Banishment or jail. The majority preferred to be stateless, request political asylum and fight for the freedom of Nicaragua from another geography. Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez Lagos decided the secondeither. “Let them be free, I pay their sentence,” said the religious, according to sources from the Catholic Church to international media.
“Let them be free, I pay their sentence”, Monsignor Àlvarez.
On February 9, the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa (north of the country) was transferred from the building where he was serving house arrest to the La Modelo maximum security prison, located in the municipality of Tipitapa, northeast of Managua. He did not want to get on the plane where 222 political prisoners traveled who were thrown out by the Daniel Ortega regime.
The priest’s decision aroused international admiration, since it is considered that the fact of staying in Nicaragua, in the midst of adverse conditions for those who challenge and question Ortega, reinforces his figure as a symbol of resistance.
Others see him more as a martyr, foreseeing the consequences that his determination to stay in his country would bring. On Friday, one day after the release and exile of the political prisoners, the court ruling was announced. who sentenced Monsignor Álvarez to 26 years in prison for alleged treason, obstruction of functions, aggravated disobedience to the detriment of Nicaraguan society and dissemination of false news. In addition, his nationality was withdrawn.
(Read more: Nicaragua: Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years and four months in prison)
For the regimen, the priest questioned a state decision and, according to Ortega himself, who came out at a press conference to give details of the case, Álvarez had a “superb behavior of someone who considers himself the head of the Nicaraguan Church, the leader of the Latin American Church and even with everything necessary to occupy the office of His Holiness, the Pope.”
According to Ortega, the priest lined up to get on the plane and then announced that he would not get on, arguing that he had to speak with the other bishops in the country. By agreement with the United States, political prisoners had to be mounted of their own free will.
“He is deranged, but hey, that must already be determined by the judicial and medical authorities who will also have to treat him in La Modelo (…), he is an ordinary man. The habit does not make the monk,” said the Nicaraguan leader, making it known that there will be no special treatment for Bishop Álvarez.
The father’s decision was something that clearly marked the political prisoners who got on the plane. “It was a painful and sad moment, but within faith we see him with great hope. He is an example of a pastor and a pride of Nicaragua, of that love and dedication and his people,” said Yubrank Miguel Suazo, one of the released , to THE TIME.
(Keep reading: Who are the 222 political prisoners expelled from Nicaragua?)
Three days after what happened, they see the news of his sentence with little surprise and, rather, discomfort. That, according to Suazo, confirms how the regime’s arbitrary actions have been in recent years. “We see how the Daniel Ortega regime is merciless against this man who has raised the dignity of the Nicaraguan people,” added the psychologist.
the uncomfortable father
“We belonged to a generation of young people who had to conquer our freedom at the price of persecution and pain.”
“He is a firm, energetic man, strong in his principles. He has been an independent person, who has handled things with courage and has always denounced ”. This is how a religious colleague who is in asylum in the United States described it and prefers not to be quoted by name. That is why he was not surprised by the decision he made and, much less, by the “revenge” with which the regime responded to his refusal to leave.
They met in the seminary, following the same path of vocation. From a young age, Álvarez showed his closeness to priestly service. In the 1980s, during the Sandinista revolution, he refused to do military service, which was compulsory, and for this he was imprisoned and exiled for a time in Guatemala. “We belonged to a generation of young people who had to conquer our freedom at the price of persecution and pain,” Álvarez told Magazine.
(Read more: Nicaragua: prisoners found out on the plane that they no longer had nationality)
In 1994, at the age of 28, he was ordained and in 2011 became the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa. When the repression of the Ortega Sandinista administration began in 2018, Álvarez served as a mediator between the government, the opposition and the protesters. But he gradually became an uncomfortable figure, and on the second opportunity for dialogue he was vetoed by Daniel Ortega.
He did not hesitate to put his position and his parish at the service of the citizens, whom he protected during violent protests and helped when they asked for intervention to get young people out of police stations, take them to be treated in private health centers or accompany the families that said goodbye to their children killed at the hands of the repressive authorities. Together with other priests from the region, They opened a human rights office to receive complaints.
“Everyone was in their place, assuming the consequences of the social uprising and caring for the population, which was being oppressed, imprisoned and killed,” said the exiled father, who received threats, intimidation and physical attacks on three occasions. As he explained, it was the personal decision of each priest to take a stand, support or not the parishioners who asked for it. There was never a call to action from the Church.
It was a matter of time before those who opted for the complaint against Ortega ended up in exile or imprisoned.s. That was the case of Monsignor Álvarez. From August 4, 2022, the authorities prevented him from leaving the Matagalpa Curia and on the 19th of the same month he was abducted and taken to his parents’ house in Managua, where he was detained while he was undergoing his process for allegedly “conspiracy to commit undermining national integrity” and “propagation of false news”.
(You may be interested in: The life of Salvadorans since Bukele built the mega-prison)
In December 2022, he was formally charged, and the hearing for his trial was originally scheduled for the end of March this year. After the release of the 222 political prisoners, and after the refusal of the hierarch to get on the plane that took them out of the country, Judge Nadia Tardencilla brought forward the appointment in which the sentence was imminent. The 12 testimonies that were going to testify were police officers, state workers and Sandinistas, as reported by the local media 100% Noticias.
“He never got involved in politics, only in religion,” his sister Vilma Álvarez told La Prensa Magazine. But his religious work, in favor of those who mobilized to demand a democratic solution to the political and human rights crisis in Nicaragua, was seen by the regime as a coup act. Given the unfair ruling against him, questions remain about how the attempt to resume relations between the United States and Nicaragua will progress. Thirty-eight people are still in prison accused of inciting the rebellion against the State.
NATALIA TAMAYO GAVIRIA
SUNDAY EDITORIAL
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