In a new attempt to erase the memory of those who fell victim to government repression during the 2018 April Rebellion, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has forced their public employees and their army of supposed “volunteer police” to march through the streets of Nicaragua’s municipalities with their hoods on.
The regime has organized a series of activities beginning on April 1, with dawn reveilles in all the towns, aimed at promoting the official narrative as proclaimed by all-powerful “co-president” Rosario Murillo: “They couldn’t, nor will they ever” [defeat the regime]. The first day’s activities culminated with the marches headed by the supposed “volunteer police,” a term the regime used in 2018 to justify the actions of paramilitary groups who used weapons of war to tear down the barricades erected in protest.
“We knew they were going to use us for public activities during April, to generate a vision of an armed body made up of anonymous people, who are loyal to the dictatorship and willing to defend it with their bullets,” Rigoberto*, a teacher obligated to join the ”volunteer police”, confided to Confidencial.
According to the teacher, many public employees are “bothered,” because they were obligated to go out and march “like always, but this time with hoods on as well.”
“There were a lot who didn’t want to go, but obviously we had to obey. They put us at the head of the marches, so that everyone would see that hooded men and women are part of the repressive forces and will silence anyone who dares to protest,” he insisted.
Nicaraguan student leader Enrique Martinez, spokesperson for the Avanza movement, believes that the participation of a hooded “army” in the activities organized by the dictatorship is meant to send a message of “intimidation” to Nicaraguans.
“They want to intimidate citizens and let them know – with the weapons and that warlike thinking that the Sandinistas have imbued in Nicaragua – that “we’re not going to allow another April.” But people are tired and can’t endure that subjugation,” Martinez affirmed.
A Confidencial report revealed how the regime forced the public employees to train and become part of the 76,887 so-called “volunteer police,” with the objective of “generating terror” among the population.
Murillo’s aggressive message
Rosario Murillo began the month of April with an aggressive message about the civic insurrection that shook the country in April 2018. “They couldn’t, nor will they ever” she repeated during her daily noonday monologue that is broadcast over all the official media. Once again, she twisted the events that occurred during the civic protests, calling them “an attempt at a Coup d’etat.”
“Those wretches, those miserable people, couldn’t nor can they ever. Seven years since the massacres, seven years since the unpardonable nights and days of terror (…) vandals, blockaders, criminals, lackeys,” ranted Murillo.
“They were defeated because God is with us at seven years since the organized brutality, also directed and imposed from some houses of worship by demons, heretics and morons at the service of hell,” added Murillo, who has been spearheading direct attacks on the Catholic Church.
During the April Rebellion, at least 355 people were killed according to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. Meanwhile, the group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua created by the United Nations has issued reports stating that the Ortega-Murillo regime committed crimes against humanity.
Dictators “rebaptize” April
Murillo has rechristened this month as “April, a people that defend peace.” The name is part of a bill that Murillo and her co-president and husband Daniel Ortega sent to the National Assembly for their immediate approval.
The law – approved unanimously by the docile Congress – obligates the Nicaraguan schools, high schools, universities and media outlets to unite in the activities that the regime plans to realize every April, together with the State institutions, and the municipal and regional governments.
Hooded citizens participated in a march held on April 1, 2025. Photo from government website “El 19 digital”.
The four articles that comprise the new law replace Law #1197, approved on April 8, 2024, declaring April “month of peace.” The new law also invites “Nicaraguan families, communities and organized youth to celebrate throughout the national territory.” According to the text of the law, the regime ordered April to be celebrated in the framework of “a culture of peace of the Nicaraguan people,” even though, in practice, the regime continues persecuting anyone who opposes it and silencing dissident voices.
“Desperate” attempts of the regime
During an interview with the online television news program Esta Semana and the Confidencial media team, Lesther Aleman, one of the protagonists of the 2018 student protests, assured that these were “failed attempts” on the part of the regime to erase what had occurred during the April Rebellion.
“The marches of public employees and any propaganda on the part of the dictatorship won’t be able to erase what history already determined was the beginning of the end of the dictatorship,” Aleman stressed.
Enrique Martinez agreed that the dictatorship is seeking through its official discourse and propaganda campaigns to replace the memory of the repression and suppress any reference to the victims of the April Rebellion.
“The establishment of this new law, the actions of the dictatorship and their obligatory call to the citizens to defend their dictatorship and its version of history is nothing more than a regime that knows they’ve lost the battle of ideas as well as the narrative at both a national and international level,” Martinez insisted.
April 18, 2025, will mark seven years since the civic insurrection exploded. For over 100 days, this popular uprising of 2018 pinned the Ortega-Murillo regime between a rock and a hard place. To commemorate it, exiled opposition groups will be holding a series of activities, mainly in the United States and Costa Rica, where the largest concentration of Nicaraguan exiles live.
This article was originally published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated by Havana Times. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.