In 2018, when the Nicaraguan state responded with systematic repression to citizen protests, many of us women learned that resisting authoritarian power came at a higher cost than we had imagined.
The question was not whether to resist —that was never in doubt— but how to do so without turning life into a tribute.
Gene Sharp’s methods of nonviolent struggle, Hannah Arendt’s reflections on power, or Martha Nussbaum’s analyses of political emotions are one thing.
But when military intelligence is tracking you, the siege is real, and persecution becomes a daily occurrence —even beyond borders, and despite the sovereignty of countries of asylum— theory ceases to be abstract.
It becomes an urgent question that permeates daily life. When power snatches away the sacred and desecrates the most intimate, that question becomes persistent. How can we sustain life without giving up resistance?
Resistance is not a single scene or a homogeneous voice. It is not static. It is a plural field of situated decisions whose transversal condition is the defense of life.
Not all people face the same level of risk, nor do all geographies offer the same conditions of protection. Decisions are made from unequal times, bodies, and contexts.
As a teenager, I saw a feminist campaign on the streets of my country, Nicaragua, that invited people to break the silence on gender violence. I clearly remember two slogans: “Let’s break the silence” and “only your voice can stop it.”
They had a profound impact on me. They taught me that speaking out could be a form of defense, that naming could interrupt violence, that silence was not neutral. A cry could still be heard. It was resistance.
Today, in the midst of escalating repression that crosses borders, I returned to those slogans to look at them head-on. To rethink what it means to break the silence when caring for life becomes a political urgency.
Naming is not just an expressive gesture. It is a situated political practice. In authoritarian contexts, where violence seeks to capture not only bodies but also meaning, the shared word becomes a territory of moral and ideological dispute.
It is not only a matter of denouncing, but of eroding the narrative that sustains fear, exposing its inconsistencies, and restoring ethical density to what power seeks to naturalize. It is about building a common language that sustains resistance.
But words alone do not exhaust the struggle. For a long time, politics was associated almost exclusively with absolute visibility, being at the forefront, speaking without reservation, sustaining exposure as proof of commitment.
That tradition privileged visible heroism and sacrifice as a measure of legitimacy, relegating care and sustainability to the background.
But remaining, protecting oneself, reorganizing, and sustaining long-term processes are also political decisions. The struggle does not always move forward in a straight line. Sometimes resistance means holding on, waiting, or shifting the scene of action.
The responsibility for violence should never fall on those who resist, but on the structure that targets dissent. In contexts where criticism faces real risks, this statement is not rhetorical.
Examples abound. They have names, they have bodies, they have absences. Remembering this is not an emotional gesture. It is an ethical precision. No one should be made a sacrificial example to demonstrate political consistency.
Nor should the belonging of the dead be disputed or commitment be measured by “whose dead” they were. Every life taken is part of our common history, and every loss is a wound that cuts through our collective memory.
Of Dictatorships and Decent Citizens: Wir Haben Es Nicht Gewusst
Re-signifying resistance means dismantling that logic and affirming another political ethic. One that does not measure consistency by permanent exposure, but by the ability to sustain processes, protect life, and act with strategic responsibility.
Between today’s strategic resistance and that of the past, there is a wide range of possible decisions. Resistance is not a fixed scene. It is a movement that adapts, reorganizes, and reinvents itself according to conditions.
This discussion is not exclusive to Nicaragua. Wherever civic space is reduced and protest is criminalized, the question reappears: Resist, yes, but how?
Defending life is not giving up resistance. It is its condition.
Claudia Vargas M. is a feminist human rights defender exiled from Nicaragua. Spain granted her citizenship as a protective measure. Today, her voice denounces transnational repression and demands justice for the political assassination of her husband, Roberto Samcam.