El Faro English translates Central America. Subscribe to our newsletter.
Last week marked two years since the illegal confiscation of the private Central American University (UCA) in Nicaragua, a crown jewel of Central American intellectual life. Co-dictators Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega, old student revolutionaries, have launched a full-throttle offensive for control of the university system, leaving no stone unturned as they rearrange regulators and purge and install loyalists in key positions.
In May, under the pretext of carrying out an “institutional reorganization”, Murillo and Ortega eliminated the National Council of Universities (CNU) and National Council for Evaluation and Accreditation (CNEA), higher public education regulators, and created a National Council of University Rectors (CNRU), composed of 12 rectors aligned with Sandinismo, all appointed without internal processes or transparent criteria.
Murillo also announced the appointment of FSLN party apparatchik Bismarck Santana as Specialized Technical Secretary, taking over CNU duties like the registry of degrees and titles. Ironically, before becoming a loyalist administrator, Santana became known for his involvement in 1995 student protests for the allocation of the constitutional six percent of the national budget for universities — a battle for autonomy and stability.
Although the Sandinista grip on higher education dates back to the 1990s, under the 2023 reform of the University Autonomy Law the executive branch imposed authority unprecedented in recent history. According to Confidencial, the regime then removed rectors, vice-rectors, and general secretaries from seven public universities.
Even the most loyal were not spared; for example, Ramona Rodríguez lasted as CNU president from 2021 until her precipitous removal in 2025, when she was demoted to a minor position at an entrepreneurial training center. As rector of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN), during the 2018 protests, she allowed paramilitaries and police to raid the campus, where they killed students. At the CNU, Rodríguez was key in the confiscation of over two-dozen private universities.
One, of course, is the Jesuit-run UCA, whose facilities were occupied by the regime on Aug. 15, 2023. The UCA played a high-profile role in the 2018 protests and gave shelter to students attacked by police. The regime branded the UCA as a “terrorist center” and converted its buildings into the Casimiro Sotelo National University, where the Sandinista flag flies above the campus — as at every university in Nicaragua today.
The confiscation was the capstone of a slow process of repression. According to Divergentes, which analyzed the budget allocated to UCA from 2015 to 2022, the university was gradually stripped of its constitutional budget allocation. Father José María Tojeira, spokesperson for the Society of Jesus in Nicaragua, estimated to Divergentes that the confiscation amounted to a theft of $60 million in assets. They are considering filing an international lawsuit against the State of Nicaragua.
The confiscation of the UCA barred more than 5,000 students from completing their university studies at the institution. Likewise, the regime dismissed 710 professionals, including 418 professors and 292 staff members. The dismantling of the institution also forced the exile of academic researchers and students who opposed the confiscation.
One academic researcher, who worked at UCA for 14 years, was forced into exile with his family due to political violence. Four days after the confiscation, he left for El Salvador, where he was welcomed by the local campus of the UCA, before moving on to Guatemala. “The confiscation of the UCA meant the closure of the last academic front for critical thinking in the country,” he told El Faro English, lamenting the dismantling of a system that supported more than 8,000 students.
For Yaritzha Mairena, a former student leader and political prisoner now exiled in Costa Rica, the UNAN —on the public side— was one of the first institutions the Ortega-Murillo regime targeted. “Public universities are the heart of critical thinking and the formation of a nation’s future,” she adds. In 2018, Mairena was one of the students who was barricaded inside the UNAN during a paramilitary attack. She was imprisoned for over a year and expelled along with more than 140 students.
Central American Conservatives Look to Curb LGBTQ+ Education, Health
The persecution of students does not stop even in exile: According to a report by Confidencial, most of those expelled had their academic records erased or denied and, to this day, there are no definitive counts of how many were able to resume their studies either inside or outside the country. One study revealed that 95 percent of Nicaraguan students were displaced to Costa Rica, the United States, Romania, Spain, and the Netherlands, yet still faced the denial of academic documents.
Four sources interviewed by El Faro English agreed that university autonomy no longer exists in Nicaragua. Now, decades after Nicaragua became the last country in Central America to secure it, former political prisoner Juan Sebastián Chamorro asserts that Ortega has destroyed objective and quality education, viewing universities as “centers of resistance, protest, and thought” — an intrinsic threat.
“If studying in Nicaragua means sitting at a desk inside a classroom, then yes, it’s still possible to do that,” says Chamorro, an economist, former presidential candidate, and visiting fellow at Notre Dame. “But what really matters is the quality of education, and that has deteriorated.”
Never-ending siege in Guatemala
It says much about the reality facing university activists in Central America that, while some Nicaraguans take refuge in Guatemalan universities, Guatemala is expelling and trying to imprison students of its own.
In Guatemala, the turning point was the occupation of the facilities of the public University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC) in May 2022, lasting nearly 400 days, in reaction to the fraudulent election of rector Walter Mazariegos —a political ally to President Alejandro Giammattei— in which dissident voters were barred from casting ballots. University activists have even called Mazariegos a “narco-rector”, and he is up for reelection next year, without guarantees of a clean process.
Stemming from the occupation of the USAC, the office of Attorney General Consuelo Porras has accused dozens of students, professors, and other employees of crimes including destruction of cultural property, illicit association, and influence peddling. In November 2023, prosecutors carried out 33 raids and issued 27 arrest warrants, which included the former Human Rights Ombudsman, Jordán Rodas, who this week announced he has been in exile for three years.
The charges, which continued to grow against more students, were so brazen that the Public Prosecutor’s Office accused President-elect Bernardo Arévalo and Vice President Karin Herrera in 2023 of “damaging the national patrimony” for having tweeted in support of the students on the campaign trail — in yet another attempt to illegally prevent the duo from taking office.
Just this May, the Superior University Council of the USAC expelled 10 university students recognized for their academic excellence who had participated in the protests against Mazariegos.
Currently, the USAC case includes a total of 14 people, comprising students, academics, and union members. The hearings for both cases have only just reached the intermediate stage due to recurring suspensions. This month, on August 27, the second group of defendants is expected to move forward to the intermediate stage.
What may seem like an internal university struggle touches the highest echelons of Guatemalan politics: the USAC is the only university in the country that takes part in decision-making within more than 60 State institutions holds the power to propose legislation, and every five years chooses one of the five magistrates on the Constitutional Court, the most powerful tribunal in the country.
Allegations of corruption within the USAC rectory are far from new. The election of Mazariegos, who for years had worked as Dean of the Humanities, came after the arrest of former rectors Murphy Paiz and Estuardo Gálvez in February 2021 on charges of illicit association, influence peddling, and violations of the constitution.
But the election of Mazariegos reached new heights: While the police and other shock groups blocked the majority of voters opposing Mazariegos from entering, the CSU failed to meet quorum. Mazariegos’ opponents also argued that he had only three years of teaching experience, despite regulations stating that the rectory requires five.
“This is the most blatant case of a violation of university autonomy. A court intervened even though the university’s own regulations clearly stated why the election should not be held,” said former USAC student leader Andrés García, who was expelled from the university and now is an aide for the ruling party Semilla’s legislative bloc. “Starting to recover the university means starting to recover the country for us,” he adds.
“Academia is the new political battlefield in Central America”
Human rights defender Iduvina Hernández sees Mazariegos’ election as a sign of USAC’s decline after playing a key role in resisting authoritarianism. She says exile, forced disappearance, and the murder of university activists during the 36-year armed conflict were the prelude to the fraud and criminalization that has once again called into question the autonomy of the country’s only public university.
“There is a clear absence of respect for university regulations and the rule of law that governs academic life — principles that uphold autonomy and have, in the past, allowed the university to be a leading force in national affairs,” says Hernández.
Fear of a Nicaragua repeat
In El Salvador, the university crisis is still far from the heights of financial asphyxiation and intimidation in Nicaragua. Nayib Bukele has not succeeded at submitting academia to his control: While much of civil society and the press face systematic police harassment or exile, the UCA remains one of the scarce few voices to criticize the Bukele regime in the open — and, crucially, inside the country.
But that does not mean El Salvador’s top university is immune to the fear percolating across civil society. Two sources close to the UCA —who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals— agreed that the community is afraid of facing persecution similar to the UCA in Nicaragua. The Bukele-controlled Assembly tried, without evidence, to shake down the university by summoning them to a committee hearing in 2022 on “façade NGOs” who embezzled money from past governments.
The approval in May of a Nicaragua-style Foreign Agents Law has put even the public University of El Salvador (UES) —and other higher learning institutions, for that matter— on edge. In an interview with El Faro English in late June, rector Juan Rosa Quintanilla admitted that he was unsure how the Foreign Agents Law will affect the university, but the UES University Council has expressed concern.
During his 2018 presidential campaign, Bukele promised to reinvigorate support for the UES. Since then, he has racked up considerable debt with the university, up to$29.8 million dollars this February, which in recent years stymied basic services, research, and contracts — even while the government was repeatedly allowed to host events at the university facilities, such as facilities for the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, the UES relied heavily on international donations to stay afloat.
Quintanilla reported at the time of the interview that the government by then owed a far reduced $1.981 million. “There is concern among international donors about how this [Foreign Agents Law] will impact their ability to support the university. I honestly don’t know the full contents of the law,” claimed Rosa Quintanilla. ”We cannot dismantle everything we put in place to sustain university life during the financial crisis, as the scenario of lacking a budget could happen again.”
The decade between the 1940s and 1950s was pivotal for student movements across Central America, as they threw themselves into the struggle for university autonomy in higher education institutions. As the region faces a return of authoritarianism, Salvadoran historian Héctor Lindo says one of the constants of these governments is hostility toward higher education. Students who think independently are a nuisance.
Like Lindo, human rights advocate Iduvina Hernández also emphasizes that the critical thinking fostered in these institutions is fundamental to the protection of freedoms, rights, and the fight against abuse of power. “As long as dictators feel threatened by critical thinking, they will limit the autonomy of these institutions in order to ensure that free and critical thought does not exist,” warns Hernández.
This article first appeared in the August 26 dispatch of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.