Fear and concern grip Charlotte mom whose brother, a priest, sits in a Nicaraguan prison
In her Charlotte home, Mayra Tijerino waits day and night to hear her brother’s voice again over the phone.
Ramiro Tijerino is a 50-year-old Catholic priest in Nicaragua. He serves as rector of John Paul II University in Managua.
In the early morning dark on Aug. 19, police raided the home of a Catholic bishop and took Tijerino and other Catholic clergy to El Nuevo Chipote prison, the Catholic News Agency and multiple other news outlets reported.
Tijerino and the other clergy had gone to visit Bishop Rolando Álvarez when they were placed under house arrest on Aug. 4, Mayra Tijerino and her husband, Jaime Meza, told The Charlotte Observer in a recent interview.
Four priests, a deacon, two seminarians and a cameraman were imprisoned that morning, the couple said. The bishop remains under house arrest, according to the couple and multiple news outlets.
The “El Chipote” prison is notorious for its torture of political opponents of President Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship, news outlets have reported.
Bishop protested human rights abuses
The 76-year-old Ortega belonged to the Sandinista junta that took power in Nicaragua in 1979. He became president in 1985 and held office until 1991. He regained the presidency after the 2007 election.
Álvarez “was the most prominent voice of protest“ against the Nicaraguan government’s human rights abuses, The New York Times reported.
“Nicaragua Silences Its Last Outspoken Critics: Catholic Priests,” read the headline of the Aug. 23 Times article about the arrests.
“Until now, it was the only institution that had escaped his control after 15 years of uninterrupted rule,” the newspaper wrote, referring to Ortega, while calling his imprisonment of the priests a “purge.”
‘Not afraid to die’
Mayra Tijerino said her brother “is a person who’s not afraid to die” for speaking out against the regime.
Her brother and the other priests “are very passionate about what they do,” Mayra Tijerino said in Spanish. Meza, her husband, translated for an Observer reporter.
“They said they are willing to put their lives in danger to see Nicaragua free,” she said.
Mayra Tijerino said she last spoke with her brother the day before he was placed under house arrest.
Ramiro Tijerino felt called to the priesthood during his final year of college, his sister said. He was 21 or 22 years old, and he studied in Rome as part of his education to become a Roman Catholic priest, she said.
Their father, whose first name also is Ramiro, likewise spoke out against injustices by those in power in Nicaragua in the 1970s, Mayra Tijerino said.
Their father, now retired, was an agronomist and general manager of a production facility of food and beverage giant Nestlé, she said.
Mayra Tijerino and Jaime Meza said their oldest son, Manuel, also was held as a political prisoner. Manuel was 21 in 2019 when he was sentenced to 71 years in prison, only to be later freed with hundreds of others, his parents said.
Mayra Tijerino arrived in the United States with her four youngest children in 2018. Meza and Manuel arrived in 2019.
In 2020, Jaime Meza landed a banking job in Charlotte. His wife works remotely for the Miami office of a South American financial institution.
Health and trial concerns
Mayra Tijerino said she also worries that her brother might not be receiving his medication for diabetes and hypertension.
She’s “afraid and concerned” for him due to those conditions, and also because she hasn’t heard from him.
“We don’t know anything about him,” she said. “We’re not sure he’s getting a fair, legal trial. We don’t know if he has access to an attorney.”
Mayra Tijerino said her and her husband’s parents are elderly and ill, and she wishes she and Meza could fly to Nicaragua to see them and her brother.
“We are 100% sure we’d be in jail” if the couple visited, Meza said.
Special Mass at St. Matthew
The couple said they’re grateful for all of the people in Charlotte and beyond who’ve offered prayers and other support, especially those at their church, St. Matthew in Ballantyne. The church held a special Mass on Aug. 24 for Father Ramiro Tijerino and the others who were imprisoned.
“We’re grateful to be a part of St. Matthew’s,” Mayra Tijerino said.
She hopes the general public, too, will pray for her brother and the other political prisoners in Nicaragua and support ongoing U.S. government efforts to free the unjustly imprisoned.
She said she hopes Americans don’t take their freedoms for granted. In Nicaragua, “people are suffering, being imprisoned,” their freedoms taken away, she said.
“You’d never imagine in 2022 that this would be happening” so close to the U.S.,” she said.
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 6:00 AM.