Exiled Nicaraguan activist: 'People here could make connections between global issues'

Nicaragua has been home to a severe political and social crisis since April 2018 when demonstrations against pension reform were violently suppressed by Daniel Ortega's government, although there had already been years of protests against the construction of a Chinese-financed interoceanic canal and its negative environmental impacts.

Crackdown on demonstrators lead to over 300 dead as well as many 'disappeared', with many others internally displaced. Some 60,000 Nicaraguans ended up leaving the country, the vast majority of whom sought refuge in Costa Rica. 

"I had to flee because I feared for my life and the work we were doing. All of my colleagues are also in exile in different countries," says Magaly Castillo, a human rights activist who has been living in Barcelona since June 2018 and is a member of the Feministas Autoconvocadas collective of Nicaraguan and Catalan feminists.

But not only has Nicaragua been home to unrest sparked by the 2018 pension reform, it is also a country in which, since 2006, abortion is illegal under all circumstances and where violence against women and girls is widespread.

Castillo, who is also an actor and who participated in the Fall 2019 edition of the 'Cities defending human rights' project, explains some of the issues affecting women in the Central American country: "Women who suffer from gender-based violence do not have access [to standardized public assistance], those needs are covered by the feminist movement."

Although many of these problems pre-dated 2018's events, Castillo argues that they have gotten worse.