Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha Cranshaw: feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha Cranshaw: feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha Isabel Cranshaw passed away just days before her 65th birthday. Despite battling a painful illness, she remained loyal to her ideals and convictions, refusing to let her condition break her spirit. In this profile, DIVERGENTES revisits her legacy of fighting for a fair and just Nicaragua, and the betrayal and confiscation she endured at the hands of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s dictatorship—despite her background as a guerrilla fighter and her unwavering commitment to the cause of migrant rights.

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Dear Martha Isabel, In my septuagenarian memory, I still glimpse, as if peeking through a wide window, the image of a beautiful young woman, brimming with courage and conviction, galloping under the scorching sun through the dusty streets of León, back in the 1970s. Your simple clothes, always matching your solidarity with the poor, is a recurrent memory. Almost always in cotton shirts, frayed pants, and leather-strapped sandals, a testament to your rejection of class privileges and your Christian commitment that inspired so many of your generation. What stands out most in my memory is the spark of the message: The Revolution! A sociopolitical transformation was needed to bring down a dictatorial and dynastic regime that had gripped Nicaragua for almost half a century through persecution, death sentences, imprisonment, and terror. And even so, you risked your youth, full of dreams and hopes for a Nicaragua freed from a venomous beast…

From my memories, Oh Dear Soul!

Excerpt from a poem by Thelma Uriarte Narváez dedicated to Martha Isabel Cranshaw
By Divergentes
San José, Costa Rica
Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Martha Isabel Cranshaw defined herself as a “feminist, defender of migrant rights, Sandinista, and a Leonesa at heart.” However, those who knew her say that, despite Martha’s pride in her red-and-black ideology, she wouldn’t stand today on the side of the dictator couple, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

“I don’t have to imagine much, I don’t have to speculate. Martha stood on the side of democracy, on the side of freedom, on the side of justice. She was against authoritarianism, against centralization, and above all, against repression,” says Ana Quirós, a sociologist and civil rights activist, one of the first injured during the dictatorship’s repression of the April 2018 protests. Quirós was also a friend and fellow social activist alongside Martha.

Martha passed away on January 9, 2020, after a year and a half battling cancer. Her legacy is marked primarily by her dedication to protecting migrants and her fight against tyrannies, both that of the Somoza family, as a guerrilla fighter, and that of the Ortega-Murillo regime, which betrayed, harassed, and persecuted her.

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“Martha herself was a victim of repression and imprisonment during Somoza’s time. That was deeply rooted in her. She could not tolerate, nor accept, the repression, authoritarianism, and persecution we were subjected to from 2018 onwards. Martha wanted a free, just, democratic Nicaragua with equal rights for everyone,” Quirós says.

Her connection to migrants’ struggles

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

After distancing herself from the Sandinista Front in 1992 due to Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian shift, which eventually led to the cruel dictatorship now oppressing Nicaragua, Martha focused her activism on defending human rights, particularly those of migrants.

“In 1994, Martha moved to Mexico for personal reasons. And there, I believe she experienced firsthand the difficulties faced by migrant populations, because she herself became a migrant in Mexico City. Despite having friends, I’m sure it wasn’t easy,” Quirós recalls.

In 2006, Martha had the idea of creating a network to connect Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica with their families back home. This idea later materialized as NicasMigrante.

“Upon returning to Nicaragua, she became more involved in the fight for migrant rights. Along with others, especially young people, she founded NicasMigrante and helped launch the Nicaraguan Migration Network alongside other organizations,” Quirós adds.

***

NicasMigrante and the Nicaraguan Migration Network

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

In the book Martha Isabel Cranshaw: A Life Dedicated to Nicaragua, different testimonies from people who knew her work and activism are cited.

In the chapter on her fight for migrant rights, Costa Rican sociologist Abelardo Morales Gamboa, who co-founded NicasMigrante with Cranshaw, shares: “Through this network, Martha made significant and fruitful advocacy efforts. She worked extensively with the media and migration authorities across the region.”

“Martha understood that migration is a global issue that must be part of the international agenda. She explained that migration has major socio-political and economic consequences, both in the recipient countries and in the labor-exporting countries. She knew that, due to poverty, Nicaragua could not escape this phenomenon,” the book adds.

“Martha was like a ‘mother hen with her chicks.’ She helped many of us on her team, most of whom were young, develop professionally, become emotionally strong, and clearly express ourselves both verbally and in writing,” wrote Michael Barreras, a member of NicasMigrante.

Martha had direct confrontations with the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship over its migration policies, which she called “hypocritical,” particularly in the case of the dictatorship’s imprisonment of professor Nilamar Mora Alemán in August 2016 for facilitating the passage of an immigrant from the Republic of Congo to Honduras.

She asserted that the underlying reason behind professor Nilamar’s case was not to dismantle a trafficking network, but rather to send a “message” to human rights advocates for migrants, warning them to refrain from showing solidarity and helping migrants cross the country.

“Nicaragua’s immigration policy regarding support for Nicaraguans abroad is insufficient. We are acting quite hypocritically, because while we complain about the detentions we face from the United States, at the same time, we are deporting Haitian and African migrants every day back to Costa Rica under the guise of ‘non-voluntary returns,'” Cranshaw argued in an interview with Confidencial.

Su etapa como guerrillera

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Her time as a guerrilla fighter

Martha joined the fight with the Sandinista Front in 1973, convinced that this was the only way to liberate Nicaragua from the tyranny of the Somoza dictatorship. In her first mission as a full-time militant, she barely escaped death alongside 35 comrades while training near El Sauce to form a guerrilla column.

The column was discovered and massacred by the National Guard, with most of the future fighters falling, including her friend and comrade Arlen Siu. After this event, a military court under Somoza sentenced Martha to eight years in prison on fabricated charges of criminal association and other offenses.

“Martha, using the pseudonym Cristina, was moved to Chinandega where, alongside fellow fighter Alonso Porras, she worked on political organizing and creating support networks in the sugar mills and the port of Corinto. It was through this dangerous and demanding work, thanks to the extraordinary determination of young people like Martha Cranshaw, that the foundation for what later became a nationwide armed insurrection against the dictatorship was laid. Without dedicated, brave, and hardworking militants of Martha’s caliber, no insurrection would have been possible,” said Jaime Wheelock Román during her funeral, as cited in the book on Martha’s life.

In 1977, Martha was captured by the Guard near the Licorera Company in Chichigalpa. She was taken to the security offices at loma de Tiscapa, where she was tortured and beaten, leaving her with lifelong spinal pain.

“Her father, worried about her life and safety, secured promises of her release from Somoza on the condition that she publicly renounce the Sandinista Front. Her father came to Martha’s cell, and her response, showing him her bruises, was: ‘Tell the person who made you that offer that I am good here, and if you plan on visiting me again, don’t bring me such a proposal ever again,'” added Wheelock Román in his speech.

The dictatorship’s betrayal

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights

Martha was freed, along with Daniel Ortega, as part of a negotiation following the operation that led to the takeover of the National Palace on August 22, 1978. In a cruel twist of fate, this operation was led by future General Hugo Torres, who later died in prison under charges of treason, ordered by Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo.

Martha did not escape the wrath of the current dictator couple either. Her disappointment with the authoritarian shift in the Sandinista Front, and her independent stance focused on social activism without political compromise, made her a target of Ortega and Murillo.

In 2009, by direct order of the dictator, Martha was evicted and dispossessed of her home in the Fátima neighborhood in the city of León. According to reports from that year, two close Ortega collaborators, Lenín Cerna (now sidelined by Rosario Murillo) and Francisco López (a presidential advisor), were present at the eviction.

“Being brutally stripped of my home is a violation of personal dignity, because without any process or notification, the caretakers were thrown out and my furniture was taken away,” Martha denounced.

The legendary human rights defender Vilma Núñez de Escorcia expressed that this confiscation was because Ortega saw Martha as a political adversary. “She (Martha) is a person who doesn’t seek confrontation, she offers solutions, which is why I consider Daniel Ortega’s actions a cowardly act,” Núñez remarked.

“She found herself in a difficult position for having been part of the Sandinista power structures in the 1990s. Although she distanced herself from the FSLN in the early ’90s, her heart still felt close,” says Quirós about Martha’s connection to Sandinismo.

“In 2008, when Dora María Téllez went on a hunger strike demanding the restoration of the legal status of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (now Unamos), Martha publicly condemned the FSLN’s actions and demanded that democratic spaces be reopened. From that point on, Martha was harassed and persecuted by the FSLN structures,” Quirós adds.

Martha Cranshaw and the April 2018 rebellion

In 2018, during the “April rebellion,” which was later crushed by the Ortega regime, Martha, who had relocated to Costa Rica after the Sandinista persecution against her, to fully focus on her work with the Nicaraguan Network for Migration, expressed her concern and sadness over the impending bloodshed as the repression intensified.

“What I’ve gathered here, from my conversations with the Nicaraguan migrant community, is a great deal of uncertainty and fear about how this situation in Nicaragua will unfold. There is concern for their families; they ask me what’s next, if there will be a peaceful transition, they even ask who will replace Daniel Ortega. Let’s not forget that Nicaragua’s recent historical memory includes the overthrow of Somoza. It’s inevitable that comparisons will be made between two processes that share some common elements but also have marked differences,” she said in an interview with a Costa Rican television station.

“Dialogue is part of the solution. Someone decided to switch from rubber bullets to real bullets, to launch paramilitary repression. Those responsible, including those who pulled the trigger, must face a legal process. In a conflict of the nature Nicaragua is experiencing—where on one side there are stones, and on the other, bullets, on one side, words, and on the other, insults, where one side faces repression, and the other, social mobilization—there are no conditions to discuss the country’s major issues,” Martha warned.

Born on January 16, 1955, Martha left this world just days before turning 65. Despite the Sandinista regime’s punishment for her social activism and the toll of Somoza’s prisons, Martha did not allow these events or the progression of her illness to define her days.

“She faced her illness with the same energy she faced her whole life, always concerned about her friends’ wellbeing, taking care of herself but always more concerned about others,” Quirós recalls.

“She was a very compassionate person, deeply concerned about the wellbeing of those around her, but especially her friends. She was always mindful of how people lived, what they were going through. She cared about their families and helped in any way she could to improve their situation,” reflects the activist.

Three months before her high school graduation from Colegio Asunción in Managua in 1972, Martha wrote a poem. These words, from a 17-year-old eager to take on the world—and more than that, to give her body, soul, and spirit to the social causes she fervently believed in—capture the essence of the person she would become during her life:

Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
I have discovered I am neither Aristotle nor Columbus nor Darío... just another traveler. I have found, within my world—mass, a small leaven—that my philosophy is my engine that my verses carry my ship that is forming, built of Christian fiber.

And forged together as one: we sail... Bow forward, trade winds rudder in hand, fog, and placed upon the vast curved ocean...

Forward!
Martha Cranshaw: Feminist, activist, and fighter for migrant rights
He descubierto que no soy ni Aristóteles ni Colón ni Darío... un viajero más. He encontrado dentro de mi mundo —masa, una pequeña levadura— que mi filosofía es mi motor que en mis versos flota mi nave que se forma, que es de fibra cristiana.

Y fundidas las tres en una sola: navegamos... Proa de frente, vientos alisios

timón en mano, neblina, y colocadas en el vasto océano curvo...

¡Adelante!

DEFENDERS is a multimedia series produced by DIVERGENTES
English version by Alicia Henríquez
Graphic Conceptualization by Ricardo Arce
Development by News Lab Experience
General Direction by Néstor Arce