The National Council of Universities (CNU), an entity subordinated entirely to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, created a new higher education center in Nicaragua on the morning of Thursday, August 17: the Casimiro Sotelo Montenegro National University. This will be the new name of the recently confiscated Central American University (UCA). Not even 48 hours have elapsed since a Sandinista judge accused the Jesuit alma mater of “terrorism” and seized all its assets – nor is there a court ruling – when the new authorities of the now state compound were already appointed.
The UCA, the most important private university in the Central American country, confirmed the criminal proceedings against it on Wednesday, August 16, and decided to “suspend” its operations after operating for more than 63 years under the tutelage of the Society of Jesus. The confiscatory process began immediately: the CNU issued a statement on Wednesday night indicating that they were “working to guarantee the educational continuity of the undergraduate and graduate students of the extinct Central American University,” and that they would soon make “a call for the resumption of academic and administrative activities.
The presidential couple has used the name of the martyr Casimiro Sotelo, assassinated in 1967 for rebelling against the Somoza dictatorship, to mask the confiscatory and repressive act against the UCA. According to the legal document addressed to the Jesuit leadership revealed by the Divergentes media outlet, the Ortega-Murillos allege that “the UCA functioned as a center of terrorism, taking advantage of the conditions created with lies, to raise the levels of violence and destruction , organizing armed and hooded criminal groups that used terrorist methods, destroyed public universities, public and private buildings” during the 2018 protests.
“Criminal activities were committed at the UCA with firearms, lethal ammunition, mortars, Molotov cocktails and blunt objects, causing considerable economic losses to the country and betraying the trust of the Nicaraguan people who welcomed them in our country so that they could function as an educational institution. superior”, continues the legal document whose statements the UCA, as well as the Central American Province of the Society of Jesus, rejected out of hand.
“The serious accusations against the Jesuit University of Nicaragua are totally false and unfounded (…) The de facto confiscation of the UCA is the price to pay for the search for a more just society, protecting life, truth and freedom of the Nicaraguan people, in keeping with its motto: The truth will set you free,” the Central American Jesuit provincial rejected in a statement.
The dictatorship waits for the night and begins to dismantle the sign of the UCA, to rename it after the confiscation. they are predatory pic.twitter.com/mBX2vlT3yY
– Wilfredo Miranda Aburto (@PiruloAr) August 18, 2023
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This recount of the judicial document alludes to the massive social protests of 2018 against the Ortega y Murillo regime. Popular discontent, which led to a national civic rebellion and rocked the presidential couple, was incubated in the UCA after the fire in the Indio Maíz Reserve. The students of the compound took to the streets and were attacked by the Sandinista mobs. Then, with the imposition of social security reforms, university students from the Jesuit alma mater also took to the streets on April 18.
Like thousands, they were repressed with brutal violence by police and paramilitaries who shot to kill. One of the most brutal episodes occurred on May 30, 2018: Father José Idiáquez, rector of the UCA at that time and today in exile, opened the doors of the campus to shelter more than 5,000 people during the attack on the Day march de las Madres, one of the largest demonstrations, in which almost a million people expressed solidarity with the relatives of those murdered in April of that year. Some of the main leaders of the 2018 social protests also emerged from the UCA, such as Lesther Alemán and Madelaine Caracas, who rebuked the presidential couple during the failed national dialogue, a process used by the regime to buy time and arm paramilitary groups.
Despite the fact that human rights organizations, especially a group of United Nations experts, have classified what happened in Nicaragua since 2018 as “crimes against humanity”, the Sandinista government tries to impose its same narrative: that they were victims of an “attempted coup”. In this sense, the legal document insists that the UCA and its directors “are and continue to be traitors to the Nicaraguan people. These incidents of violence left traces of mourning and pain in Nicaraguan families.”
Although for now the exact number of UCA executives charged by the regime is not known, some of them left Nicaragua –after being notified– to preserve their freedom, according to sources close to the campus consulted by EL PAÍS. Judge Saavedra Corrales’ document is forceful against them: she alleges “that the main directors of the UCA have continuously attempted against the independence, peace, national sovereignty and self-determination of the Nicaraguan people, inciting the destabilization of the country, harming the supreme interests of the nation.
Highest Jesuit authority reacts
The final blow of the Ortega-Murillo family to the UCA even caused this Thursday the reaction of the highest Jesuit authority in the world: Superior General Arturo Sosa, who in a letter from Rome claimed that his university “has been denied the right to to legitimate defense.”
“A fair trial -with an impartial justice-, would bring to light the truth of the entire plot that the Government has been carrying out, since the youth protests of 2018, against the UCA, against many other works of the Catholic Church and against thousands of of Civil Society institutions, in order to suffocate, close or appropriate them. With similar slanders they have also insulted the rights of so many people, their reputations, their lives and their property,” Sosa said.
In this way, the Ortega-Murillos add a new flank of confrontation with Rome, this time with the Jesuits and which is added to the one they maintain with Pope Francis for the religious persecution against Catholicism in Nicaragua. Despite the fact that the Jesuits are demanding the seizure of their university, the Ortega-Murillos named the new authorities of the state campus on Thursday. It is about Alejandro Enrique Genet Cruz as master rector, pointed out by students and professors of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) “of sexual harassment.” The other authorities of the confiscated university are Luz Marina Ortiz Narváez as general vice-chancellor and Moisés Ignacio Palacios, as general secretary.
Among the students and workers of the UCA what prevails is uncertainty. “I was waiting for them to announce the day that I was going to withdraw my degree, because I had just graduated. Now I don’t know if they’re going to give it to me. If it is going to bear the name of another university. Receiving the news was quite heartbreaking, I feel very helpless. It seems sad to me that five years of effort only remained in an anecdote, ”said a Social Communication graduate who does not trust the promises of the CNU to continue her procedures and studies. For now, the regime has not taken over the UCA facilities that were evicted, but this Thursday the main accesses to the campus woke up cordoned off by police. It is the last image of what, until less than 48 hours ago, was the last bastion of freedom of thought in Nicaragua.
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