By John McPhaul
Tininiska Rivera (Miskitu), daughter of the late Nicaraguan Miskitu Indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera (73), said she feels a mixture of grief over the death in captivity of her father and anger at the way he was treated and ultimately buried in an "express" burial without the participation of his family.
"They kidnapped him two times, once in 2023, and they kidnapped his body when he died," said Rivera, the eldest of four children of the Indigenous YATAMA party leader. She said it was Brooklyn Rivera's wish to be buried in the town of Sandy Bay on the Caribbean Coast, next to the tomb of his mother, Pulcida, with a traditional Miskitu ceremony.
Instead, the authoritarian government of Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo took Rivera's body from the hospital and, with little fanfare, buried his remains in a nearby cemetery. The government last week released images of an emaciated Rivera, clearly agonizing and attached to life support, following an international outcry of governments and human rights groups demanding to know the state of Rivera's health. "He was perfectly healthy when they kidnapped him," said Tininiska Rivera.
Instead of allowing an aunt, a cousin and his wife, a female cousin, a niece, and a friend of the family to recover Brooklyn Rivera's remains after he passed on May 30, the Sandinista government detained the group. "They are going to fabricate some kind of charge against them," said Rivera.
The government announced his death on May 31, claiming their "brother" died of medical complications following an infection of COVID-19. "That's the dirtiest thing a government official could have said, to call him 'brother.' Only his people, the people whom he fought and struggled for all his life, have the right to call him ‘brother,’” she stated.
Brooklyn Rivera’s family and human-rights groups and governments such as the US and the European Union have called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance and death, according to press reports.
As for YATAMA, Brooklyn' Rivera’s political party, which he formed in the 1980s during the Miskitu struggle for autonomy with the Sandinistas, the government has revoked its official standing, so it has no way to represent the Caribbean Coast Miskitu population of around 150,000. "To replace my father, we have to convene an assembly to represent the 400 communities in the region, but with the government having occupied the entire area with soldiers, that would be impossible," said Tininiska Rivera. The majority of the YATAMA members have gone underground for fear of being kidnapped like Brooklyn Rivera was.
The United States State Department and other countries, as well as non-governmental Human Rights groups, issued statements holding the Nicaraguan government responsible for the kidnapping and physical deterioration of Rivers during his year and a half of captivity.
Tininiska said she would continue to press international forums for justice for her father through judgments from both Nicaraguan and international courts of justice. "I'm going to go ahead and continue to try to get justice for him," said Tininiska Rivera. She said she plans to hold a religious service for her father in the country where she lives in exile.
The Miskitu are the largest indigenous group on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast and are concentrated in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas), the Rio Coco (Wangki) region, and other coastal and river communities. Broojlyn Rivera led Miskitu guerrillas in a successful resistance against Sandinista government attacks in the 1980s, culminating in the Central American Peace Accords on Aug. 7, 1987. In 1988, he and fellow Miskitu leader Steadman Fagoth formed the political party YATAMA and served in the Violeta Chamorro administration as minister of autonomous development in Nicaragua. Fagoth has also been detained by the Sandinista government.
When Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) returned to power in 2007, Rivera served as a YATAMA representative in the National Assembly a post he held until April of 2023 when he went before the United Nations and condemned the government for failing to protect the Miskitu from the so-called colonos,, settlers from the Pacific Coast who have systematically taken Miskitu land for farming and lumbering, and for allowing foreign interests, mainly Chinese, into the land for mining. He returned to Nicaragua in September of 2023 and was promptly jailed by the Ortega-Murrillo regime.
The following month, on October 4, 2023, the country's Supreme Electoral Council revoked YATAMA's formal standing and banned the political party. Party members were driven into hiding or into exile while Rivera's family members fruitlessly demanded proof that Rivera was alive.
--John McPhaul is a Costa Rican-American writer
