Messinese journalist blocked in Nicaragua for his profession

After the fear, the relief. The journalist from Messina, Massimiliano Cavaleri, has returned home, detained in Nicaragua and then released only after checking social media and his political orientation. "They live, essentially, under a full regime, it reminds me a bit of North Korea," Cavaleri explains to La Sicilia. The journalist had gone to South America for a book he is working on, titled "my world", in which he recounts 20 years of travels in over 100 countries and in the most remote places. Stopped at the border before entering Nicaragua, he said he was "periodista", but the agent on duty immediately opposed an halt and called his superiors. "Nicaragua was the 200th country I visited – the journalist from Messina tells La Sicilia – and I had never experienced anything like this. Moreover, it is a country that does not require a visa, just an Italian passport. I was traveling with a friend who is a magistrate and passed through without any issues. When it was my turn, the woman at the controls asked what my job was, and I replied 'periodista', meaning journalist; she immediately stood up and said 'halt', took my passport, and went to another office, essentially calling a superior who came and asked me for which publications I write, what kind of journalist I am, if I deal with politics, and so on, and they made me write down all the publications on a sheet. I hadn't studied the situation in Nicaragua well, namely that they had expelled journalists, and I had therefore answered naively. I explained to them, however, that I mainly deal with Medicine and Health and had to prove that I was there only as a tourist; at that point, I avoided saying I was there to write a book. Then they left me waiting. In the meantime, I was looking for numbers for the Italian embassy, which only had landline numbers, so I couldn't call. Yet the Italian embassy is one of the few left. After a while, a superior returned, and after telling me that he had verified I was there only as a tourist, they let me enter the country. Once inside, I found a country torn apart by internal conflicts, namely by the attempts of activists to overthrow the dictatorship. Once in Nicaragua, Cavaleri listened to the local people: Chatting discreetly with many locals in various cities, I found that they are deeply disappointed with President Daniel Ortega, who with his Sandinista Revolution of 1979 had freed the country from Somoza's military dictatorship. As often happens after coups and revolutions, the liberator has gradually transformed into a new tyrant. Now there is terror for the violent repressions against those who dare to contest or criticize the government (see the protests of 2018); and there are exclusively controlled media.

"Since last year, co-president has been appointed the wife of Ortega, Rosario Murillo, long considered the true soul of power and described, as reported by some newspapers, even as a "witch" for her practices of occultism. Both live in seclusion in a villa in the capital, rarely appearing for public occasions, and she speaks daily on the noon news but only through voice (as if it were on the radio): a propaganda that attempts to reassure a population that is now among the poorest in the American continent (about 30% are below the poverty line). Meanwhile, the couple's 44-year-old son, Laureano Ortega, already sanctioned by the United States and the European Union for human rights violations, manages diplomatic relations and, last September, signed an economic cooperation agreement with Russia concerning the occupied regions in Ukraine, after a meeting with Putin.

Ironically, on the first day of the visit to Nicaragua, following the airport shutdown, while at the Palacio Nacional (partly a museum), Cavaleri coincidentally met the former Nicaraguan vice president Wilfredo Navarro Moreira, now second secretary of the Legislative Assembly: a useful opportunity to "steal" a historic snapshot with a prominent political figure, a deputy described as chameleonic because after years of fighting against Ortega, he was swept away by the winds of repression, changing allegiance. "It is thought-provoking that at the airport named after Sandino (a revolutionary from the 1930s who inspired Ortega's uprising) - concludes Cavaleri - his name is accompanied by the slogan Nicaragua Libre (Free Nicaragua), which recalls the motto of the Cuban Revolution, a cry for freedom that seems to have been widely betrayed."