As part of the “inhumane” plan of psychological torture to which the regime of Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, subjected old comrade Dora María Téllez, legendary guerrilla fighter and commander two of the Sandinistas, was the ban on telling the time. So she set up a system: she rested her head against one of the walls of her cell, number 1 in the male isolation gallery, where she spent a year and eight months in El Chipote prison, in Managua, one of the most notorious prisons in the country of Latin America, and looked up. So he tried to unravel the mysteries of “utterly dimmed” natural light “that wouldn’t show his hand properly” and slipped through the only ventilation into a windowless 6×4 meter hut, which he was not allowed to leave. “Now it must be 11,” they said, “it’s almost time to go to the bathroom.”
Only in this way could he organize his endless days until the arrival of another prisoner, Álex Hernández (500 Days in El Chipote’s Hell). “The boy was a genius when it came to telling the exact time,” she says. From his cell number 4 he saw “the sunlight entering the small corridor”. “I whispered to him, ‘Alex, what time is it?’ He replied, “10:15,” Téllez recalled this Friday in an interview with “One day, one of the guards, who was not allowed to wear a watch so as not to give us clues, entered the bathroom and took his own and secretly confirmed to me: ‘No I know how he does it: it’s 10:15!’
Tellez also wants accuracy in his 605 Days in Hell, so he takes the journalists’ notebook and pen and draws a map of the place where he spent his horrible imprisonment. “The cell was twenty-five feet high, punctuated by a concrete terrace,” she explains, sitting in the lobby of a hotel near Dulles International Airport with that elegant pose that only elicits resistance. Here the US State Department received the 222 political prisoners released this Thursday by the Ortega regime and his wife Rosario Murillo to be deported to Washington by chartered plane. A few hours later, as they flew to freedom, came the final retaliation: the National Assembly amended the constitution to strip them of Nicaraguan citizenship.
Among the exiles are journalists, politicians, business people, students and farmers, but the strongest symbol is undoubtedly Téllez. “Afternoons in El Chipote were the worst. Very difficult,” continues the former guerrilla fighter. At least in the morning they went in for sports: three hours a day: “strengthening quadriceps, basic karate routines …”. Every day he ran five miles in a circle, “80 laps, 50 feet per lap,” he says as he draws another graph. It became such an obsession that he eventually injured his foot.
Dora María Telléz in the days following the victory of the Sandinista Revolution. Margaret Montealegre
After all, it was the only possible distraction. A historian by trade, a “reader by necessity”, she was forbidden to read and write. He was also not allowed to have any books, papers or pencils. “We slept naked on a slippery mat on the cold floor. They didn’t give us towels, we dried ourselves by putting our clothes on them. There was constant psychological torture. I was never physically tortured, treatment by prison officers was kind and efficient; it is the inhumane treatment of the Ortega-Murillo regime. I calculated: out of about 1,440 minutes a day, he would only speak for one minute if you added up all the short conversations with the guards. Eventually I lost my voice, so I turned to soft singing to make up for that loss. The visitation regime is “another form of torture”. “At first I didn’t see anyone for three months, not even my lawyer. So two months, one month, 40 days; The way they organized it was very unpredictable.”
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Of course, all these prison measures are prohibited by international human rights treaties. “Although the scariest thing,” Téllez admits, “was the isolation. The women who were in El Chipote were all isolated. You, in another gallery, but Ana Margarita [Vijil]date [Dávila]suyen [Barahona] and I have always followed that regimen. Men were never kept like this for more than two months.” Why the difference? Questioned, Téllez makes the silent gesture of firing a pistol. “Special darling,” he jokes. “This is the deep hatred for the women of the Ortega-Murillo family.”
The discipline she acquired during her years as a guerrilla fighter, which earned her worldwide fame when Gabriel García Márquez immortalized it in his 1978 chronicle Assalto ao Palácio, about the legendary act of resistance against the Somoza dictatorship, helped her go to prison. Ali also helped him think about “everyday resistance.” “I knew I had to hold on, it was my way of beating Ortega every day. Every day I didn’t hurt myself mentally, every day I didn’t relieve myself in the cell. That he didn’t hang me. When I had interviews and interrogations, I told the police officers clearly and directly. This is to kill us mentally and emotionally. “And what do you want?” I asked her. “They are looking for me to hang me with sticks.”
Téllez lists below the list of health effects that solitary confinement can have. It’s a list based on their experiences: “Anxiety disorders, pervasive sleep disorders (although I like to fall asleep), bowel movements, eating disorders, skin problems, migraines, pigment disorders, tooth loss, vision loss, balance problems. Now I have to be careful, if I take a step aside, I may fall to the ground.”
One of the worst moments of his captivity occurred the night his former comrade-in-arms Commander One, retired General Hugo Torres, fell back into cell number six down the hall. “I heard the sound and looked through the bars; I saw the police move,” she recalls. “Someone ran. The cell was opened and a somewhat burly young policeman came out with Hugo. I realized it wasn’t fainting, it was something else: the left arm was lifeless…”, says Téllez. After a while, Torres was returned to his cell. Later he did not receive the necessary medical care in El Chipote and he relapsed again. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. It was a hard blow, Tellez says.
When she was told on Wednesday to hurry up and put on her blue prison uniform, at first she thought they might be preparing her for an interview. Then, as the hours passed, he became suspicious: “They took us out at 1:30 pm and by then I had already ruled out the rest of the reasons: they kicked us out of the country. I didn’t know if I was going to Mexico, Colombia or the United States.”
In Washington, he finally met his partner, who is also serving time. “On the day of the arrest, I had to laugh a little when I saw her come in [a los policías enviados a apresarlas]. They came with the AKs [por los fusiles de asalto AK-47], body armor, slamming doors, in combat position. We quietly wait for them there with our puppies. It was all a fantasy: the fantasy of those who are afraid. A cop pushed me, but no more force was used.
Once in the United States, he says he intends to continue the fight on that side of the world. “Ortega thought he would break us, but not a single prisoner begged for forgiveness. We all struggle. It’s time to reorganize and keep fighting. I will return to Nicaragua, I don’t know when, but I will return and regain all my freedoms. No one can take away my citizenship, which is my birthright, for a crime I did not commit,” he said.
For now he is content to read again. Sapiens Awaits You, an essay by Yuval Noah Hariri she wrote while in captivity. He is also preparing a book on “100 Years of Sexual Diversity by a Nicaraguan Historian and an American Social Scientist” and a return to 20th century history [el historiador marxista británico] Eric Hobsbawm”. Literature also helps him answer the question of what he thinks Ortega has changed since meeting him. “It’s an analysis I’m always asked and I’m hesitant to do it; relevant. You can expect Ortega in one of Stefan Zweig’s deeply psychological biographies: a biography like Fouche. They are very similar. Fouche was neither right nor left, on the contrary. A man of power, ruthless in essence. This is Ortega: a ruthless power animal.”
Another urgent task for Téllez, now that he has regained his freedom, is to “restore the dawn”, of which he was deprived for a year and eight months. It started this Friday. He awoke with the fear that “it was just a dream,” then marveled in his exiled hotel room as the sun rose on a glorious Virginia sunrise. The ones where “the sky is all orange”.
Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
