One January evening in Nicaragua’s capital, police officers showed up at José Alejandro Hurtado’s home. Their reason? A supposedly stolen rental car linked to his ID, and he needed to come to the station. That was the last time anyone saw him.
Hurtado, a 57-year-old computer systems engineer and veteran political activist, is just one of almost three dozen individuals human rights organizations report have ‘disappeared’ in Nicaragua. Authorities refuse to acknowledge their arrests or reveal their locations, leaving loved ones in agonizing uncertainty.
These forced disappearances are a grave breach of international law, echoing the dark history of brutal dictatorships across Latin America. In Nicaragua, this disturbing tactic has surged over the past two years, with most cases occurring very recently.
Alarmingly, nearly half of Nicaragua’s 73 officially documented political prisoners are absent from any public court records. Their families have been denied contact, and the charges against them remain a mystery. Relatives tirelessly search from prison to police station, only to be met with dead ends, according to human rights organizations.
This wave of arbitrary detentions, devoid of any legal transparency, represents a new, chilling strategy in Nicaragua’s ongoing political crackdown. Since 2018, co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have systematically quashed almost all opposition, cementing their authoritarian control.
Even after arresting and killing hundreds of protesters and forcing countless others into exile, Nicaragua’s government continues to invent new methods to silence dissent and instill fear throughout the population.
The greatest fears of these families are now being realized, as two of the disappeared prisoners were recently returned to their loved ones — deceased.
On August 25, the body of Mauricio A. Petri was handed over to his family. He had been arrested 38 days prior, swept up with his wife and son in a government crackdown targeting a specific church.
Authorities quickly summoned his relatives to a coroner’s office, then escorted them to a cemetery, denying them the chance for an autopsy, according to human rights advocates.
Just four days later, Carlos Cárdenas Cepeda, a lawyer for the Catholic church (also a government target), was returned to his family, dead after 15 days in detention. No official cause of death was provided for either man, and the government has remained silent.
These tragic deaths have deeply shaken the families of the other 33 disappeared, especially given that a dozen are over 60, many suffer from serious health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, and one elderly detainee is 81 years old.
Adolfo Hurtado, José Alejandro’s brother, recounted how police, arriving without warrants to arrest his brother and search their Managua home, vaguely suggested five different police stations where the family might find him.
For weeks, Hurtado’s wife and brothers endured endless bureaucratic hurdles and agonizing hours-long waits, visiting numerous police stations and prisons in a desperate search.
“Initially, two brothers and his wife visited three times a week for about a month and a half,” Adolfo Hurtado explained. “That pace was simply unsustainable for the family.”
Adolfo believes his brother became a target after publicly advocating for national dialogue and elections to resolve Nicaragua’s deep political crisis.
Nicaragua’s co-presidents, especially Ms. Murillo, appear determined to eliminate any independent voices from the political sphere, fearing they could challenge her power should Mr. Ortega, who turns 80 soon, pass away.
Ms. Murillo, 74, who also serves as the government’s spokesperson, did not reply to inquiries for this report.
The chilling practice of forced disappearances carries a profound and painful legacy in Latin America. The term ‘desaparecido’ became tragically iconic during Argentina’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, when up to 30,000 alleged dissidents were abducted, tortured, and in many cases, thrown from airplanes into the ocean.
Across Latin America, hundreds of thousands have vanished since the 1970s, often taken to secret detention centers for torture and execution, with many bodies never recovered.
While Argentina saw hundreds eventually face justice, countless cases of the disappeared remained unresolved, noted María Adela Antokoletz, leader of the Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared.
“We recognize that the detestable practice of enforced disappearance persists as a tool to silence dissent,” she stated.
Today, Mexico, El Salvador, and Colombia still experience such disappearances, although they are more frequently carried out by gangs or cartels, often with the implicit approval of local authorities, Ms. Antokoletz added.
International law unequivocally mandates that authorities inform family members if they detain someone, emphasized Barbara Frey, a retired University of Minnesota professor and co-editor of a book on modern Latin American disappearances.
“If the state detains someone and refuses to disclose their location to their family, that is, by definition, a disappearance,” Ms. Frey asserted.
Historically, ‘disappearance’ referred to individuals missing for extended periods. However, Reed Brody, a UN human rights expert on Nicaragua, noted that international bodies now increasingly apply the term to short-term secret detentions, such as those seen in Nicaragua.
Brody warned that the 33 documented cases in Nicaragua are likely an underestimation, as many families are too terrified to report to human rights groups. These families frequently face harassment, threats of arrest, or confiscation of their property if they continue searching for their missing relatives.
Among the disappeared are community and Indigenous leaders, teachers, journalists, and pastors. In at least five instances, entire families have been arrested. Many of these detentions occurred during a summer wave where over 50 individuals were simultaneously rounded up.
“It’s difficult to understand why some individuals are simply arrested, while others are made to disappear entirely,” Brody commented.
Angelica Chavarríahas vanished in May 2024, precisely the day her partner, Daniel Ortega’s brother Humberto, was placed under house arrest, human rights groups confirmed.
Humberto Ortega tragically passed away last year.
Thelma Brenes has her own theory about these disappearances. Her father, 70-year-old Carlos Brenes Sánchez, and his partner, 67-year-old Salvadora Martínez, were taken from their Jinotepe home (90 miles north of Managua) on August 14, according to Ms. Brenes.
“If individuals are being disappeared without any official record of their detention, how can we possibly prove the existence of political prisoners in Nicaragua?” she questioned. “There are no photos, no system entries. How can we prove it?”
Brenes, a retired military colonel and long-standing critic of Mr. Ortega, was previously arrested in 2018 for speaking against government abuses during mass protests. He was released a year later under an amnesty law.
His daughter stated that he had been faithfully adhering to his release terms, including regular police check-ins and remaining within the country, when he was abruptly arrested again without any stated reason.
“We just want proof that he’s alive,” Ms. Brenes pleaded.
Claudia Pineda, spokesperson for the Blue and White Monitoring Group (a human rights organization tracking politically motivated arrests), revealed that Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled legislature amended the penal code in 2021, allowing individuals to be held without charge for up to 90 days.
A habeas corpus motion could offer a lifeline for these missing detainees and their families, demanding their release. However, Salvador Marenco, a Nicaraguan human rights lawyer now in exile in Costa Rica, stated that the government has disbarred any lawyer courageous enough to take on such politically sensitive cases.
Nicaragua’s human rights organizations, including Marenco’s, have all been forcibly closed by the government; some have relocated to Costa Rica.
“Was there any chance to appeal? To present evidence? To have someone declare this person innocent?” Mr. Marenco lamented. “The answer, quite simply, is no.”
Defending someone against a ‘ghost case’ — one that officially doesn’t exist — is an impossible task, he concluded.