Brooklyn Rivera, a prominent Nicaraguan Indigenous leader swept up and imprisoned three years ago as part of the country’s crackdown on political dissent and Indigenous autonomy, died over the weekend in state custody. He was 73.
Mr. Rivera, a former lawmaker and leader of the Miskito people, the largest Indigenous group in the Central American country, passed away on Saturday, according to his family, fellow activists and local media reports — only three days after the government published photos of him bedridden, intubated and emaciated that prompted outrage from human rights groups.
The health ministry, part of the government run by the co-presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, did not announce Mr. Rivera’s death until Sunday afternoon. It said that despite “enormous and intense efforts,” he died of “a bacteria generated” by Covid.
Some family members, along with some human rights and Indigenous groups, lamented his death, while airing their grievances over his treatment in custody and the government’s narrative.
“I express my profound grief and concern regarding the circumstances under which his death occurred,” his daughter Tininiska Rivera said in a statement.
When the government, which had previously concealed Mr. Rivera’s whereabouts, released photos of her father at a hospital in the capital of Managua and an update of his condition on Wednesday following international pressure, Ms. Rivera called his care into question. (The authorities said that Mr. Rivera had “longstanding conditions” and that one of his sons had been visiting him every two weeks.)
His daughter said in another statement then that her father was in “optimal health, walking and fully self-sufficient” when he was detained in September 2023. She added, “So the regime cannot now attempt to blame pre-existing conditions for the physical deterioration of a man who has remained in state custody for nearly three years.”
Various groups, including the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, had also denounced the images of Mr. Rivera and called for his release.
“The dictatorship released a statement through its state-controlled media only now that Rivera is critically ill, attempting to conceal their singular role in his cruel treatment and current condition,” the State Department said on Friday.
Mr. Ortega and Ms. Murillo have been in power since 2007 and have overseen the elimination of opposition to their power since anti-government protests in 2018. Ms. Murillo, who also serves as the government’s spokeswoman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Mr. Rivera’s daughter also refuted some of the government’s account that family members were present at her father’s bedside during his final moments.
She called for the Nicaraguan authorities to hand over her father’s remains so that her family could mark his death in accordance with their Miskito traditions. She said she had promised her father that she would bury him alongside her grandmother. Because she is in exile, his daughter also asked the international community for help in returning safely to Nicaragua.
She added that her father had “an unwavering commitment to the defense of the rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.”
Mr. Rivera’s niece, Dina Carolina Fagoth Rivera, said by telephone that her family and Indigenous communities wanted to bury him in his native region, the northern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. She also insisted on an independent investigation of his death.
“We do not, for one moment, think that any of what they’re telling us is true,” said Ms. Fagoth Rivera, whose father, Steadman Fagoth Müller, a fellow Miskito leader, was detained by the Nicaraguan government in 2024.
She added about her uncle, “He was a light for our people. He meant freedom for our people.”
Reed Brody, a member of the United Nations Group of Human Right Experts on Nicaragua, said in an interview that Mr. Rivera, who was first elected to the country’s legislature in 2007, was probably the most important Miskito political leader of the last 40 years and one of the most prominent activists to die in Nicaraguan government detention.
He said that the U.N. group has documented 124 cases of the arbitrary detention of Indigenous leaders and that at least 46 have been killed in violence on the Caribbean coast since 2018. Mr. Rivera’s death “encapsulates the broader dismantling of Indigenous autonomy and it also illustrates the problem of enforced disappearances in Nicaragua,” Mr. Brody said.
An estimated 500,000 Miskito people live in Nicaragua, mostly along the northern Caribbean coast.
Mr. Rivera fought against the first Sandinista government, of which Mr. Ortega was a part, alongside the Contra rebels in the 1980s. His political party, Yatama, eventually became an ally of Mr. Ortega after he returned to power in 2007, but later fell out over what it said was an infringement of Indigenous lands and rights.
In 2023, Mr. Ortega’s government barred Mr. Rivera’s political party from running for elected office. Mr. Rivera was also barred from returning to Nicaragua after criticizing the government while abroad early that year, but he slipped back in and was later arrested.
James Wagner covers news and culture in Latin America for The Times. He is based in Mexico City.
The post Prominent Nicaraguan Indigenous Leader Dies in Government Custody appeared first on New York Times.
