Forty years ago, President Daniel Ortega and his wife Vice President Rosario Murillo hid together in safe houses in Costa Rica’s capital while waiting for the imminent fall of Anastasio Somoza. Today, thousands of their exiled compatriots hide in the same streets, awaiting the fall of the presidential couple.
We went to San José to interview and photograph Nicaraguan exiles from every walk of life: students, politicians, journalists, human rights activists, civic leaders. Some made media headlines worldwide when they left Nicaragua. Most are anonymous citizens. All have one thing in common: if they returned home, they say they would be arrested, tortured, or killed. They are some of Ortega’s most wanted.
If they returned home, they say they would be arrested, tortured, or killed.
Nicaraguan exiles are grateful to their southern neighbors. But most are hardly surviving in a foreign environment where they feel Ortega’s presence around every corner. “This is not a safe exile for me”, says Nemesio Mejia, a renowned farm leader who only sees his wife and children twice a month to elude danger. A defected member of the Nicaraguan riot police lives in seclusion on the outskirts of the capital: “I feel like a rat”. It took seven weeks for Rafael Solis, one of Ortega’s former closest allies, to find the right place and time to be photographed — “I am not afraid, but I take precautions”, Solis claims.