 So welcome to everyone. Thank you for coming for the special celebration. We're here today to celebrate the opening of the Chamorro Barrios Family Papers at the Latin American Library. And before introducing our invited speaker, Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, I would like to offer a few words of background on this donation. And to reflect a little bit on the significance of this particular collection, because I believe it teaches us something important about historical memory and about archives and libraries in general. The reason that Chamorro Barrios Family Papers are here in New Orleans and not in Managua is that they were in danger of confiscation and disappearance if they remained in Nicaragua. I say this with great sadness for many reasons, but not the least of which is that I am intimately familiar with several cultural institutions and courageous people in Nicaragua who have built great archives with the highest degree of professionalism there. They are all under threat of disappearing. Beginning in January of 2019, I worked closely with Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, the sister of Carlos Fernando, who represented her family in the process of donating the papers. He all felt a sense of urgency in protecting these documents as the political situation in Nicaragua became more complicated. Cristiana is not here today. I would like to think she would be here with us because she has been under house arrest since June of 2020 for the crime of running for president as an opposition candidate as is their sibling, her brother Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios. There has not been a moment in preparing for this event that they haven't been on my mind. And so I want you to hear in Cristiana's own words her thoughts on the collection and the family's donation. What I'm going to read is an excerpt from a short piece she wrote in January of 2021 when she was asked why this donation, why give this to Tulane. And these are some of Cristiana's words and I translated the translation of mine. History is not written in stump speeches, but based on facts preserved in the archives and papers of its protagonist that must be made available to new generations so that they can learn from the lessons and the mistakes they contain. In honor of the sacrifice of my parents, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardinal and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in gratitude for their lives and to honor their example of service and love of their country Nicaragua. The Chamorro Barrios family decided to donate all of their papers to Tulane University and the Latin American Library. We do this to share their political legacy with new generations and through this documentary collection to transmit their human, historical and political lessons in the service of democracy, peace and the economic and social development of Nicaragua. Our objective is to contribute to the recovery of the historical memory of Nicaragua. For academic researchers, the papers of Pedro and Violeta Chamorro offer a window directly into the key dilemmas of the country's development in the 20th century. At the same time, my parents' life stories help to construct historical, political and cultural reference points that may serve Nicaraguan youth and civil society who are in the process of constructing the future of our country. Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardinal, a journalist who was assassinated in January 1978 triumphed posthumously with the revolution that toppled the Somoza family dynasty in 1979 and later with the presidency of his widow Violeta Chamorro. My mother's Violeta's history continued. My father's prolonged struggle for democracy in Nicaragua. Under the spanner, she took on the cause to reconstruct the country and in the wake of a right-wing dictatorship and later when the Somoza project was replaced by a dictatorial left-wing regime, Violeta kept alive the struggle for freedom for all. In 1990, with a message of love and national reconciliation, she put an end to a devastating civil war and carried out a three-prong transition to democracy from war to peace, from totalitarianism to democracy and from a state run to a free market economy. Currently, in 2021, Nicaragua lives again a moment of polarization under increasing tyranny. In this context, both my parents' stories remind us of the central mantra of Pedro Joaquin. Nicaragua will once again be a republic. Each one of the documents in their personal archives, given to Tulane, are a reminder that democracy and basic human rights are not abstract concepts, but realities that demand constant human effort and the active engagement of men and women for their consolidation when they already exist or for their establishment when we don't enjoy the privilege of possessing them as has been the case in Nicaragua in some periods of its history. What a powerful lesson for us all. Within the context of Nicaragua past and present, Cristiana's words make clear that preserving collections like this one and making them available constitutes an act of resistance against erasures of memory and deference by some to rewrite history. In his book, Archive Fever, French philosopher Jacques D'Argo is even further, there is no political power without control of the archive if not of memory. Effective democratization can always be measured by access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation. Among the many histories, stories, and lessons they hold, the Chamorro Barrio's family papers remind us of the central role of archives in the construction of democratic societies where access to information is or should be a fundamental right. We may see the current state of things in Nicaragua as an extreme case, but in the U.S. we should take heed. Democracies are fragile and memories can be erased. I hope everyone gets a chance to see the exhibit that surrounds us because it provides a small glimpse of some of the documents in the Chamorro Barrio's family papers. It also provides a historical context in the timeline and it has other parts. Please take a program and walk through. Take your time and walk through after these words and I hope you bring your classes. I hope you as students come and learn and that this exhibit will be up for a while. For a while, yes. None of it would have been possible without the fantastic staff of the Latin American library, Cristina Hernandez, Veronica Sanchez, Aida Scholar, and Jesse Steffen. They deserve a heap of praise under some tough circumstances in the past few weeks. Thank you. I also thank our students who have worked behind the scenes for the past two and a half years to help us get the collection ready. Pablo Barra, Camilo Gonzales, and I see some of the faces here. Camilo Gonzales, Diego Matadamas, and Josh Sirota. Thank you as well. None of it would have been possible. Now, I would then like to introduce our main speaker. And it is my pleasure to introduce Nicaraguan journalist, Carlos Fernando Chamorro Parrios, who is with us today on behalf of his family for this inauguration. Carlos Fernando Chamorro is a leading voice for democracy and freedom of the press in Nicaragua and in Latin America. He is the founder and director and producer of the news website Confidencial, not El Confidencial. And two television, two former television programs Esta Semana and Esta Noche, which were broadcast in Nicaragua until they were shut down by the government in 2021 and are now broadcast on the web through YouTube. He is the recipient of several Distinguished International Awards, including the Award for Freedom of Speech in Latin America from Casa América Cataluña, Spain, 2009. And in 2010, the prestigious Maria Morse the Cabot Prize for journalism from the Columbia University School of Journalism. More recently, last year, he received the Distinguished Ortega y Gasset Prize for professional achievement in journalism by El País, Spain's most important news source and probably the most widely read news source in the Spanish-speaking world. He has held visiting fellowships at Stanford and taught as a visiting professor at the University of California. With other prominent international journalists, he currently serves on the advisory board of Fundación Gabriel García Marquez para un nuevo periodismo iberoamericano, founded by García Marquez, who also began as a journalist to promote ethical values and creativity among new generations of journalists in Latin America. His journalistic work includes news reports, investigative work, opinion pieces in leading journals in Europe and the Americas, interviews and documentaries, as well as several books and essays. Carlo Fernando Chamorro's news programs have emerged as influential sources for investigative reporting and analysis in opposition to the current regime in Nicaragua. For this reason, he has been forced into exile in Costa Rica, where he continues to speak out against repression. In this sense, and this is one of the other lessons in this collection, he carries on a family legacy of principled engagement and advocacy for human rights that serves as an example to us all. So I would like to thank Carlo Fernando Chamorro and to introduce him as our speaker. We will hear his words. Muy buenas noches a todos. Good evening. Many thanks to Dr. Ortencia Calvo, director of the Latin American Library at Tulane University, to her extraordinary team who have made possible this exhibit and the catalog of the Chamorro Barrio's family papers which is now open to the public. As Ortencia explained, this is a project that was initiated several years ago by my sister Cristiana, who should be here today at this inauguration, but she has been a political prisoner in Nicaragua for 525 days. My brother, Pedro Joaquín, and my first cousins Juan Sebastián Chamorro and Juan Lorenzo Holman Chamorro are also prisoners. Along with 220 other political prisoners, they have been condemned in mock trials to sentences ranging from 8 to 13 years in prison for the alleged crimes of conspiracy against national sovereignty, money laundering, and propagation of false information. All of them are innocent. Their only crime has been to demand free election to fulfill the aspirations for democracy and justice of a people who do not wish to live in a dictatorship. My only sister who is not in prison, Claudia, is in Nicaragua in charge of taking care of our mother's health. I am in exile in Costa Rica for the second time in three years to avoid imminent detention to preserve my freedom and to keep doing journalism. The fact that I am free to speak for all those who are silenced is thanks to the courage and the inspiration of my wife, Desiree, and my children who helped me to take to make the difficult decision to go into exile. Desiree and I are here together on behalf of our family to appreciate, distribute, and dedicate it to the legacy of four people. My grandfather, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro-Selaya, a professional historian and journalist, our parents, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro-Cardinal, journalist and anti-Somosista fighter, and my mother Violeta Barrio de Chamorro who fought by his side and continued his ideals after winning the presidency. And also to my brother-in-law Antonio Lacayo who was part of my mother's government and played a key role in the democratic transition. The family papers contain documents and letters covering history of the 19th century up to the end of the 20th century. It is a work in progress that can help us to draw lessons from the past, including its errors. Because Nicaragua's history repeats itself in an increasingly tragic way with dictatorships, political prisoners, and crimes that have enjoyed impunity. I first discovered the book Estirpe Sangrienta Los Somosa, which is here and probably in the bookshelves, written in 1957, whose original draft is included in the archives. I discovered it many years ago when I was a teenager, snooping through the shelves of my father's library. I knew that my father had been in prison, expatriated and exiled, but in our house he never spoke to us about his book, nor about the tortures that he and his companions suffered in the prisons during the days and nights of terror after the death of the dictator Anastacio Somosa Garcia. I read Estirpe Sangrienta in one sitting, overwhelmed with emotion. It was my personal secret, but later I found out that my sister Claudia did the same. My father's book had an enormous influence in several generations of Nicaraguans. I discovered in his testimony his Christian values and his strong commitment to the liberation of his country, to democracy and social justice. My father led by his own personal example at my mother with her love and generosity. Yesterday I spent six hours reading documents in the archives that I had never seen before. It will take probably more than six full days to read all the papers and much more than six months to study them as students, visitors and researchers at the Tulane Library will now have the opportunity to do. Among all the documents I read I was particularly moved by the exchange of letters between my parents while my father was a political prisoner of this Somosa dictatorship. I found the testimony of a love story which is also a story of pain, resilience, patriotism and hope with a touch of humor. When I was reading this small sample of the historical archives I was tormented by a present-day question. Why has Nicaragua after a revolution and a democratic transition returned in the 21st century to the same starting point with another family dictatorship that practices forms of cruelty and torture against political prisoners? Paraphrasing Mario Vargas Llosa's character, Savalita's famous question about Peru from his novel Conversación en la Catedral, one could ask, ¿Cuándo se jodió Nicaragua? And the short answer is that we are obliged to examine our history. In the last four decades, Nicaragua has had three great national opportunities for political change and democracy, 1979, 1990 and 2018. In all three moments, we had at the beginning a national and international coalition as a driving force for change. The assassination of my father, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, on January 10, 1978, fueled a national insurrection that led to the overthrow of the Somoza dynastic dictatorship in July 1979. The Sandinista Revolution unleashed new forces of social transformation with the promise of social justice, political pluralism and a mixed economy. It was successful in the first three years with major social accomplishments, but it was constrained by ideology and by the political radicalization of the Sandinista Front, the failure of economic policies of state nationalization and a bloody war, which was in fact a civil war with the peasantry as well as the war of foreign aggression financed and promoted by the Reagan administration in the United States. The national and international alliance that allowed the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship lasted only a short time, while the revolution itself lasted only ten years. The second opportunity was the democratic transition that started in 1990 after the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas by a coalition led by my mother Violeta Vario de Chamorro. Ironically, by accepting the electoral defeat, the Sandinista Front made a significant contribution to the democratic transition. So the so-called triple transition from war to peace from a centralized economy to a market economy and from a revolutionary political model to representative democracy established the basis of a new national consensus regarding the preeminence of democratic institutions. This led to making the army and the police nonpartisan to freedom of the press, free elections, accountability, an autonomous judicial system and the development of a market economy. Most of these changes were codified in the constitutional reforms of 1995, but in the long run, it was proven that democracy was not irreversible. In the process of building a democratic state, the state was always blurred, the lines in favor of the economic elites and the only changes that lasted permanently were the market reforms, even in these 15 years with the Ortega dictatorship. Between 1990 and 2006, we had three different democratic governments but a succession of failures allowed the resurgence of an authoritarian regime in 2007. We failed in the attempt to transform the Sandinista Front into a democratic left political party and it became a political machinery that ended up controlled by strong men and a new family dictatorship. The political parties which govern Nicaragua in those years failed to become democratic institutions and they became corrupt electoral machineries with no social roots in the majority of the poor or the small emerging middle classes. We went through economic modernization at the expense of the economic elites taking over the state and refusing to permit a fiscal reform. The result was a weak state disconnected from the people's needs, facilitating a system of cronism. Daniel Ortega's return to power in 2007 wasn't like Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa or Evo Morales who all came to power with the majority of the vote. Ortega came back into power as a result of the infamous pact with Arnoldo Alemán in the year 2000 that consolidated a sharing of control of the state by two major political parties. The pact also changed the rule regarding the percentage of votes needed to win the presidency in the first round from 45% to 35%. That combined with the fragmentation of the electorate facilitated Ortega's victory with 38% of the vote. During the second Ortega's government it was clear from the beginning, at least for some of us that there was a dictatorial intention to concentrate power starting from the top where Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo the presidential couple and gradually the presidential family substituted the Sandinista Front as a political party and imposed a personalistic regime a new family dictatorship. But the consolidation of Ortega and Murillo institutional dictatorship was only possible mostly because of three factors one the inability of the political elites to defend the vote during electoral frauds like in the municipal election of 2008 after his first unconstitutional re-election in 2011 Ortega consolidated a model of total control of the state subordinating the army and the police. This just passed Sunday in another electoral force Ortega wanted total control of 153 municipalities. Number two the multimillion in economic support that Ortega got from Hugo Chavez and his oil economy. The five billion dollars that were managed in a parallel non-accountable budget were instrumental not only to support state subsidies and the Sandinista Front as a political parties but also to create a private business empire run by the Ortega family. And third and most importantly the economic alliance with the business elites to take advantage of the economic and investment opportunities the alliance granted political legitimacy to the government at the expense of democracy and transparency the corporativist alliance between the dictatorship and the economic elites was a pillar for stability and governability it gave the country a stable rate of growth of an average of 4.5% with a very dynamic attraction of foreign investment it had an impact in the reduction of extreme poverty but it was insufficient to promote sustainable growth between 2011 and 2016 the government enjoyed popular support there was a combination of selective repression with clientelist policies that were in fact successful for a time so when Ortega was re-elected for the third time in 2016 with his wife Rosario Murillo as vice president and after he had eliminated the opposition nobody could have predicted the 2018 uprising on the contrary it looked as if Ortega would transfer power to his wife in 2021 thereby imposing a dynasty when the oil prices collapsed and Venezuela drastically reduced economic cooperation the government was under pressure to promote a fiscal reform and a pension reform this generated tensions with his business allies but the collapse of the model in 2018 was not caused by the economy but rather by political repression the civic protests originally started because of the pension reform but very rapidly after dozens of deaths it became a national rebellion demanding either the resignation of Ortega and Murillo or electoral reforms and early elections the April rebellion was initially led by university students and became a national civic insurrection with the participation of all sectors of national life it rejected armed struggle as a mean of political change and was focused on marches, building barricades, university campus takeovers and neighborhood organizing informers and in eastern strongholds during 100 days the uprising threatened the Ortega Murillo dictatorship power and for the first time in our history it prioritized the demand for justice and the fight against impunity on the national agenda but this movement lacked the kind of strategic leadership it needed to succeed during the time the national protests were strongest international political pressure was totally absent Ortega imposed brutal repression based on the control of the police, paramilitary forces, the co-optation of the army and the support of a strong minority of Sandinistas according to the International United Nations and OAS human rights organizations more than 325 people were assassinated, thousands were wounded more than 1,700 people were illegally detained and tens of thousands were forced into exile in September 2018 the government imposed a police state cancelling all democratic freedoms and although the police state was never suspended the pro-democracy movement accepted to participate in elections in 2021 without having any guarantee of free and fair elections would take place the broad opposition movement began a process to select a single unity presidential candidate to compete with Ortega in the November 2021 presidential elections the dictatorship decapitated this process through repression and by eliminating all possibilities of political competitions month before the election seven aspiring presidential candidates of the opposition Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Félix Maradiaga, Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Medardo Mairena, Miguel Mora and Noel Vidaure that represented the entire social and political spectrum of Nicaragua were imprisoned along with dozens of political and civic leaders including peasants, university students, business people, journalists, clergy and human rights defenders totaling today more than 220 political prisoners the political prisoners imprisoned in the infamous El Chipote jail have been subject to systematic isolation and torture over the more than 500 days they've been locked up their families have only been allowed to visit them 10 times for an average of one visit every 45 days today marks 74 days without a family visit four political prisoners have been on hunger strike for a month and a half demanding the end of solitary confinement the right to reading and writing materials and the right to visit from their young children for all of them during all this time four women political prisoners Doramaria Teyes, Tamara Davila, Ana Margarita Vigil and Suyem Baraona have been held in solitary confinement for 513 days internationally more than two months of solitary confinement is considered torture other political prisoners share six by seven foot cells where they are not allowed to communicate with each other none of the political prisoners are allowed to have access to reading materials a Bible, pen and paper or communication with any kind of their young children all of the political prisoners are receiving insufficient quantities of food and show signs of malnutrition they have all lost between 20 and 50 pounds causing them severe physical and mental health problems torture and punishment practices include keeping the lights on day and night or keeping them in total darkness for weeks political prisoners also lack access to timely and specialized medical care which is producing the aggravation of chronic illness on February 11 this year former Sandinista guerrilla commander and retired Brigadier General Hugo Torres died in police custody Hugo Torres had spent the previous eight months as a political prisoner enduring conditions of torture in El Chipote jail so the families of these prisoners have denounced a systematic policy of torture directed at breaking down their bodies and minds they fear for the lives of their family members and have sent an SOS to the people of Nicaragua and the international community not to accept the normalization of torture and dictatorship yesterday when I read the prison correspondence between my father and mother in the historical archives and my father's testimony about his own hunger strike in 1959 with fellow prisoners Reynaldo Antonio Tefel and Ronald Alavanza to reject the accusation of traición a la patria I couldn't help but think about our current challenges the political prisoners in jail today symbolize national dignity and the hope for democratic change Daniel Ortega has tried to erase them from national memory but he has not been able to produce a single confession or admission of guilt for the alleged crimes that he accuses them of their convictions and sentences have not silenced the demand for their freedom just the opposite by punishing them the regime has given greater force to the national and international demands for their unconditional release one year after Ortega's re-election in 2021 without any kind of political competition a process of radicalization of repressive tactics have been imposed in Nicaragua with an increasingly totalitarian dictatorship the persecution of the independent press has increased with the confiscation of la prensa and the criminalization of freedom of expression in addition to the closing of the electoral space the regime has closed all civic spaces with the shutting down of more than 2,600 non-governmental organizations and the persecution of the Catholic Church one bishop is under house arrest seven priests are in El Chipote prison the connections have been forbidden and a bishop and a dozen clergy are in exile the dictatorship has also closed down international dialogue expelling several diplomatic representatives from the European Union from the Netherlands and the Vatican while at the same time has consolidated its alignment with Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea the crisis in Nicaragua is also having regional implications with massive emigration to the US and to Costa Rica and it is having political repercussions for the future of the authoritarian governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala which are seeing themselves in the mirror of impunity in Nicaragua the regime is experiencing its lowest point of popular support ever and government workers are showing signs of unease still the dictatorship maintains full political and economic control of the state and all its repressive machinery influencing a totalitarian dictatorship requires a simultaneous increase in both national and international political pressure to push Ortega to suspend the conditions of torture against political prisoners that will be only a first step in the irreversible path toward the release of all political prisoners and the return of exiles a dictatorship like the Ortega-Murillo regime can survive international sanctions and continue to stay in power but it can't last even one month without the police state in the moment Nicaraguans recover their right to assembly and organization the power of the regime will be diminished because there is a large political majority that won't change through free and fair elections so although there are no prospects for a sustainable dictatorship the Ortega regime will last longer if it doesn't face stronger national and international pressure simultaneous civil resistance, national unity, internal crisis and international pressure could lead to political and electoral reform in the Chamorro Barrios family papers and especially in the papers of my mother Violeta de Chamorro there are also many lessons of hope for Nicaragua so many thanks to the Tulane Latin American Library for keeping the family papers safe and open to the public to be able to study them and to learn from the lessons of history as my father the journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro proclaimed when we recover our freedom Nicaragua volverá a ser república muchas gracias Thank you very much, Carlos Fernando for a very moving talk I would like to publicly thank the Chamorro Barrios family on behalf of Tulane University, on behalf of the Latin American Library for the honor of having these papers here which was a complete donation and the only restriction that they requested was that the papers be publicly available without restriction and so on behalf of all of us thank you and now we at Tulane have the responsibility of being stewards of this collection and in making sure that they will be instruments for teaching history there are lessons for all of us this is a copy of the catalog of the collection, the Finding Aid that is still a work in progress a bit but I thank you very much it's been a complete honor to have you here and to listen and I hope all of you now get a chance to actually are there any questions because the other thing we can do is simply enjoy the exhibit have the reception and speak with Carlos Fernando Chamorro in groups or together thank you very much