“I have learned that true strength lies… in the ability to understand, empathize, and work together towards common goals” 

A Dialogue on Democracy and Authoritarianism 

Felix Maradiaga, Democratic Futures Project,  
University of Virginia 

Abstract: Felix Maradiaga is a prominent figure in Central America known for his expertise in nonviolent resistance and democracy building. As an activist, human rights advocate, and thought leader in nonviolent resistance strategy, he is widely recognized as one of the leading voices within the Nicaraguan democratic opposition against the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. He was recognized with The Peter Gotell Prize in 2021, in Stockholm for his human rights work. In May 2023, a cross-regional coalition of 25 human rights organizations granted him the 2023 Courage Award at the 15th annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. He received the 2023 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award for Outstanding Opposition Figure. In January 2024, a group of prominent figures led by Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana formally nominated Félix alongside Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who is unjustly detained in Nicaragua, for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the lifelong dedication of both Nicaraguan individuals to the pursuit of peace and democracy in Nicaragua. In 2024, Maradiaga joined The Democratic Futures Project (democraticfuturesproject.com).  

In the following interview, Maradiaga discusses his development as a public advocate for democracy, as well as the personal cost of such work. In doing so, Maradiaga discusses the struggles of Nicaragua to become a democratic nation and the current authoritarian rule of Daniel Ortega. Having suffered imprisonment and banishment for his democratic advocacy, Maradiaga stresses the need to move past trauma to a greater sense of empathy. He argues “Only love and forgiveness can build free and just societies.” He concludes by offering advice to the next generation of democratic and human rights advocates. 

Key Words: Nonviolence, Trauma, Democracy, Civil War, Exile, Listening, Nicaragua, Demobilization, Disarmament 

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Transformations: For many advocates, their sense of justice emerges from their experiences as children. Was this the case for you? Did your childhood experiences provide a lens for your later work? 

Maradiaga: Undoubtedly, the influence of my experiences during my childhood during the Nicaraguan civil war and my adolescence as a refugee and exile in the United States deeply marked me in various ways. However, it wasn’t until my adulthood that I truly understood the significance of that influence on my life decisions. In a way, for a good part of my life, I tried not to dwell too much on my childhood due to the pain that those memories brought. For example, I now understand much better that my father’s suffering as a political prisoner during Nicaragua’s dictatorship in the 1970s early on awakened in me a profound sense of empathy with torture victims. Having witnessed up close the horrors of war, the expropriation of land, and my mother’s business, or having had to leave Nicaragua at the age of twelve, undocumented, for the United States to escape the war, are aspects that I now recognize as episodes of great influence on my decision to dedicate myself to what I do. 

Transformations: There is always a moment when an individual takes their first public action, that moment when they step off the sidewalk and into the streets? What was that moment for you? What about that moment made you act? 

Maradiaga: That’s a very interesting question, and honestly, I hadn’t thought about it before. There are several crucial moments in my life that I could define in that way, but perhaps the first one was my decision in 1997 to accept the Nicaraguan government’s proposal to help create the Office for the Attention of Ex-Combatants. I was a 20-year-old who had just graduated from university. I had returned to Nicaragua after the war and had gained some experience in the post-war areas of my country as a volunteer for the Catholic Church in the remote mountains of Matagalpa and Jinotega. The government at that time wanted to create an office in the post-war areas to promote the disarmament of some remnants of the guerrillas and initiate processes of social and economic reintegration. It was a job that, looking back on it now, could only have been accepted by someone extremely idealistic and daring. But that first professional step was the beginning of a ten-year career in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants. 

The work of the team in that office for the attention of ex-combatants caught the attention of several international agencies, and I was invited to share Nicaragua’s successful experience with other DDR projects around the world. Between 1997 and 2001, we achieved the demobilization and reintegration of 1,700 irregular combatants who had taken up arms again because they felt that the peace agreements of 1989 and 1990 had not been fulfilled. We managed to get these former combatants to lay down their arms and to trust in the peace process again. That is the greatest satisfaction of my life. 

Transformations: Nonviolence has been a dominant force in your public work. How did you first learn about this framework for public work? Why do you think it particularly useful within the context of Nicaragua? 

Maradiaga: The most powerful lesson I received was from my mother, who in 1988 made the most difficult decision a mother can make. Seeing the destruction of the civil war and how the two factions of the conflict, the Contras and the Sandinistas, were recruiting adolescents, she decided to send me out of Nicaragua. My mother couldn’t leave my siblings alone, and my father had passed away years earlier. Leaving my country at the age of twelve, unaccompanied, is a challenge of a very difficult dimension to explain. But my mother explained it in a way that marked me for the rest of my life. She said, “I never want you to use a rifle against another human being. I never want to see you being part of the war.” This awakened in me an early feeling of deep rejection of violence, but also an almost obsessive intellectual curiosity with nonviolence. 

During my years as a public servant, we developed a national program for the reintegration of ex-combatants with the help of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The program was called Culture of Peace. Over time, it became an ambitious and very effective program that I helped replicate in dozens of countries around the world. When I left the government in 2007, I founded the first university-accredited institute in my country on this topic, the Civil Society Leadership Institute (ILSC). 

In a country so painfully marked by two hundred years of armed conflicts, nonviolence is much more than just a framework; it is a national imperative. Unlike our neighbor Costa Rica, in Nicaragua, political violence and armed conflict have been latent problems throughout our history. They say that no one is a prophet in their own land, and that is probably true, but I still decided to dedicate my life to teaching nonviolence as a way of life and as a framework for public policy. I don’t know how much success we have had, but I must say that in April 2018, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets waving the blue and white flag of Nicaragua and not raising a weapon, I felt immeasurable satisfaction. The massive and spontaneous protest movement against the Ortega dictatorship in 2018 and subsequent years gives me hope that this culture of peace is more deeply rooted in the new generations. 

Transformations: When people hear you were the Secretary General of the Ministry of Defense, they will wonder how nonviolence fits into that work? Can you talk about what you did as General Secretary? Why you felt it was important? 

Maradiaga: When the Office for the Attention of Ex-Combatants was created in 1997, it was meant to be an intergovernmental agency for disarmament and reintegration of guerrillas and soldiers who had refused to lay down their arms, despite the peace agreements of 1990. For administrative reasons, it was later decided to place this office under the authority of the Ministry of Defense, as a kind of Veterans Department. The office was closed in 2002 to take on new disarmament-related functions. I briefly went to the United Nations to continue my work on disarmament, but the newly elected President Enrique Bolaños asked me to return to Nicaragua to assist in important disarmament projects, such as the eradication of anti-personnel mines and the reduction of Nicaragua’s arsenal of anti-aircraft missiles, remnants of Soviet weapons. I felt that the country needed to deepen its disarmament process, so I accepted the challenge of assuming the position of Secretary General of the Ministry of Defense, which is equivalent to Under Secretary of Defense for Disarmament Affairs. 

By 2006, we had achieved the highest rate per square kilometer of anti-personnel mine removal in the world, eliminating these weapons in Nicaragua, both those installed in the territory and those in the arsenal. We were among the first countries in the world to be declared free of anti-personnel mines. Similarly, we greatly reduced the arsenal of portable anti-aircraft missiles and placed the remnants under a strict inventory and safeguard system. During my tenure as Secretary, we also developed a plan called the “Reasonable Balance of Forces” to promote a new stage of conventional arms reduction in the Central American region, but political times had changed, and shortly after, I left the government. 

Transformations: Much of your government work occurred between the presidencies of Daniel Ortega? How do you understand the possibility of Ortega coming to power, establishing an authoritarian government?  

Maradiaga: When Violeta Barrios Chamorro won the first free elections in the history of Nicaragua in 1990, many Nicaraguans were filled with great hope that we would finally have a democratic rebirth. I was part of the thousands of Nicaraguans who were in exile and returned to Nicaragua to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. However, it must be recognized that there were several important mistakes made during those sixteen years of difficult, frustrated democratic transition between 1990 and 2006. 

The first mistake is that the governments of Violeta Barrios, Arnoldo Alemán, and Enrique Bolaños could have done a better job beyond the extraordinary efforts in macroeconomic reconstruction. The lesson learned is that after a war, a government must not only be good but extraordinary, as the demands of the people were very high, and those governments did not live up to the high expectations of the people. Being good is not enough when it comes to rebuilding a country. But the other serious mistake was to give the Sandinista Front, Ortega’s Party, a series of exaggerated political concessions that allowed that party to constantly boycott democracy. And worse yet, the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) never democratized as a party, but rather, as an opposition party, it chose to strengthen its alliances with Libya, Iran, and Hugo Chavez, in full view of democratic governments. 

When Ortega won the elections in 2006, it was extremely evident to me that he would re-establish an authoritarian model because his public inspiration had always been Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. I have been one of the few who never had any hope whatsoever that the Sandinista Front would be anything different from what it is. It is a military-political party that detests liberal democracy. What there was, was immense naivety from those who expected something different from Daniel Ortega. 

Transformations: You have been an outspoken critic of Ortega, forming a major opposition group, testifying against Ortega, then running for president yourself? How do you see these efforts as an attempt to rebuild a democratic rights-based culture in Nicaragua (or support the history of such cultures in Nicaragua?  

Maradiaga: More than a critic of Ortega as an individual, I have been a staunch opponent of the authoritarian political model that has prevailed in Nicaraguan politics for centuries. With the fall of the Somoza regime in 1979, no democracy came as the Sandinista Front’s propaganda led the world to believe. Sandinistas made efforts to establish a Marxist system that also fed on Nicaragua’s historical authoritarian tradition. Of course, I will not endorse the civil war in any way, nor will I make an apology for the military regimes that preceded Sandinismo, but the truth is that we did have a democratic experiment between 1990 and 2006. Our emerging democratic process was interrupted by Ortega’s return to power.  

In 2007, after ten years in government, I began a brief professional career in the private sector and academia. However, upon seeing how Daniel Ortega was returning with a more aggressive plan for total control of the state, I felt morally obligated to leave the comfort of my classrooms and consulting industry to help build a civic movement that would break with the past. I felt that none of the political options at the time understood the urgent need to offer a new model of political conduct and a vision for the country that would break with the historical parallels that have plunged Nicaragua into a cycle of violence and poverty. But it is tough to face the resistance to change from so many sectors, especially from the Sandinista dictatorship but also from traditional political sectors that are attached to old ways of politics. 

Transformations: What costs have you paid for your advocacy? What have been the personal and mental costs of such work? Do you believe the public understands the mental stresses placed upon advocates? The trauma they experienced? The need to find spaces to heal? 

Maradiaga: The path of dedicating ourselves to the promotion of nonviolence, as a way of life and conduct, but also as a political philosophy, is extremely costly and painful. Moreover, in a violent and post-war society, especially in the context of a dictatorship like Nicaragua, these personal human costs are very high. In my case, it has involved at least two assassination attempts, nearly two years of imprisonment in extremely inhumane conditions, including periods in solitary confinement and torture. It has involved facing long and unjust trials, the first in 2018 and the second in 2021, which resulted in a 13-year prison sentence that I fortunately did not serve because of international pressure. 

But the most painful cost is the pain inflicted on my family. I went almost four years without seeing my daughter, my mother, and my wife. During my time in maximum security prison, I was never allowed to receive a letter from my wife and daughter, except for a few days before I was released when I was able to receive a brief note from my daughter. It is essential to recognize that after such an extreme process of isolation and inhumane treatment, there are many aspects that need healing. Some physical and others emotional. I maintain that the most important is the heart. That is why I constantly audit my heart to ensure that despite everything I have experienced, it is not pain or hatred that drives me in my projects, but rather hope and the desire to help my country find peace with freedom. Nothing new can be built from hatred and resentment. Only love and forgiveness can build free and just societies. 

Transformations: Today, you are living in the United States. How have your past experiences shaped your current work? What does that work look like today? How are you trying to organize the Nicaraguan diaspora to continue to push for change in Nicaragua? 

Maradiaga: For someone like me who has experienced exile in the past, being forcibly banished to a country that is not my own has not been easy to process. My fundamental longing has been to contribute to Nicaragua having peace and democracy, in a climate of freedom and justice. However, my past experiences have taught me to turn personal traumas into opportunities for personal growth in pursuit of life projects. I believe that history shows that groups of exiles and diasporas, in dictatorship contexts, can be extremely valuable when there is an opportunity for democratic transition and reconstruction of the country. That is why I am working very carefully to create technical platforms for the opposition in exile, not only from Nicaragua but also from other countries around the world whose causes are closely related to the situation in my country, such as Venezuela, Cuba, and even Bolivia. One of these platforms is the Foundation for the Freedom of Nicaragua, which has a presence in Costa Rica, the United States, and several other cities in Europe. Additionally, I am collaborating with the World Liberty Congress in developing a common strategy of nonviolent resistance against dictatorships. One of the projects that excites me the most is collaborating with the Democratic Futures Project at the University of Virginia, where we will be developing tools for human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists from around the world, especially in addressing the growing problem of arbitrary detentions for political purposes. 

Transformations: If you could go back in time and give advice to your 20-year-old self, what would that advice be? What lessons, that is, have you learned that might support the work of the next generation of democratic advocates? 

Maradiaga: If I could go back in time and give advice to my 20-year-old self, it would be to cultivate an even deeper sense of empathy and understanding towards others. I would encourage myself to listen more attentively to different perspectives, to seek common ground, and to approach challenges with a spirit of cooperation and compassion. I have learned that true strength lies not in force or aggression, but in the ability to understand, empathize, and work together towards common goals. 

For the next generation of democratic advocates, I would emphasize the importance of perseverance and resilience in the face of adversity. The path to democracy is often long and challenging, but it is crucial to remain steadfast in the belief that positive change is possible. In that sense, if I could speak to my 20-year-old self, I would emphasize that precisely because the journey is long, the main motivation cannot be to reach a specific goal but each of the steps in that journey. I would encourage him to pack his backpack for that journey with the technical toolkits that will be necessary to do the work with excellence, such as learning languages, absorbing knowledge with curiosity and discipline, traveling extensively and experiencing diverse cultures with an open mind, but also to include spirituality as one of the most powerful tools to withstand the storms along the way. And finally, if possible, to seek a companion on the journey as it has been in my case with Berta, my wife. Without my wife as my accomplice and partner in this struggle, I would not be alive today.