face of injustice with those who were responsible for it. When they were forced to witness acts of injustice and contrasted them with their own understanding of the Nicaraguan reality they started a process of looking and reflecting on their own oppressions. They realized that what they were facing was not an isolated situation, and this pushed them to search for change. This is exemplified when

Dámaso talks about how she needed to support the protests because she was seeing how other people were being oppressed just like her.

The process of awakening of critical consciousness through the encounter of a limit situation stimulated a reaction of solidarity. Thinking about solidarity was helpful to understand why people decided to participate in the protests and help other protesters despite the risk, and how it was possible for them to survive in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Martín-Baró gives a lot of examples of solidarity and is constantly mentioning it in his writings, but he did not spend a lot of time defining solidarity. The definition of solidarity of Arnsperger and

Varoufakis connects with the examples and writings of Martín-Baró and highlights an understanding of the emotional component of solidarity and how it can become radical. This concept best demonstrates how the sense of injustice focused on the structure that made the repression possible and why my co-researchers acted as they did.

The solidarity motivated by a reaction against injustice can be found when we hear Abril saying that after she witnessed a murderer she could not go back to her regular life and act as if she did not know the police had murdered someone. We also find it in Lyris saying that she did not understand what was happening but that she knew it was wrong and she felt she had to help. During the protests they gave and received solidarity. Karen and Alissa put their knowledge and skills to the service of others, Slam faced the police in an attempt to protect protesters inside the UPOLI campus. They became targets of the repression due to their commitment to help others, but they could count with the protection of other people, for example by giving them a place to sleep in safe houses.

As we now know, protesters did not succeed in their demands of justice because the structure they were challenging was more organized and the government did not hesitate to attack, persecute and harass them. In the end they had to flee Nicaragua because no matter how much help they received, it was too dangerous to stay.

But regardless of the outcome, both during the protests and once they were in Costa Rica, they created communities of resistance which have served as a physical and symbolic space of resistance to take care of each other and to organize to act. Working as a community, they have been able to cover their needs in order to survive, to become more aware of their oppressions by empathizing and reflecting on the experiences of others, and to find company which helps them to cope with dire circumstances.

These people need to have psychological accompaniment to heal the stress associated with being political refugees, and as Martín-Baró proposes, a damage that is produced socially needs to be healed as a collective. I think other kind of interventions, not just focused on the individuals, need to be imagined. Liberation psychology proposes to target the roots of oppression and the social conditions that damage the psyche of individuals and the social fabric of communities. Social relations need to change in order to overcome situations of violence and trauma. While the political repression continues, no reparations for the multiple human rights violations are granted, and no responsibility is taken, the social and psychological effects of the political violence will continue to take place and Nicaraguan social tissue will keep tearing apart.

Lastly, I want to mention that writing these stories in a less academic and more literary style more effectively captured the emotions, feelings and thoughts of these persons, and made

78 them closer to us. I hope you could imagine them as real persons with a past and with hopes for their futures, and that this contributes to a better understanding of the way political violence can mark and transform someone’s life and the realization that these people need social support, and to be heard without discrimination.

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APPENDICES

Appendix A: Co-researchers information

Name or Abril Lyris Dámaso Slam Alissa Karen Jorge Flor de Luz Nickname Date of 08/05/2019 07/10/2019 07/20/2019 08/03/2019 07/05/2019 07/10/2019 08/12/2019 07/08/2019 interview

Age (at the 30 20 26 18 34 27 24 28 time of the interview) Gender identity Female Female Trans women Male Female Female Male Male

Educational University Incomplete Fourth year Sixth grade in University University University University Level / Studies Completed / university of High Elementary Completed/ Completed/ incomplete / Completed Managerial school School Law Agricultural Third year Civil Economics Management engineering Engineering Were they Second year of Third year of No No Third year of No He was No studying at the College. College. College. studying an time the Majoring in Majoring in Majoring in English course protests Psychology Architecture English started? Which subject? Department Managua Managua Managua Managua Managua Nueva Segovia Managua Managua where they were living when the protests started

Name or Abril Lyris Dámaso Slam Alissa Karen Jorge Flor de Luz Nickname Occupation at Working on the Student Working at Self employed Lawyer / Working at the Working at a Working as a the time the family business the National Consultant Segovias call center consultant protests started LGBTIQ+ Leadership Nicaraguan Institute Board

Did they cross Checkpoint Checkpoint Checkpoint Blind spot Checkpoint Blind spot Blind spot Blind spot the border through a border checkpoint or through a blind spot? Do they have Yes No No No No No Yes Yes work permit? Do they receive Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes psychological therapy? Are they No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes currently receiving psychological therapy?

Appendix B: Spanish quotes

i "Yo sé que vos viviste una situación parecida a la mía. El problema es que en la relación de poder entre nosotros dos, vos estás en otra posición en este momento, y necesito decirte este tipo de cosas." ii “Cuando vos despertás a la idea de que no les importa asesinarte, ya vos te haces la idea de que lo que está es un régimen, que de verdad es una dictadura, que ya no están respetando nada. ¿Ya? Y si yo me quedo callada con estas cosas que están pasando, es como que ¿Qué puedo exigirles a las demás personas? Me daba un miedo horrible, espantoso, qué te digo, pero era como que las circunstancias lo ameritaban, porque si yo me regresaba, yo sabía que había otras personas que iban a decir ʽNo, me da miedo, mejor me quedo en mi casa.ʼ Entonces, yo tenía que salir por esas personas que no se iban a sumar a la lucha. Era como… yo lo sentía como un deber.” iii “comenzaba a ver cosas que a mí no me parecían, ni como mujer, ni como ciudadana, cosas que no las veía correctas. No me parecía que ese espacio estuviera independizado, o que fuera consciente verdaderamente de lo que pasaba en el país. Estaba ahí para hacer cosas que no eran de un joven activo. O sea, fuera de conocer gente o hacer el relajo, como nosotros decimos, no miraba ninguna otra forma participativa ni verdaderamente inclusiva para todos los demás sectores. Todo era totalmente arbitrario.” iv “durante esas protestas, me acuerdo que hubieron chavalos que mandaron a golpear a esa gente que estaba organizada ahí, a que les robaran, y lo contaban como que si fuese una hazaña, como que si hubiesen hecho algo importante al golpear jóvenes. Entonces, fueron situaciones que obviamente no están correctas, entonces, fue el motivo, pues, de mi salida.” v “nunca pensé de que iba a llegar a tal grado de que alguien muriera ese día. O sea, era una protesta, la gente iba a estar ahí, pero que alguien iba a morir, de que se iba a armar un enfrentamiento así, pues nunca me lo imaginé. […] Después de eso fue como que bueno, ya no me puedo regresar a mí casa a cerrar los ojos y a decir todo está bien, que ya mañana se compone esto.” vi “mucha impotencia, mucha, mucha, mucha impotencia, pero también mucho dolor porque eran un montón de chavalos, chavalos jóvenes de mí edad, algunos menores que yo, y se veían algunos hasta niños, oscilando entre 10, 14, 15 años, armados y atacándonos, y algunos no sabían ni por qué”. vii “Porque cada voz cuenta, de entrada. El estado nación de Daniel Ortega es totalmente perverso. Y también es mi conciencia de la verdadera necesidad de libertad y democracia. El saber que yo toda la vida he vivido en Nicaragua oprimida por mi identidad de género, el saber que en Nicaragua es mentira que hay derechos para todo el mundo. En Nicaragua la soberanía está totalmente sesgada por quién tiene más dinero, por quién tiene más... por quien tiene más poder, por quien tiene más contactos, por quien es hetero, por quien es blanco, y entonces todo eso lo vivía yo, todas esas opresiones las vivía yo, y como iba a ser posible

que hubiera una revolución cívica donde los chavalos salieran a la calle a decir "Nos están matando. Somos pobres y nos están matando por ser pobres. Nos están matando por pensar diferente, por ser diferentes", y yo no estuviera ahí. O sea, para mí no tenía lógica los 12 años que tenía de ser activista y no participar en esta revolución.” viii “la economía en el país no es buena, aparte del sistema de estudio, medicinas y cosas así, no están muy bueno en realidad, cada vez se ponen más caras las cosas.” ix “en la esquina cerca de mi casa ya comencé a quemar llantas porque estaban llegado patrullas al lado de la UPOLI. Ya comencé a sacar llantas de las tierras y quemarlas, botar rótulos para que no pasaran, […] y estando en la UPOLI a los 5 minutos comienzan, la policía, a tirar unas bombas y comenzamos a… en pocas palabras, a defendernos con piedras.” x “ese 19 yo regreso a dormir en mi casa, ya comienzo a organizarme más, hago una reunión con varios de mi grupo y comienzo a hablar y a decirles que hay que unir a los barrios, y que hay que buscar como levantar barricadas porque... para que no entraran al sector de la UPOLI. Nos comenzamos a organizar y comenzamos a hacer levantamiento de barricadas en Villa Progreso. Ya la gente de Villa Progreso hablo con los del Georgino y Carlos Marx y Primero de Mayo y el Nueva Libia, haciendo un trato de paz para... entre los pandilleros, para poder hacer, tener todo un pueblo unido, y ahí fue donde nos sincronizamos y comenzamos a poner barricadas.” xi “ahí conocí quienes eran los verdaderos amigos y mi familia me comenzó a apoyar, y ya mis amigos ya no eran simples amistades, sino que eran como mis hermanos de la vida y de lucha porque también lucharon conmigo.” xii “Había muchachos del barrio que andaban de paramilitares, pero no les hacíamos nada porque nosotros sabíamos que el partido los había obligado, que los habían amenazado, y ellos tampoco nos hacían nada.” xiii “Te vamos a encontrar. Ya sabemos que andas ayudando a esos hijueputas”. xiv “Comenzaron a buscar cosas y se metieron al lado de mi oficina donde estaban los papeles legales.” xv “yo no me deje, me golpearon. A mí me quebraron dos dientes. Me... me violaron físicamente. Me agredieron. A mí ya me llevaban presa, pero los vecinos se levantaron, porque yo vivo en una residencial, y la vecina al ver la policía ahí ella empezó a llamar a todos los vecinos, pero a mí ya me iban a llevar presa.” xvi “cuando a mí me sueltan, se van, y me dicen que me van a tener vigilada, que cuidado ando haciendo mierdas que no son porque ya sabes lo que te puede pasar. Y se fueron.” xvii “Pues como mujer te lo digo sinceramente, lo que te hacen cuando te violan es como que “No quiero darte pena.ʼ Te encerrás completamente, como que ya no quiero. Mi mente se 88

bloqueó. Para mí esa experiencia yo no la quiero hablar ni quiero que me pregunten. Fue lo primero que me moleste. Y hasta ahora lo hablo. O sea, yo me encerré con un candado en mi mente que esa experiencia yo no la viví. Según mi psicóloga, porque estoy yendo a una psicóloga, hoy fui por cierto, me dice de que son temas de que eso es así. Dice que la persona se bloquea, y que para que puedan sacar eso es como culpabilidad, porque mi mamá siempre me vivía diciendo de que me alejara de esos temas, me alejara de lo político, que un día te van a hacer algo. Entonces, yo por no hablarlo ni que se diera cuenta mi mamá, para que no me dijera ʽ¡Ves! ¡Te lo dije!ʼ Entonces lo selle.” xviii “las amenazas salían de los chavalos de la juventud sandinista del municipio, porque logré investigar… y amenazas que salieron de parte de la vicealcaldesa de Mozonte también. En varias ocasiones pues, ellos me dijeron que me retirara pues, de andar en la lucha, y yo les dije que no, porque era algo que me gustaba, era mi trabajo, y eso es lo que me apasiona a mí, defender los derechos humanos, defender el territorio. Y yo les dije que si me iban a matar pues, yo iba a continuar siempre en la lucha. Pero ya en diciembre las amenazas seguían y seguían. El asedio era de manera diario, día y noche, no dejaban en paz a mí mamá.” xix “Entonces, yo decidí trasladarme para Costa Rica. El 3 de enero yo tomo la decisión de venirme. Yo hablé con mi mamá, con mi hermano, y les digo ʽMiren, ya no puedo estar aquí, me da miedo.ʼ Porque últimamente sí sentía miedo. Y entonces, con lo poco que yo tenía, porque a nosotros no... ni la liquidación nos quedó tiempo pues de retirarla, ni el último pago, porque las cuentas fueron congeladas. Entonces con 100 dólares que tenía ahorrados, yo me trasladé para Costa Rica. Un 3 de enero hago mi mochila sólo con dos mudadas, con mi pasaporte, mi cédula de identidad, y con eso pues, me vine. Salí el mismo 3 en la noche de Mozonte a Ocotal. Salí como a la 1 de la mañana, porque los vecinos pues, podían bombearme que yo iba a salir. […] ya el 4 yo salgo de Ocotal a Managua. Llegué a las 8 al Mayoreo. Yo que llego y el bus que va a salir para San Carlos venía saliendo, entonces yo me vine con el muchacho defensor de derechos humanos, los dos nos venimos, los dos de la organización.” xx “nos esperamos porque andaba la policía de Costa Rica ahí rondeando la zona, y no podíamos cruzar pues. Eran las 9 de la noche y nosotros continuábamos en ese lugar con miedo de zancudos y todo. Pero ya era noche y yo tenía miedo pues, de cruzar. Entonces, no sabíamos si nos esperábamos para el siguiente día, pero en una de esas que la policía se retira del lugar el coyote nos dice pues, ʽCreo que es el momento de que crucemosʼ dice. Entonces, decidimos cruzar. Un trayecto súper cansado el cruce, porque fueron como 20 minutos creo, sólo corriendo, de noche. No llevábamos ni bombillo para alumbrarnos. En dos ocasiones me caí. Tenía que venir al pendiente del muchacho, porque tiene problemas en la vista, el defensor de derechos humanos. Fue algo bastante complicado porque, el cruzar, el no saber... el saber si te va a agarrar la policía, te va a regresar otra vez” xxi “yo solo dije ʽOkay, no sé qué está pasando, pero esto no está bien y tengo que ayudar en algo.ʼ” xxii “claramente me tomó como bastante tiempo poder analizar por qué lo hice y considero que fue como, como que me rompió la burbuja, pues, o sea, […] hasta que vi que estaba pasando 89

en mi universidad y en mi barrio dije como que ʽWow, algo está pasando aquí, me está afectando y me va a seguir afectandoʼ Y hasta que pude ver pues, como con mis propios ojos, como había gente del barrio herida, o como había gente disparando y esas cosas, pues fue como hasta que afectó mi círculo cercano, pues que abrí los ojos”. xxiii “fue bastante feo de hecho, como se sintió. De estar acostumbrado a llevar la vida de una manera, y que de por si la crisis le dé vuelta, y aún dentro de la crisis sentir otro cambio más brusco todavía.” xxiv “yo sentía como que no pasaba el tiempo. O sea, sentía que se hacía de día y de noche y no estaba haciendo absolutamente nada. […] no nos dejaban hacer llamadas, casi no teníamos contacto con lo que estaba pasando fuera. Y así estuvimos como dos meses. O sea, conté la cantidad de casas en las que estuvimos. Estuvimos en 10 casas en dos meses. Y yo siento que eso me afectó bastante porque era una inestabilidad completa pues. Los primeros tres días yo pasé con la misma ropa con la que me detuvieron porque no tenía nada. Y fue hasta esos tres días en los que me llevaron mi mochila con parte de la ropa que habían logrado sacar de la otra casa de seguridad. Entonces, era súper incómodo pues, porque simplemente, o sea, no podía ni siquiera sacar las cosas que andaba en la mochila porque yo sabía que pocos días después me iba a tener que mover otra vez. Entonces, era esa como inestabilidad de que no tenía nada y no podía contactarme con nadie, no estaba haciendo nada. Sentía como que estaba, como perdiendo el control, no sé. A veces pasaba dormida todo el día y toda la noche y no comía, no me daba hambre, y pasé así hasta un punto que dije ʽNo, ya no puedo. Ya no puedo. Ya no puedo seguir asíʼ y me regresé a mi casa. Me regresé a mi casa como a finales de octubre.” xxv “Comenzaron a meterlos a todos ellos en celdas preventivas y no sé de dónde sacaron un machete, un gran machete, diciendo que ese machete lo habíamos llevado nosotros y metiéndonos una pistola, que supuestamente íbamos a hacer homicidio y matar a unos policías. A mí me metieron en otro lugar, solo, me comenzaron a interrogar, me comenzaron a interrogar, yo no quería... yo no hablaba y me decían ellos, así como que, haciéndome como que tortura psicológica, diciéndome que ya le habían dichos mis compañeros, que habían agarrado conmigo, que les habían dicho que yo era el de la UPOLI, que era supuestamente dirigente, y cosas así. Y yo como que no, me negaba, me negaba. […] ellos se enojaron y comenzaron... me llevaron a una zona oscura del lado del Ajax Delgado, que prepararon ahí, y ahí entraron como 4 oficiales encapuchados y junto con otro de rango mayor, a golpearme con AKs, y a golpearme con amansa bolos, a ponerme la AK cargada en la cara. Después me pusieron la AK adentro de la boca, cargada, diciéndome que me iban a disparar, y yo les decía que si lo iban a hacer que lo hicieran, que de todos modos ya sabían que yo estaba ahí, y ellos diciendo que nadie sabía que yo estaba aquí. Entonces yo les digo que ya saben, de todos modos ya saben que estoy en la 4, y yo les decía que no tenían excusa. Entonces yo... entonces ellos como que se pusieron a pensar y como que se dieron cuenta de que yo tenía razón y que todo mundo iba a saber que fueron ellos, y como que me dejaron. Me llevaron a la celda preventiva. Y llegué y mis amigos me ayudaron porque me vieron golpeado y todo. Ya hasta ahí, en la madrugada me vuelven a sacar, y me comenzaron a agarrar mis huellas, y me pusieron... antes de agarrarme la onda de mis huellas me pusieron la pistola en la mano,

para que quedaran mis huellas, y comenzaron a hacerme este aspecto de lo de la investigación de las huellas y todo.” xxvi “La verdad no sé, solo sé que en un rato ya no podía caminar y comencé a vomitar sangre. Sentía que ya no podía más, y una señora me ayudo, una vende cajetas me ayudo, que estaba cerca de ahí, y me llevo al hospital. En el hospital no me querían atender, pero llegaron unos doctores y como que me atendieron a escondidas.” xxvii “me decían ʽNo querés ver a tu primita muerta, no querés ver a tu mamá muerta, ¿Verdad?ʼ Me mandaban fotos afuera de mi casa y ellos con armas, y no era la policía, eran paramilitares que me decían ʽestamos afuera de tu casaʼ, que me iban a matar.”

xxviii “Yo no conocía a nadie en este país, entonces, yo no tenía una red de apoyo. Yo no conocía que organismos habían aquí. Yo no conocía nada.” xxix “Y yo sabía que estaba en explotación laboral, pero al ver la violencia y la xenofobia que estaba en este país, yo no podía denunciar, porque no tenía una red con la que contar.” xxx “Cuando tenía que trabajar, porque no tenía un documento, me iba a limpiar casas, y una vez me toco 3 días limpiar y sólo me dieron 7,000 colones. Otro día limpié dos días y solo me dieron 5,000 colones. Y yo sabía que me estaban explotando, pero eran 7,000 colones y 5,000 colones que yo no tenía.” xxxi “lo emocional, porque venir a un país en que no conoces a nadie, que no sabes si realmente esa amistad que te están brindando es sincera, que vas a contar con el apoyo de esa persona. O sea, vos venís de Nicaragua, donde tenés una red de apoyo, y venir a un lugar donde no tenés nada, no tenés ni donde dormir, ni siquiera ropa tenés, porque yo venía con dos mudadas, y no tener un abrazo de alguien que realmente te quiera, de saber que el te quiero que te dicen o el todo va a estar bien es de esa persona que te importe. Entonces, a nivel emocional venís destruido, venís dejando a tu familia, y que vayan surgiendo limitantes. Y te empezás a cuestionar que si valió la pena dejar todo por eso, que si valió la pena dejar a tu familia, y no poderte despedir de un abrazo de tu ser amado […] Entonces, también tener limitantes de xenofobia, discriminación, diversofobia, y no es victimizarse, sino que es la realidad de este país. La gente no está sensibilizada, en ese momento no está sensibilizada de que la migración era forzada.” xxxii “hay demasiados duelos que tengo que sanar para entender todo este exilio, pues, entender todo este viaje. Porque antes yo me cerraba, decía, en este momento yo tengo que estar aquí porque estoy solo, y tengo que salir adelante. […] en la noche me agarraba la depresión, lloraba, me quedaba horas, no podía dormir. La primera semana no pude dormir. Ya luego cuando vine a San José tampoco podía dormir. Escuchaba las balas de la divina misericordia, me quedaron secuelas de eso. En ese momento escuchaba las balas, aunque estuviera en el día a día. Pero yo entendía que eso era parte del trauma pues, que eso en algún momento iba a sanarse, que iba a perder peso.”

xxxiii “porque llegas a la casa y aunque no lleves dinero, no tengas nada, pero tenés a una persona que te está tomando aprecio, que te quiere pues, que te va a dar un abrazo, y que te va a saber leer pues, y te va a decir, ʽoe, estás bien?ʼ” xxxiv “Con lo mínimo que uno pueda aportar, que llevar tomates, que llevar unos plátanos, que llevar esto, y saber que llevar un poquito de comida a la casa ya estamos aportando pues. Entonces nos podemos acuerpar de esa manera, porque es difícil no tener dinero y tener hambre también.” xxxv “Una de las razones por las que acepté esta entrevista, y participar en esta investigación es porque tengo necesidad de decir muchas cosas ¿Me entendés? Y no sé si es el momento, yo soy muy supersticioso o creyente, no sé en qué, pero soy creyente en algo, no sé si será el momento, pero sí necesitaba decirlo en algún momento con alguien, además de con mi psicóloga.” xxxvi "Mi relación con la esposa de mi tío era muy complicada porque la señora es blanca, ojos azules. Es xenofóbica, porque mi tío me dijo, no me lo dijo que es xenofóbica, me dijo de que a su esposa no le caían tan bien los nicas.” xxxvii “yo me sentía tuani con ella, pero después empecé a sentir como ese rechazo de parte de su esposo. Fue como, ʽMierda, ¿Qué estoy haciendo aquí? No tengo trabajo, no tengo para donde irme, no tengo como irme para otro lugar.ʼ” xxxviii “Imagínate que yo me enferme tres veces de gripe, porque yo venía de Nicaragua sin ganas de hablar nada, yo somatice el asunto de la represión, o sea, directamente en el cuerpo, yo lo súper somatice. Yo pasé prácticamente como mes y medio, entre todo el tiempo que me enfermé. Yo me empiezo a sanar cuando voy a la psicóloga y empiezo a hablar.” xxxix “Yo estoy muy deprimido porque quiero irme de la casa en la que vivo, porque en la casa en la que vivo la gente se droga mucho, hay mucha irresponsabilidad.” xl “Yo tengo que buscar cómo generar mis propios ingresos, y para hacer eso necesito un poco de tranquilidad. Si me fui de Nicaragua fue para vivir un ambiente más tranquilo que me permitiera hacer otras cosas, porque ya no quería estar en las protestas.” xli “Sí he encontrado mucho apoyo, sobre todo apoyo de costarricenses fíjate. Yo lucho con la xenofobia que cargo y con la xenofobia que cargamos, y peleo con la gente cuando pone la canción esta de Alejandro Mejía de Nica en Costa Rica, y con toda la mierda de la xenofobia porque la verdad me he encontrado mucha gente costarricense tuani. De que no entienden, porque no entienden en absoluto, o que medio entienden, pero quieren apoyarte, te creen.” xlii “Siento que no he podido avanzar y de pronto me digo, no, no te preocupes, no has avanzado porque estás solo, porque no has logrado pensar bien cómo hacerlo. […] de repente me siento fracasado.”

xliii “Estando pues en CENDEROS conocí gente muy linda, no sólo las personas que trabajaban ahí, sino también compañeras que, igual que yo, estaban ahí por la misma situación que estaba pasando, que igual venían como refugiados. Y se dio una situación en la que yo me sentía más cómoda porque tenía con quién platicar.” xliv “ya tenía de nuevo con quién interactuar, con quién relacionarme y compartir experiencias, vivencias, hablar si me sentía mal, y eso.” xlv “Yo pago la casa, mi amiga paga la comida, nos dividimos. O sea, ella tiene su cuarto, yo tengo el mío. Ella usualmente, como yo he sido la que más he trabajado porque ella todavía no había tenido pero ni el primer carnet, entonces, ella hace la comida. Como yo salía temprano y venía súper noche, entonces ella hacía la comida, limpiaba, y yo venía, comía y ya me dormía. […] platicamos y se nos sale como que el güegüense en plan burlesco. Nos damos ese tipo de apoyo en el cual tratamos de burlarnos hasta de lo que nos está pasando, ¿Me entendés? Para no estarnos estresando. Sí salimos, a veces pues, no han sido muchas ocasiones porque tampoco el presupuesto nos lo permite. O a veces, es como, por lo menos vamos a comernos un helado o por lo menos ir al parque.” xlvi “Mira, yo creo que es que el estrés como que se fusiona. No solo tengo el estrés de lo que pasó y de lo que está pasando en Nicaragua, sino que tengo el estrés de que estoy aquí y tengo que resolver aquí en este momento. Entonces, todo se me fusiona. Entonces, son como dos momentos paralelos, pero en el mismo contexto, o sea, en la misma vivencia. O sea, estoy en el aquí y ahora, pero tratando de saber qué es lo que está pasando en Nicaragua, recordando cosas que me pasaron, pero también tengo que saber que tengo que resolver aquí, que tengo que buscar trabajo, que tengo que buscar cómo pagar cuentas, y eso.” xlvii “Hay personas que te miran los papeles y todo bien y van por la parte del carnet y te los devuelven, y me decían ʽMuchacha lo que pasa es que solo contratamos residentes o nacionalesʼ” xlviii “Tengo sentimientos encontrados, de que si de verdad, si de verdad esto paso. ¿Me entendés? Del ¿Por qué?, de ¿En qué momento se desviaron las cosas? ¿En qué punto llegué hasta aquí dónde estoy? Y eso. Y también, dejar mis estudios, y ahorita empezar desde cero. O sea, allá ya tenía un plan de vida, ya sabía por dónde iba. Mientras que aquí es como que realizar otro plan de vida nuevo. ¿Cuánto tiempo voy a estar aquí? Son las preguntas que me hago constantemente. A veces me cuesta concentrarme, me cuesta... sí, o sea, hay días que me cuesta concentrarme. Hay días que quiero solo dormir, y comienzo solo a pensar, y a pensar, y no puedo dormir. O talvez paso dormida y no me quiero levantar. Y no quisiera hacer nada.”