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The “Via Crucis”, devotional representations of the Life, Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, are one of the most colorful popular expressions of Catholicism. The communities work collectively to elaborate careful details, including the uniforms of the Roman guards, the crown of thorns and the historical setting, as well as the selection of the neighbor who best represents the Son of God.
In Nicaragua this cultural and religious expression has a particular format, with stable theater groups that perform the “Judeas”, plays with dozens of actors that tour parishes, municipalities and squares throughout the country.
However, these citizen expressions of faith have been banned in Nicaragua since 2023 by orders of the government of co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo; 21 people were arrested for violating the restriction on engaging in religious activities, while the regime tried to impose on the digital conversation a distended version of summer tourism events, against the digital resistance that managed to position #AprilNoSeOlvida and #SOSNicaragua.
In 2025, this prohibition became more evident, when the celebration of Holy Week coincided with the seventh anniversary of the wave of anti-government protests that were violently repressed, with the joint work of paid police and paramilitaries, causing more than 300 people to be killed.
Then the religious persecution extended to the processions outside the churches and to remembering the names of the murdered people in the masses and even to the “Children’s Judeas”, which had to be held inside the schools, as published in X by the lawyer and author of the series of reports “Nicaragua, a persecuted church?”, Martha Patricia Molina.
La dictadura impidió que niños del preescolar Mariano Dubon de la ciudad de León, hicieran su tradicional Via Crucis previo a Semana Santa.
Los pequeños tuvieron que hacer la actividad en las instalaciones del centro educativo.#iglesiaperseguidani #Nicaragua#SOSNicaragua… pic.twitter.com/pr3vAwp8RZ
— Martha Patricia M (@mpatricia_m) April 11, 2025
To implement this new repressive wave, before Holy Week, the police took it upon themselves to monitor and harass priests, checking their phones and the text of sermons, warning that religious figures could not be taken out of the churches, nor give homilies critical of the government or talk about what happened 2n 2018.
A vow of silence, if they did not want to suffer the fate that Christ suffered when he was accused, imprisoned, martyred and finally crucified. Or in the case of Nicaragua, also exiled and even stripped of nationality for “treason” as was done to the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Alvarez, who was imprisoned, disqualified for life and stripped of his nationality when he refused to be exiled, which led to a broad support from the Nicaraguan society in social networks.
The voice of the people is the voice of God
Despite the religious veto, social organizations, activists and journalists in exile, managed to promote a digital campaign to recall the Nicaraguans’ request for justice and freedom, a digital clash that Probox was also able to document in April 2024 when the regime promoted a “Peace Law” that also tried to impose itself in the conversation of social networks, which was again countered by civil society using the recurring tags #AprilNoseOlvida and #SOSNicaragua.
This includes the voice of various priests, who from exile in the United States, paid tribute to the victims of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, in addition to raising their voices in a way that is not possible in the country, such as that of Father Nils Hernández, now priest of Waterloo Parish, Iowa and Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua and in exile since 2019 by order of Pope Francis, after the breaking of diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
Likewise, the testimonies of the victims go against the official version, recalling the abuses, outrages and viciousness of the shock groups that beat and harassed demonstrators, mistreated the bodies of murdered people and attempted to tarnish the reputation of those who peacefully opposed the authoritarian government’s reforms.
April Is Not Forgotten
ProBox conducted social listening research between March 24 and April 23, 2025 to track the digital conversation around the anniversary of the 2018 protests in Nicaragua and its coincidence with the Holy Week period.
Publications and mentions associated with keywords such as #AprilNoSeOlvida, #AbrilAzulYBlanco, #SOSNicaragua, #JóvenesDeAbril, “7 años de abril”, “Protestas abril 2018”, “Abril 2018”, “Semana Santa” were monitored, “Religious banished”, “Militarized churches”, “Religious repression”, “Protests churches”, “Control of processions”, “Holy Week confined”, “Repression in Nicaragua” and “Ortega regime”.
An increase in mentions in social networks was found from April 1, with a higher volume from April 11 to 18, when the peak of the conversation was recorded, with an abrupt drop the following day, showing the closing of the cycle of this digital manifestation.
Of the 3,367 mentions, more than half (53.6 %) were found on X, which was followed by 968 mentions on Facebook (28.8 %), with smaller numbers on Instagram and TikTok with 412 (12.2 %) and 184 mentions (5.5 %) respectively.
The campaign’s mentions include that of persecuted or censored media outlets such as La Prensa, whose editorial team was exiled to Costa Rica in 2021, and whose publication recalled photos of the demonstrations seven years ago on its Instagram account.
Other media in exile have made a critical coverage of the ban, such as Despacho 505, which interviewed the vice-president of the opposition party, Unión Democrática Renovadora (Unamos), Dulce María Porras, to exemplify religious and political repression:
“Just to give you an example, 91 priests have been expelled and prevented from entering the country, and apart from that, we have a certain number, a third of them are here in Costa Rica. So, the repression has escalated in a brutal way.”
The leaders of Unamos, a leftist party that changed its name to eliminate the word Sandinista in 2021 and part of the National Blue and White Unity (UNAB), a coalition of parties, organizations and social movements formed in 2018 to oppose the government of Daniel Ortega, were imprisoned and exiled, being stripped of their nationality upon leaving the country.
This unit was put into action during the period studied, in which we found that the wide diffusion in X media such as Canal 4 Nicaragua, Divergentes and 100% Noticias, was also accompanied by a series of videos and images with a similar aesthetic, and the use of the identified labels, by the NGOs FundaLibertadNi, AUN and AvanzaNic.
Sumate a Conmemorar el séptimo aniversario de la insurrección de abril, contaremos con la presencia del padre Benito Martinez el 26 de abril a la 1:00pm en la 2917 Kentucky ave Indianapolis Indiana 46221. #AbrilNoSeOlvida 🇳🇮✊🏻 pic.twitter.com/I480K1qM27
— AVANZA (@AvanzaNic) April 13, 2025
Several of the media also cited the Global Persecution Index, which documents the harassment of Christians in different countries around the world, in which Nicaragua scored 71 out of 100 points in 2025, for actions driven by what the report describes as “dictatorial paranoia.”
Likewise, the research found diverse expressions of digital citizenship and activism in X with accounts such as “Auto-Convocados”, Nica Clicy La Totolo, which through images and videos of other users, the use of commemorative tags and mentions to other relevant users in the social network, called attention to the discontent and the importance of historical memory.
Dictatorial normality
Media aligned with the ruling party in Nicaragua have focused their Easter Week coverage on the promotion of domestic tourism, omitting any mention of the 2018 protests and in an environment described as safe and festive, in line with the implementation of the Plan Verano Alegre y Seguro (Happy and Safe Summer Plan).
The publications highlighted the deployment of police forces and the support of institutions such as the White Cross, pointing out their role in preventing incidents. The high influx of visitors to tourist destinations was emphasized as an indicator of the success of the government’s security measures.
The similarity in the wording of many of the official messages disseminated suggests a possible coordination in the communication strategy. In several cases, different accounts shared the same content, even using the same photographs and texts, which reinforces the perception of a unified narrative aimed at projecting an image of normality and social welfare during the holiday.
These types of “twitter troops” have already been documented in a ProBox report, which found that these coordinated users of the Sandinista regime manage to triple the volume of opposition initiatives, sometimes positioning narratives alongside the governments of Venezuela and Cuba.
This digital espionage network was revealed in April 2025 by the United Nations Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua (GHREN), in which members of the National Police and the Army infiltrate and listen to citizens in neighborhoods, offices, schools and every virtual space.
From the outside, they remember and excite
With the massive expulsions of politicians, priests and activists, the voice of exiles is essential. The publications on Facebook of Alianza Cívica and Nicaragua Freedom Coalition stand out. This effort also highlights the work of Nicaraguan journalist Leana Astorga on Telemundo, covering the lives and struggles of exiles and political prisoners in her country.
An analysis of the conversation by platform found that civic organizations and social movements, such as AUN and Alianza Cívica, had a strong and strategic presence, especially on Twitter and Facebook, where they coordinated commemorative messages, denunciations and calls to action.
Meanwhile, independent media, such as 100% Noticias, Café con Voz, Divergentes, La Prensa and Confidencial, played a key role in the dissemination of information, being more active on Twitter and Instagram, adapting their content to the format and audience of each network.
In addition, activists and well-known opposition figures, such as Irlanda Jerez and Lesther Alemán, were also very active, mainly on Twitter and Facebook, reinforcing the emotional and testimonial component of the conversation.
Although in lower volume of mentions, TikTok highlighted the participation of individual users and young people, many of them without visible institutional affiliation, who appealed to more expressive and narrative formats to remember the events of April, which reflected a more decentralized citizen expression, although there were also accounts such as “fundacionlibertadnic” and “18-abr-18”, with usernames as part of the symbolic narrative, such as Abril_2018 in X, which also made 70 publications in this regard.
In a country where even processions have been confined and homilies censored, remembering becomes an act of resistance. The coincidence between Holy Week and the seventh anniversary of the April 2018 protests again exposed the regime’s efforts to erase milestones of citizen protest through religious censorship, systematic surveillance and the imposition of an official narrative. However, the digital conversation (driven from exile, by activists and online communities) evidences that collective memory is still active, articulating denunciations, reconstructing narratives and resisting oblivion.
In contexts where repression extends even to symbols of faith, digital citizenship reaffirms its role as a space to preserve history, demand justice and make human rights violations visible.
For more information on socio-political manipulation in networks and digital rights you can follow us through our social networks as @ProBoxVE.
