Five countries have updated their travel alerts to Nicaragua in 2024: the United States, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and recently Canada. These nations have classified Nicaragua as a territory requiring a “high degree of caution” and warned their citizens to reconsider the risks of traveling to the country.
Although many of these countries had issued alerts since the sociopolitical crisis began in 2018, due to arbitrary detentions and other state aggressions for political reasons, in 2024 they placed renewed emphasis on insecurity and street robberies. Canada was the most recent country to renew its alert on July 15, 2024.
All the countries that issued the alerts noted that the crime rate in the country has increased in recent years and highlighted certain areas to avoid. Canada specified Mercado Oriental, Reparto Shick, Jorge Dimitrov, Ciudad Belén, Américas 1, Américas 2, and the Camilo Ortega neighborhood, all districts in the capital, Managua.
Although the National Police hold biweekly press conferences about their supposed successes in crime prevention, and the Ortega-Murillo regime claims that Nicaragua is the safest country in Central America, this official narrative lacks international credibility, especially regarding security issues, says Carmen, a sociologist who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals from the dictatorship.
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“It is well known to other countries that levels of state violence still prevail in Nicaragua, along with human rights violations, legal insecurity, the inefficacy of the police and the justice system, and the widespread unprotection of citizens, including foreign visitors,” she states.
Granting of pardons spurs crime in Nicaragua
The latest Barometer of the Americas’ report indicates that Nicaragua has the third highest rate of crime victims in the entire continent, registering levels of insecurity “well above” countries like Honduras and El Salvador, which have historically recorded the highest figures of street crime in the Central American region.
However, 30% of Nicaraguans surveyed reported being victims of crime in 2023, a percentage that has been rising since 2018, due to several reasons.
The report highlights the granting of pardons to thousands of prisoners who did not complete their sentences as one of the main reasons, which results in risks and threats to people’s safety, Carmen points out.
“Especially because a good portion of them (the pardoned prisoners) did not meet the requirements to be pardoned, but also because no mechanisms, programs, or policies have been created to allow their social reintegration,” she explains.
Other factors include the police’s ineffectiveness in responding to citizens’ complaints, ineffective plans to combat street insecurity, and the lack of inter-institutional work to prevent these crimes.
Carmen asserts that these international alerts have a significant impact in highlighting the social situation in Nicaragua, as they demonstrate that there is a real security issue in the country and because they decrease the interest of potential tourists who want to visit the country.
Declining tourism
For Leslie, an affected tourism entrepreneur who requested anonymity for safety reasons, Nicaragua’s image as a tourist destination has regressed to the 1990’s, only now it projects the image of a repressive country where there are no guarantees of human rights instead of a war-torn nation.
“The negative image is no longer that of a country facing war, but of a country with a corrupt government, whose population lives oppressed by a family dynasty that openly violates all international norms. The impact and the regression are dramatic,” she asserts.
Leslie highlights that Nicaraguan tourism relies mainly on small and medium-sized businesses “that make a valiant effort to survive.” Additionally, these businesses face the challenge of continuing to sustain themselves despite a regime that does nothing to improve the situation, but rather worsens it every day, she expresses.
According to Leslie, the regime seeks to present an image of false normality in tourism with high numbers of foreign entries and exits in the country. As of July 22, 2024, the Directorate General of Migration recorded the entry and exit of 75,032 people.
However, many of these numbers are not tourists, but people using Nicaragua as a country of transit to other destinations, mainly the United States. Recently, the U.S. reported that there are migrant trafficking networks in Nicaragua that have benefited from the Government’s permissiveness, according to an article by Despacho 505.
In the past year, Nicaragua has been one of the major destinations for Haitian and Cuban migrants passing through the country on their way north, arriving in Managua via charter flights permitted and promoted by the Ortega-Murillo regime. According to Leslie, the regime uses those numbers to claim that tourism has increased in the country.
“The country has not managed to recover tourism-wise since the coronavirus pandemic when all other countries in the region have. This is an indicator that the image Nicaragua currently projects as a destination indeed deters a large majority of tourists from visiting the country,” she states.
Complaints against the regime affect Nicaragua’s image
Although most of the countries that issued the alerts emphasized the security situation, countries like the United States focused mainly on the political situation in the country, which also poses risks to foreign nationals.
Currently, the U.S. alert on Nicaragua is at level 3, the second-highest level of danger, meaning “reconsider travel.”
“U.S. citizens, including dual Nicaraguan-American citizens, have been subject to revocation of Nicaraguan citizenship, reentry bans, expulsion, and other actions,” warns the Department of State.
The constant reports of human rights violations by the dictatorship only serve to further isolate the regime and reveal the lies it tells about security and prosperity, Leslie explains.
“No matter how much effort they make, no one believes them. What persists is the image that Nicaragua is a country whose population lives under the threat of persecution and with their rights being completely violated every day,” she says.