Nicaragua is sometimes called the “tropical North Korea.” Even by the standards of Latin American autocracies, tension reigns in Managua, the capital. Any political conversation is silenced for fear of informants lurking nearby.
Television channels broadcast propaganda, religion, or bland entertainment. Religious sermons are hollow. Garbage piles up in the streets, the smell of burning in the air.
“This ship sinks deeper every year because there are no changes, only the regime’s twisted ideas,” says one resident. In 2025, the United Nations estimated that nearly a fifth of Nicaragua’s population suffered from hunger. The regime expelled UN representatives in response.
Some 800,000 Nicaraguans have left the country since 2019, according to Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, representing more than 10% of the nation’s 7 million inhabitants. In 2023, the government began stripping critics of their citizenship and confiscating their property. Some emigrants find they cannot return or renew their passports. “Their entire lives are systematically dismantled,” a UN report states. Even outside the country, Nicaraguans are not safe. In June, Roberto Samcam, a retired army major and outspoken critic, was shot dead in his home in San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Several NGOs have linked his murder to the Ortega regime. “They came to our doorstep; repression knows no borders,” says Claudia Vargas, his widow. At least six other people have suffered a similar fate since 2018.
