MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Twice a week, locals gather at a gas station on the western outskirts of Nicaragua’s capital, showing the telltale signs of people on their way: fully loaded backpacks, plastic-bagged clothing and toiletries, and heavy coats in preparation for a chilly journey away from the suffocating heat.
Nurses, doctors, students, children, farmers and many other Nicaraguans tearfully bid farewell as they wait for private charter buses to begin the first leg of a 1,800-mile journey. Final destination: the United States.
For generations, Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti, saw only a small portion of its population migrate north. But rising inflation, falling wages and the erosion of democracy under an increasingly authoritarian government have dramatically changed the calculus.
Now, for the first time in Nicaragua’s history, the small country of 6.5 million people is a major contributor to the masses of people moving to the southern US border, displaced by violence, repression and poverty.
While the focus this year has been on the record numbers of Venezuelans and Cubans pouring into the United States, this lesser-known but remarkable wave of Nicaraguans is also contributing greatly to the migration crisis, sending money back to their families and, inadvertently, , , providing an economic lifeline to a government under United States sanctions.
More than 180,000 Nicaraguans crossed into the United States through the end of November this year — about 60 times as many as those who entered during the same period two years earlier, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Tatiana González Chacón, 23, a baker, left the Bluefields region of eastern Nicaragua for Phoenix last month because her father, the leader of an opposition party who saw her charter revoked, was charged with terrorism and forced to flee to Costa Rica .
Nicaragua used to be “an enviable country, a place where people wanted to go,” she said. ‘Now it’s a place where their own people want to go out. Crossing that river to the United States is like breathing a different air.”
Earlier this month, at a bus stop in Managua, the capital, a mother of three who did not wish to be named made the journey. The trip cost her $2,000, and she was still in debt to a smuggler for an earlier failed attempt to reach the United States. Four brothers who recently inherited a farm whose seed and fertilizer costs have quadrupled, also boarded a bus heading north.
This year, the number of arrests of undocumented migrants along the southern US border passed two million in one year for the first time.
The Biden administration expects arrivals to rise even more if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to overturn a public health measure known as Title 42, which allows the return of migrants arriving at the border. (Nicaraguans are largely exempt from Title 42, because the country doesn’t allow deportation flights and Mexico has refused to accept them.)
Last month alone, more than 34,000 Nicaraguans turned themselves in to US immigration authorities – up from just over 1,000 for the entire year five years ago.
During the country’s civil war in the 1980s, about 200,000 Nicaraguans left – for the entire decade.
Another significant influx of Nicaraguans has also entered Costa Rica and, combined with those moving north, has caused about 10 percent of Nicaragua’s population to leave over the past four years, reflecting widespread lack of confidence in the administration of President Daniel Ortega.
For decades, migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were the dominant groups arriving at the US border. Nicaragua’s government leaders often boasted that Nicaraguans felt relatively safe without the powerful gangs terrorizing surrounding countries and not having to flee.
The dynamics began to shift in 2018. Mr Ortega, a former left-wing revolutionary who led the nation during the civil war in the 1980s, won the presidency in 2006 after amendments to the constitution allowed candidates to win without an absolute majority of votes . .
He has since been re-elected three times, including last year, in a vote that much of the international community and many rights groups considered a sham because of the anti-democratic actions of Mr Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who is his deputy president.
The ruling couple has made institutional changes and signed deals with opponents that give them control over the Supreme Court, the Election Commission and the National Assembly. They have bought television stations and made them more sympathetic to the government while taking their critics off the air.
In 2018, protests erupted over changes to social security rules that made workers pay more and retirees receive less. But the demonstrations turned into massive anti-government uprisings across the country that lasted for months and resulted in hundreds of deaths.
The government’s response was brutal. Enraged by roadblocks set up by protesters across Nicaragua, the government jailed opposition leaders and shut down political parties and civil society groups. Many political activists and journalists fled.
The exodus slowed during the pandemic, but resumed last year after Mr Ortega stepped up his repression, closing research institutes, shutting down human rights organizations and arresting not only his political opponents but also their families on trumped-up charges, including plotting a coup. .
Before last year’s election, Mr Ortega jailed seven presidential candidates and banned several opposition parties from participating. President Biden called the election “neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic”.
A spokeswoman for the Nicaraguan government did not return several messages seeking comment.
“You eliminate the media, eliminate political parties, eliminate universities. Why do you think people leave?” said Manuel Orozco, a Nicaraguan analyst with Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research institute.
Elvira Cuadra, a Nicaraguan sociologist, fled to Costa Rica four years ago after the government raided her political science institute and revoked its legal status.
“These are really not the usual economic migrants,” she said. “This is forced displacement.”
Since 2018, 154,000 Nicaraguans have applied for asylum in Costa Rica, where the government recently announced changes to its asylum policy to curb their arrival. Refugees must now apply for asylum within a month of arriving in the country, will no longer be granted an accelerated work permit and will not be allowed to leave Costa Rica while their application is being processed.
At the current rate, it will take Costa Rica 10 years to process all asylum applications, said Marlen Luna, the director general of Costa Rica’s immigration service.
“This Nicaraguan immigration is historic,” she said. “This problem has no short-term solution. It’s not a wave. It’s not a fad. This is permanent.”
Many Nicaraguans are also leaving because of increasing economic hardship under Mr. Ortega’s rule.
While figures from the International Monetary Fund show that about 25 percent of Nicaraguans live in poverty, analysts say the true rate is likely much higher, as about two-thirds of the country lives on about $120 a month.
“The only way you can find a job that allows you to earn an amount that is not very good, but which is more comfortable, is if you are connected to the government,” says Víctor Hernández, 29, who left the city of León in October and is living in Nashville and doing odd jobs. “I bought a small piece of land five years ago to build a house, and I haven’t been able to buy a single brick.”
Mr. Hernández worked in Nicaragua as a restaurant manager before being unemployed for a year. He finally found a new job in a restaurant and earned $250 a month, but it was not enough to support his two children, even though his wife also worked. He decided to leave his family behind, hoping to return in a few years.
“The situation in Nicaragua is too ugly,” Hernández said.
The money that people like Mr. Hernández send home helps support Mr. Ortega’s government, which is under US sanctions against people and companies associated with the government. Nicaraguans sent home $3 billion by 2022, Mr Orozco said, remitting 17 percent of the country’s tax revenue.
“It’s a paradox,” said Alberto Cortés, a professor at the University of Costa Rica. “They have differences with the regime, so by leaving they are helping to maintain the regime. The government is happy with the departure of all these people.”
In a speech in October, Mr. Ortega blamed the US government for the spike in migration.
“It’s the country that has imposed the most sanctions and thus caused the most damage and more crisis, and then they complain” about immigrants, Mr Ortega said.
Across Nicaragua, however, Mr Ortega’s criticisms of the United States mean little as people lose faith that the grim political and economic picture will soon improve.
Hazel Martínez Hernández, 21, and her brother Julmer, 19, saw their father look much older than his 51 years when he rented a piece of land to grow vegetables and worked as a security guard. They wanted something better for themselves. The family took months to borrow $8,000 to pay a smuggler for the siblings’ journey from Santa Rosa, a border town near Honduras.
The family had to come up with another $10,000 ransom when the siblings were kidnapped in Mexico.
Ms. Hernández, a college graduate, and her brother, once a farmer, now rent an apartment in California and don’t work.
“We have seen people who have left sending money to build houses, and some have returned and opened businesses, bought land and improved their lives,” says their sister, Jahoska, whose partner left last year and sent her money.
“So they want to do the same thing,” she added.
Alfonso Flores Bermudez reported from Managua, Nicaragua and Frances Robles from Miami, Fla.