Tourists must request a permit from Customs to take recording equipment or accessories with them, in what the opposition considers a maneuver by Daniel Ortega so that the serious crisis in the country is not known.
The postcards of the visit to Nicaragua without surveillance of the authorities will be something impossible for tourists. The Government has announced that it restricts the entry of photographic or video cameras into the country. The measure establishes that permission can only be obtained for one piece of equipment and one pair of binoculars per person. In case of exceeding that amount, they must have a customs record that will qualify it as a temporary importation.
The Customs Directorate has classified 140 equipment and 90 image accessories that must have government endorsement. Travelers are deprived of taking with them lights, lenses, microphones, tripods or other specific elements that are a clear slam for audiovisual filmmakers and professional photographers.
The Executive’s decision has been harshly criticized by journalists and documentary filmmakers who assure that it is a way for the president, Daniel Ortega, to close Nicaragua to the eyes of the outside. “It seeks to accentuate its political control, as well as to block or hinder the work of the media that arrive in the country and can deny the official narrative,” said the leader of the Organization of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua, José Cardoza, to the newspaper ‘Voice of America’.
Opponents of Ortega affirm that the collection of money that can be obtained with these commercial taxes is minimal and insist that the primary purpose is to prevent the world from knowing the deep social and economic crisis in the country.
The new regulations also prohibit “the entry into the national territory of night vision binoculars, as they are for the exclusive use of the Army and the Police.”
Since October of last year, the work of documentalists in Nicaragua was controlled. The Cinematheque, an agency dependent on the Government, assumed the power to “prohibit the development, exhibition and commercialization of audiovisual products”, in addition to empowering itself to confiscate materials that it considers illegal or harmful. In this way, Ortega’s cabinet intends to avoid the risk of foreign filmmakers entering the country as tourists to record the less flattering reality of the nation.
Tourism, in the doldrums
For five years, Nicaragua has tried to recover tourism. The revolution that put an end to the dictatorship and a civil war that lasted ten years, until 1990, prevented it from opening up to the world. Inhabited by just over six million people, in the following decades it went on to top the international charts as an emerging destination. It is a land of rich biodiversity, with dozens of volcanoes, lakes, jungles, virgin beaches, nature reserves, and colonial cities.
However, since 2021, tourism rates have plummeted by around 40%, according to data from the Central Bank of Nicaragua. Right now it is in the last positions at the Latin American level, only surpassed by Honduras and Venezuela. The political situation, with multiple public complaints against Ortega for abuse of authority, the arrest of dozens of political opponents, the lack of employment and a major social and economic crisis caused the departure of at least 328,000 citizens from the country in 2022.
#Nicaragua #limits #entry #photographic #video #cameras