Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Mothers in Nicaragua unite, fight for justice
Sons among anti-government protesters killed
MEXICO CITY — The two mothers walked shoulder to shoulder ahead of a casket in the northern Nicaraguan city of Esteli, wailing in shared grief at the killings of their sons during a wave of anti-government protests.
Francisca Machado was accompanying the casket holding her 24-year-old son Franco Valdivia Machado’s body to the cemetery on that April day. Socorro Corrales had buried her own son, 23-year-old Orlando Perez Corrales, the day before.
From that image of solidarity was born a movement that became the Mothers of April, formed by relatives of many of the 325 people killed in the government suppression of the student-led protests. Its members are demanding justice from President Daniel Ortega, who has tightened his grip on power and targeted voices of dissent, arresting hundreds and closing media outlets and human rights groups in the aftermath of the protests.
The group is preparing for a long struggle for accountability for the killers of their children from a government that has labeled the protesters criminals and coup plotters. Three of its nine leaders have fled Nicaragua.
“We don’t want to think about many years passing, but part of our responsibility is to prepare for that scenario,” said Francys Valdivia Machado, whose younger brother was buried April 22.
Nicaragua’s mothers are drawing on the experiences of the bestknown such group, Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and the more recently organized Mothers of Ayotzinapa in Mexico. About 150 families are involved in the Nicaraguan movement.
Valdivia and Perez were both university students, the former a third-year law student with a 5-yearold daughter, the latter about to complete his engineering degree.
They did not know each other but were standing near one another on the evening of April 20 during a protest against social security cuts in an Esteli park. Perez fell first. Valdivia started to move toward him when he was shot in the head.
Their families believe they were both shot by a sniper firing from City Hall. Fifteen minutes before Valdivia was shot, he had denounced authorities’ use of force against peaceful protesters on a Facebook video holding what appeared to be a rubber bullet in his hand.
The nationwide protests began April 18, initially drawing mostly senior citizens who were the most directly impacted by the announced social security cuts. When the elderly protesters were met with violence from pro-government Sandinista Youth thugs, students turned out in large numbers to defend them.
Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, maintained the use of force was justified to fend off an attempted coup. Domestic and international human rights groups strongly disagreed.