NicaNotes

April 9, 2026

By Becca Renk Foster

(Becca Renk Foster is originally from Idaho, USA. For 25 years, she has lived and worked in sustainable community development in Nicaragua. She coordinates the work of Casa Benjamín Linder in Managua and is part of the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.)

Holy Burial

“I don’t like the music,” my daughter whispers to me.

Suddenly, a cymbal crashes, followed by tuba and trombones droning a death dirge. I peer through the incense to make out the slow movement of men burdened by an impossibly heavy bier carrying the image of Christ crucified. It’s Good Friday, and we are watching the Holy Burial in the León Cathedral.

“You’re not supposed to like it,” I tell her. “Jesus is dead, this is his funeral. The music is meant to fill you with dread and sadness.”

In Nicaragua, a small country that has seen much suffering, Holy Week carries a special importance. Centuries of colonization and invasions, 50,000 killed by a cruel dictatorship, another 50,000 killed by U.S. proxy war, and generations of crippling poverty have all left their mark. In this context, commemorating the suffering of Jesus takes on great meaning for Nicaraguans, the majority of whom are Christians.

Although Nicaragua has endured terrible hardship, the country has survived and is even thriving. Today, access to free health care has extended life expectancy, free education has created new opportunities, the economy is growing and the country is at peace. Christ’s resurrection is a powerful symbol of hope, and this resilient country identifies strongly with it.

Perverse Accusations

Perhaps this is why the baseless accusations of religious repression made by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau have fallen flat here. On 31 March, Laudau posted on X:

“[O]nce again this year, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is denying Nicaraguans the right to profess their faith in this manner by banning such public processions. Nicaragua has historically hosted some of the most beautiful and famous processions in the region (for example in Granada and Leon) and I look forward to the day when our Nicaraguan friends reclaim their religious freedom.”

In response, the Nicaraguan government issued a statement denouncing Landau’s remarks as part of a politically motivated disinformation campaign encouraging hatred.

“These perverse accusations,” the statement continued, are “accusations that any human being, Nicaraguan or not, can also refute based on the realities of our country and our devoted, believing and faithful people.”

Anyone With Eyes to See

Nicaragua’s religious freedom was, indeed, hard to miss this week. As my family and I traveled around the country, the signs were everywhere.

While Protestants held raucous Pentecostal singing sessions, prayer meetings and revivals, Catholics held a procession for every occasion. On Palm Sunday in León, the image of Jesus in a cowboy hat rode atop a real mule; boats carried the faithful on the Aquatic Stations of the Cross in the Isletas of Granada; young men wrapped their heads in cloth for the Procession of Covered Faces in Ometepe; on Maundy Thursday farmers carried offerings of flowers, fruit, and chickens in Masaya and Diriá; and on Friday, parishioners held a graveyard service in Bilwi.

Overall, 4,139 religious activities were celebrated throughout Holy Week with the participation of one million Nicaraguans.

While addressing 150 priests gathered for the Chrism Mass in Managua on Maundy Thursday, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes commented on turnout among the faithful.

“The people, with complete generosity and freedom, have been able to come to their churches and are living out their faith, which I believe is the most important thing.”

Pharisees

Such plentiful evidence easily disproves Landau’s feeble attempt to discredit the Nicaraguan government with the international Christian community. These attacks are not new: since the failed U.S.-led coup attempt in 2018, frustrated coup mongers have tried to manufacture international outcry by trotting out allegations of religious persecution at regular intervals.

These accusations seem to be based exclusively on the work of one person, Martha Patricia Molina, who in 2022 published a report documenting alleged instances of persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.

This report, which largely cites Facebook posts and Molina herself as sources, is now re-published annually with a few dozen additional instances of “persecution” added by Molina from her self-exile in Texas. Notably, this report is usually the only “evidence” cited by international media to corroborate allegations of religious repression.

Why is this erroneous document so widely cited? One clue may lie in the fact that in 2024, Molina had the dubious honor of receiving the International Freedom of Religion Award from the U.S. State Department.

“As always, there are Pharisees who serve foreign interests,” reads the Nicaraguan government’s statement, “false ones who have never been true shepherds nor promoted values such as fraternity or the common good, which this complex world so desperately needs.”

Alfombras in Sutiaba

On Good Friday, my family and I spend several hours enjoying one of the supposedly “banned” activities in León, the traditional sawdust paintings. For decades, families have made elaborate “Passion Carpets” on the streets of the Sutiaba barrio in León.

I talk with 48-year-old Edwin Crespín as he works with his extended family on a sawdust image of Christ in the middle of the street.

“I’ve been doing this since I was 14,” Crespín tells me. “I will keep doing it because we cherish our traditions. I make the design and print it, then we color the sawdust using shoe leather dye, and create the image.”

Further up the street, the artist group “From Sutiaba for the World,” takes a different approach: their design uses corn kernels, sorghum, beans, rice and salt to create a moving image of the Passion of Jesus. The young artists enjoying a meal after making their street mosaic explain that their goal is to maintain their way of life and preserve their cultural identity.

Life is Worth Living

On Easter morning, the sun rises behind us, bathing the mango tree in the churchyard in an otherworldly orange light.

“Because He lives, all fear is gone,” the congregants sing, “and life is worth living just because He lives.”

My family and I are at a multi-lingual Easter service – Spanish, Creole English and Miskito – at the Moravian Church in Managua. All around us, we can see signs of resurrection in nature: tiny green leaves begin to bud on the dry trees, migrating birds build nests among them, mangoes begin to form, and storm clouds on the horizon bring the promise of rain.

After the service, the congregants share a communion breakfast of gallo pinto, hot chocolate and traditional fry bread, celebrating life together in the midst of all the difficulties in the world.

Essence of Christianity

Later, we join the St. Paul the Apostle Christian Base Community for the People’s Mass in the barrio 14 de septiembre.

After a Bible reading, three women around the circle stand and read aloud from folded papers.

“To the women of Iran, who walk their own way of the Cross and yet, continue celebrating life.

“To the women of Gaza, where the earth trembles with pain and even so, life opens a path among the ruins.

“To the women of Cuba, who keep homes and communities going in the midst of the blockade.”

These international references are nods to the practical solidarity this Community shows throughout the year. At the front of the church, a photo of a Palestinian mother in a keffiyeh cradling her dead son is in the place of a crucifix. The altar groans under donations of medicine and food that the Community has gathered throughout Lent for Cuba.

“We women of this earth, we are not a chapter in the history of empires,” continue the women. “We are the continuity of life that has survived when empires have fallen.”

These women, and indeed the whole country of Nicaragua, are the resurrection, bringing hope to the world.

Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Cardinal Brenes Speaks about Freedom during Holy Week:

On Holy Thursday, April 2, the Cardinal spoke to priests and bishops about the church and freedom in Nicaragua: “I have been sent some photos showing the turnout at your cathedrals, as well as at your parishes. And what do we see here? The great work of the priests, and that the people, with complete generosity and freedom, have been able to come to their churches and are living out their faith, which I believe is the most important thing…. When I visited the parishes and saw 200 or 300 people receiving Communion, I would ask the parish priests: ‘Did those people go to confession?’ ‘Of course! We spent four hours hearing confessions.’ So, I think the work of our priests and also the presence of our faithful, their trust in their priests and in the Church, has been truly wonderful. I believe that today we leave feeling very, very strengthened.” (El 19, 2 April 2026)

2026 National Vaccination Campaign Begins

The National Vaccination Campaign against 18 diseases begins on April 6 and ends on April 30. Co-President Rosario Murillo explained that vaccines will be administered against whooping cough, measles, polio, yellow fever, COVID-19, pneumonia, mumps, severe rotavirus diarrhea, hepatitis B, bacterial meningitis, diphtheria, and tetanus, among others. Vitamin A and deworming medication will also be provided for children.

[Editor’s note: The vaccination campaigns began in 1980 and were heralded worldwide because they reached a very high percentage of children. Polio and measles were wiped out and there hasn’t been a case of yellow fever in many years. In recent years a high percentage of adults get vaccinated against flu, pneumonia and, of course, Covid. Women always get tetanus boosters when they get pregnant. You can take your baby or child to the public hospitals of which there are about 80 for their vaccines anytime. But the vaccination campaign is extremely well-organized and available close to anyone’s home all over the country. It operates with health personnel and volunteers. I was a volunteer in San Juan de Limay in the 80s and went to the most distant villages with a doctor and nurse by horse carrying vaccines in small coolers. My son was born in 1988 and I was able to walk around the corner twice a year to get his appropriate vaccines. The campaign was one of the few good things that continued during the neoliberal governments from April 1990 to January 2007, but with much less money invested, fewer personnel and at times without all the vaccines they had in the 80s. Since 2007 the Sandinista government has added more vaccines and the population knows the importance of vaccines.] (La Primerisima Facebook Page, 6 April 2026)

Zero Slippage Rate Prevents Dollarization of the Economy

The Central Bank of Nicaragua’s decision to set the country’s exchange rate slippage rate at zero percent starting in 2024—and to maintain it throughout 2025—has proven to be one of the most successful measures for strengthening the use of the Córdoba and reducing the country’s financial dollarization, according to the BCN’s Annual Report. Following a gradual path that began in 2019—when the slippage rate fell from 5% to 3%, then to 2% in 2020, and to 1% in February 2023—the BCN established a zero-percent rate in August 2023 for all of 2024, a policy that was extended unchanged into 2025. This “zero depreciation” policy eliminated the expected depreciation of the exchange rate and generated greater exchange rate predictability in a context of solid macro-financial stability. The results are visible and quantifiable. At the end of 2025, deposits in Córdobas accounted for 34.5% of total deposits in the financial system, representing an increase of 5 percentage points compared to the end of 2019.  The effectiveness of the zero-slippage policy can be explained through several channels. By gradually easing the expected depreciation, incentives to dollarize portfolios were reduced and the mechanisms for indexing prices to the dollar—which had contributed to keeping dollarization high—were weakened. In 2025, there was also a decline in the dollarization of the loan portfolio and an increase in transactions in local currency within payment systems. For the BCN, “zero slippage” has not only strengthened the preference for the Córdoba but has also contributed to greater independence in domestic monetary policy by reducing the economy’s vulnerability to external shocks and changes in U.S. monetary policy. (Informe Pastran, 7 April 2026)

New Highways Have Broken 500 Years of Isolation in the Caribbean

In an interview on Canal 4’s En Vivo magazine, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Óscar Mojica highlighted the profound impact of the road and highway infrastructure promoted by the Sandinista government, led by Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. He emphasized that paved roads and highways are not the determining factor in development, but they do facilitate and contribute significantly to economic and social progress in all sectors of the country. “These projects have directly benefited 3.7 million people in Nicaragua’s 147 municipalities,” the minister noted. He explained that before 2007, approximately half of the national territory was isolated or had an unstable connection to the main highway network. Today, thanks to a “formidable and deeply penetrating” highway network, access has been improved to 800 health facilities (hospitals, health centers and posts, maternity homes, and mobile clinics) and to 5,038 educational centers at all levels, benefiting 739,765 students, teachers, and education system staff. The highways have facilitated the transport of materials for housing, electrification, water, and sanitation, in addition to improving access to workplaces, farms, and productive areas. They have also strengthened public safety, enabling a more efficient response from authorities even in remote areas, and have promoted sports and culture by facilitating youth participation in national and international events. Minister Mojica detailed the regional progress: In the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, paved highway mileage increased from 1 kilometer in 2006 to 396 kilometers, a 39,600% increase. On the South Caribbean Coast, it rose from 76 kilometers to 401 kilometers, a 528% increase. In total, the paved highway network in the Caribbean grew from 77 to 797 kilometers, a 935% increase. “This has put an end to 500 years of isolation in these regions,” he stated. Thanks to the new highways, travel time has been drastically reduced by up to 35–40%, the unpredictability of travel has been eliminated, and sovereignty, autonomy, and territorial integration have been strengthened, while respecting Indigenous and Afro-descendant cultures. (Informe Pastran, 7 April 2026)

Pearl Cays Emerging as an Important Tourist Destination

The Pearl Cays Archipelago of 18 cays is located about 30 km from Pearl Lagoon on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast. Little by little it is becoming one of the most sought-after destinations for 2026. With its crystal-clear waters and white sands, this hidden paradise offers an experience of total disconnection from the world and direct contact with nature; you can camp on your very own island, although there are some cays with hotels. The growing demand for destinations that combine exclusivity and unspoiled beauty has put this group of cays on the radar of domestic and foreign tourists. This paradise still does not receive high numbers of tourists because getting there is not easy. The influx of visitors is expected to continue, however, cementing Nicaragua’s autonomous regions’ position as a place for tranquility and environmental sustainability on Nicaragua’s tourism map. (Informe Pastran, 7 April 2026)