Félix Maradiaga, the Nicaraguan democracy leader, has been released from prison. He has important things to tell.
Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of a piece that appears in the current issue of National Review.
‘Is this a dream?” Alejandra kept saying. “Am I dreaming?” Alejandra is nine years old, and she was hugging her father, whom she hadn’t seen in almost three years. He kept assuring her: “You are not dreaming. It’s me. Your dad is here.”
He is Félix Maradiaga, the democracy leader from Nicaragua. He tried to run for president in 2021, opposing his country’s dictator, Daniel Ortega. On June 8 that year, he was arrested, along with other opponents of the regime. The dictator was cracking down.
Members of Maradiaga’s family have been in exile, in the United States, since 2018: his wife, Berta Valle; their daughter; and Maradiaga’s mother, Carmen Blandón. He had last seen them in March 2020.
Maradiaga spent 611 days — about a year and eight months — in prison. On February 9, he was released, along with 221 other political prisoners. On a charter plane, they were exiled to the United States. The Biden administration had placed great pressure on the Ortega regime, through sanctions and other measures. So had other democratic governments. Evidently, Ortega concluded that the prisoners were more trouble than they were worth.
I have known Félix Maradiaga for several years and admire him a great deal. I admire Berta, too, and interviewed her last fall. She has campaigned for Félix, and other Nicaraguan prisoners, tirelessly. She has had a partner in Victoria Cárdenas, the wife of another democracy leader, Juan Sebastián Chamorro. Like Félix, he had tried to run for president and had been taken prisoner. And like Félix, he was among the 222 released.
On February 10, the day after the Nicaraguans arrived in the United States, Berta sent me an audio message: a greeting from Félix. He sounded like himself — even in his second language, English. From what I could hear, he had not lost a beat.
Two nights later, he called me, saying, “I’m sorry for interrupting your Super Bowl.” (He knew that Americans, ritualistically, watch this game.) I could only reply, “You are my Super Bowl!”
Talking with him now, in a subsequent and extensive conversation, I ask him about his ordeal, starting with the day of his arrest. He was not arrested by regular policemen, he tells me. He was arrested by special agents of the regime — men known for their extremism and fanaticism. When arresting Maradiaga, they beat him severely.
They took him to prison: El Chipote. This name has struck terror in the hearts of Nicaraguans for generations. “A lot of people have disappeared in El Chipote,” says Maradiaga. François Duvalier — “Papa Doc” — had a prison like this in Haiti: Fort Dimanche. The very name caused people to quake. The same is true of Evin, in Tehran.
Maradiaga is an academic, as well as an entrepreneur, a political activist, and other things. For many years, he has studied dictatorship and how to transition to democracy. “But nothing,” he says — nothing theoretical — “prepares you for El Chipote prison.”
The first 77 days, he was kept in solitary confinement. He was denied contact with anyone on the outside — lawyer, family — in violation of constitutional rights. Of food, there was very little.
In El Chipote, there was no drinking water at all, for prisoners. If they wanted water, it had to be brought by a family member, at 5 in the morning. A family member was allowed to bring two bottles of water, per day. But he or she had to show up at 5 in the morning.
Maradiaga’s sister, Ana, did this faithfully. Other prisoners were not so lucky. Maradiaga shared his water with them. Their families might have lived hours away from Managua — the capital city, where El Chipote is — and transportation is a problem.
Toward the end of Maradiaga’s time in prison, family members were allowed to bring milk and juice, in addition to water.
Guards would tell Maradiaga, “You can have this juice, but you have to drink it in front of us, right now.” Sometimes he would reply, “No, thank you. I am not thirsty. Why don’t you have it?”
It was important to him to assert control over his own mind and body — not to be a plaything of the guards. “I knew they were trying to break us, physically and mentally,” he says. Early in his confinement, he fasted quite a bit, so that his body would get used to very small amounts of food and liquid. He wanted to reduce the leverage the guards held over him.
In general, prisoners were not permitted to speak. Occasionally, they could speak to cellmates in whispers, and the guards would let it go.
Maradiaga did plenty of speaking in interrogations. He underwent more than 400 of them, in his 20 months at El Chipote. He was interrogated about everything he had ever done: every action he had ever taken, every article he had ever written, every interview he had ever given. (“They asked about the one I did with you, Jay.”) The interrogators were trying to establish him as a foreign agent, paid to tarnish Daniel Ortega’s reputation.
Characteristically, Maradiaga viewed the interrogations as teaching opportunities. I say “characteristically” because he is a natural and perpetual teacher and explainer. “I tried to speak with compassion,” he says. “I tried to open their eyes.” (The eyes of the interrogators.) “I don’t know if I got anywhere. It’s probably my imagination, but I think I was able to change a couple of hearts in those interrogations.”
During the 611 days, he was permitted no reading material, at all. In the final months, when the prisoners were allowed to receive milk or juice from family members, the guards removed the labels. The prisoners could not see even the labels on bottles.
Never were the prisoners allowed outside. You could exercise in your cell — as long as you made no noise. Maradiaga says that there was a particular cell that looked like any other — except that it had bars overhead instead of a roof. Some sunlight got through. Approximately every other week, prisoners could spend 30 minutes to an hour in that cell.
“Did you ever feel in danger of losing your sanity?” I ask Maradiaga. The answer is no. He has a strong religious faith. And, day after day, he went through mental exercises. “I resorted to every crazy idea you can imagine,” he says. He tried to remember movies he had watched. And conversations he had had.
“I even thought up TED talks” — brief speeches to be given at TED conferences, held around the world. (The initials stand for “Technology, Entertainment, Design.”) To one of these speeches, Maradiaga gave the title “Talk to Angels.” He tells me what was behind it — the speech and the title.
“Sitting there as a prisoner, I told myself, ‘When you are in hell, you can either talk to your own demons or talk to your own angels.’ My personal angels were Berta, Alejandra, and my mother, Carmen. I held imaginary conversations with them — and that would give me mental, physical, and spiritual strength.”
What of the guards and their attitudes? Was there any humanity evidenced by these men? Maradiaga thought he could sense something in their body language: a certain discomfort in dealing with political prisoners (as opposed to drug lords, say, or terrorists).
Guards were not allowed to talk with prisoners. But toward the end of Maradiaga’s confinement, something very unusual happened. A guard did indeed talk to him, and he said, “I am in a worse situation than you, because one day you may be free, but I am stuck here in this prison forever.”
“That was shocking to me,” says Maradiaga. “It let me know that even Sandinista supporters — even people who wear the uniform of the notorious Chipote prison — know that the Ortega regime is getting worse and worse.”
Maradiaga had a trial, if you can call it that. It did not take place in a court of law. It took place in El Chipote, behind closed doors. Maradiaga stood trial with Juan Sebastián Chamorro. They had lawyers, but those lawyers were not allowed to speak with them, their clients. Maradiaga and Chamorro, of course — the defendants — were not allowed to speak at all.
The formal charge against them was “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.” In other words, they had dared challenge the dictator, Daniel Ortega. They were sentenced to 13 years in prison.
It was during this trial, or sham of a trial, that Maradiaga learned about General Hugo Torres. Torres had been a hero of the Sandinista revolution. In 1974, he led a daring and successful raid to free Daniel Ortega and other Sandinistas from prison. In due course, however, he turned against the Sandinistas. And, almost 50 years after the raid, he died a prisoner, of Ortega and the Sandinistas.
He was arrested on June 13, 2021 — five days after Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro. He knew he would be arrested. Beforehand, he made a video, saying, “I risked my life to get Daniel Ortega and other political-prisoner colleagues out of prison. I am 73. At this stage of my life, I never thought I would be fighting against another dictatorship now more brutal, more unscrupulous, more irrational, and more autocratic than the Somoza dictatorship.”
When Torres was taken to El Chipote, he was in “very good shape,” Maradiaga tells me. But one does not remain in good shape in that place for long. General Torres died on February 11, 2022.
It was “the lowest point of my imprisonment,” says Maradiaga. He means when he learned of Torres’s death. “He was a dear friend of mine, even though we had different political ideas. He was a man of principle, and we respected each other. It was painful to know that he had died.”
For Maradiaga and other prisoners, conditions began to improve toward the end of 2022. The food got better. Prison officials took pictures of the meals they were serving, as if to show the outside world. Why the improvement? Maradiaga has no doubt it was thanks to the prisoners’ advocates: his wife, Berta; Chamorro’s wife, Victoria; others. These advocates refused to let attention to the men in El Chipote fade.
Both Maradiaga and Chamorro were represented by Jared Genser, an exceptional figure: a human-rights lawyer who, pro bono, helps dissidents and political figures all over the world.
In El Chipote, February 9, 2023, started just like any other day. Soon, however, there was noise in the hallway, and the prisoners were made to change into civilian clothes. They were put on a bus, whose windows were closed and covered in black cloth. The prisoners were handcuffed and ordered to keep their head down.
Where were they going? Some speculated that they were going to be transferred to house arrest. Eventually, they arrived at the Managua airport. They saw before them a team of American diplomats — and then they knew.
The plane was a charter from Omni Air Transport. When it took off, the prisoners — now ex-prisoners — sang the national anthem. And prayed. The moment was “bittersweet,” says Maradiaga. Sweet, because they were out of prison. Bitter, because it would be some time before they were allowed to return to their homeland. (If ever?)
Note something about the national anthem: It is illegal to sing it in Nicaragua. It is also illegal to raise the national flag. Why? Because the dictatorship sees both the anthem and the flag as symbols of the opposition.
On the plane, a U.S. diplomat spoke over the public-address system. (She spoke in Spanish.) She said — in Maradiaga’s paraphrase — “We know that you have been through hard things. You are going to the United States. We are going to make it as soft a landing as possible for you. The American government is your friend, and we are here to support you.”
The emotion of this, we can only imagine. Says Maradiaga, “I cannot find the right words to describe that experience.”
Their plane landed at Dulles Airport, outside Washington. To see and hug his family was “surreal,” says Maradiaga, and “a miracle.” Other exiles were unluckier — for they had had to leave their families behind.
There was another blow, to all of them: On landing, they learned that the regime had stripped them of their citizenship. The regime regards them as traitors and mercenaries. The ex-prisoners regard themselves, of course, as Nicaraguan patriots, unlike the brutes who rule the country.
Félix Maradiaga spent a few days in Washington, meeting with American officials, including the secretary of state, Antony Blinken. He is very, very grateful to Americans — officials and ordinary citizens alike — “for opening their hearts and their arms to us.” He hastens to say, however, that the United States can’t take in every freedom fighter, and every democrat, in the world. There is a limit to American power and influence. “It is our job to fix our own countries.”
In Nicaragua, Ortega did something very cruel to Rolando Álvarez, a bishop of the Catholic Church. “My beloved friend,” says Maradiaga. Álvarez had been under house arrest. He was taken to the airport, to be exiled to the United States, with the 200-plus others. He refused to board the plane, saying he needed to talk with his fellow bishops first. This infuriated Ortega — the bishop was “out of his mind,” said the dictator — and Álvarez was promptly sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Ortega released the 222 because he felt he had to, Maradiaga emphasizes. But he showed, with Bishop Álvarez, that he is as vicious as ever.
About his own next steps, Maradiaga is thinking. “One thing I know is, I will never stop working for the freedom of my people. That’s my life commitment.” In the near term, he is getting reacquainted with his family. When he last saw Alejandra, she was six and unable to speak English. Now she chatters away in English, and Maradiaga has trouble steering her toward Spanish.
He is also reading — reading at last. What? The letters that his wife, daughter, and mother wrote to him, while he was in prison. Those letters could not be delivered to him. He is also reading the Bible.
When I talked last fall with Berta — Berta Valle, Félix’s wife — she said that one of her biggest challenges was “to keep hatred out of my heart.” Félix has the same challenge. “I want to make sure that my heart has no hard feelings,” he says. “We cannot work politically out of hatred. Hate is not a good incentive for political change.”
People who overthrow their oppressor, Maradiaga says, often wind up as oppressive as their enemies. “They become exactly what they hated.” He believes that this happened in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas replaced the Somozistas. And “I don’t want that to happen again.”
He says, “I dream of a better Nicaragua, even for those who put me in prison. I hold no resentment toward them. I hope that we can have a free and democratic Nicaragua, for the children of those who work in El Chipote and for everyone else. A Nicaragua in which we all fit, and where we can all live in tolerance, and under the same flag.”