Nicaraguan exiles sink roots in Costa Rica to hold re-election

Author: Daina Beth Solomon

UPALA, Costa Rica (Reuters) – Nicaraguans forced to flee the country’s southern border to Costa Rica have expressed mixed anger, pain and resignation ahead of Sunday’s election, where President Daniel Ortega is expected to extend his long tenure after fierce rivals. .

Francisca Ramirez and more than 40 of her relatives are from dozens of exiles in Costa Rica from the diaspora, and that can grow if Ortega tightens up.

She ran away three years ago with her husband and six children, fearing they would be jailed for protesting against Ortega’s rule. Since June, Ortega Police have placed their opponents under house arrest or detention, and further encouraged them to https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/lost-hope-ortegas-crackdown-nicaragua-stirs-fast-growing-exodus. -2021-09-02.

Ramirez believed the move would be temporary. But he and 80 others now live south of the border in a compound made up of increasingly durable wooden houses.

“There will be no election tomorrow … there will be a vote imposed by a terrorist,” Ramirez, 45, said. Hundreds of people are helping in the Costa Rican capital, along with the vote, to bring a protest against Ortega.

Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla and antagonist against the Cold War in the United States, says he is defending Nicaragua to get rid of opponents who are conspiring with foreign powers.

Ramirez wants international pressure on Ortega to release political prisoners, disband paramilitary forces, return exiles and investigate the abuses of the authorities.

If the United States and other world powers do not act, he said Nicaragua would become a “complete failure”.

On the border near the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, 42-year-old exiled Carlos Cardoza, a Nicaraguan driver, works as a driver.

“There is so much pain, and so much resentment,” Cardoza said, referring to those killed in the crackdown on protests against Ortega, who killed more than 300 people in 2018.

He said five of his six siblings also live in Costa Rica.

Upala lived on the land near the east between turkeys and chickens, Ramirez said he and his family fought a plan to take their land to build an overseas canal defended by Ortega.

Ramirez’s husband, Migdonio Lopez, calls the group of wooden houses with earthen floors “Little Nicaragua”.

None of them wanted to be permanent.

“When Nicaragua is free,” Lopez, 55, said, “the plan is to go back.”