Nicaraguan exiles and the emotional value of objects

DW

20-06-2025

This guest article, by a Nicaraguan journalist in exile, is part of the Casa para el Periodismo Libre project, developed by DW Akademie and its partner IPLEX in Costa Rica.
For many Nicaraguans forced to flee their country amid the repression of the Ortega-Murillo regime, each object they manage to take with them across the border represents a tangible connection to the past, an emotional anchor in the face of uprooting and, above all, a promise: to return someday.
San José, Costa Rica. This is the story of an exiled journalist and his collection of keys. He calls himself *Castro, in homage to the surname of an influential high school teacher in Managua who, upon discovering his talent for Spanish and oratory, suggested he study journalism.
Even before leaving, *Castro swore to himself that he would return, that he would open the door to his house, embrace his family and sit on the porch to play with his dog and greet neighbors under the shade of the Indian Laurels that he himself had planted ten years before.
He set off on a windy early morning in February 2022. He carried a change of clean clothes, three pieces of underwear, two pairs of balled-up socks, a blue and white scarf, a hand towel, bathing slippers, deodorant, toothpaste, a toothbrush and a bottle of aspirin. Everything fit, tightly, into a Totto school bag belonging to his teenage daughter.
In an inside pocket, five keys attached to a stainless steel Victorinox key ring. His house keys. His pride. His inheritance. The fruit of years of bank debt and of surviving on a journalist's salary. He knew every nail, every crack, every corner of that house that he had worked on with his own hands.
Each lock told a story: the street lock was opened by a key with traces of red paint; the gate by a key with two parallel notches; the main door by an elongated one with white spots. The other two, smaller, opened the inner gate and the garage lock.
He traveled the more than 200 kilometers from Managua to the border post of Las Manos, adjacent to Honduras, listening to the metallic jingle of the keys at the bottom of his backpack. Already on the other side, exhausted after dodging soldiers and police, he took them out and put them in his jeans pocket. From then on, that sound accompanied him for thousands of kilometers, until he settled in a county east of Los Angeles.
There, for the first time, he hung them on the key ring of his new home. And then he cried. He cried with the heartbreaking certainty that he might never wear them again.
The suitcase and few belongings of a Nicaraguan journalist exiled in Costa Rica Image: La Prensa
Chronicle of everything in the suitcase
In November 2024, during a podcast workshop for exiled journalists which is part of the Casa para el Periodismo Libre project in Costa Rica, someone shared the story of a communicator who, upon fleeing the country, chose to take only one thing with him: a family photo kept inside a Bible. It was the last image, taken of him at Christmas 2021, showing him with his family.
Based on this testimony, other exiles were asked what objects they took with them and what those objects meant. The responses were poignant: keys, stuffed animals, boots, video cameras...each object carried a story of love, pain and memory.
Some names in this article have been changed by express request, to protect the families that remain in Nicaragua and continue to be targets of reprisals.
*Castro recalls the symbolic value of his keys jingling: "It was a promise I repeated to myself every day," he says, holding back tears.
*Lucia, a 14-year-old teenager who fled with her journalist mother, chose three stuffed animals from her childhood. She could not take her guitar, flute, nor her books or watercolors.
"She doesn't play with them anymore," said *Carmen, her mother. "She has them as if on an altar, among posters of her favorite singers. It's her way of remembering that she was happy, even though now she is far from home."
There is also Óscar Navarrete, a photographer for La Prensa, who still has the boots, backpack and hat he wore when he crossed the border. "Each print on my boots is a story of struggle," he says.
*Ana, a doctor and feminist activist, keeps intact the sneakers with which she was expelled by a patrol in Peñas Blancas, on the Costa Rican border. "I went to many marches with them. With them I will return," she says firmly.
The young poet and journalist José Cardoza brought with him a Kodak camera inherited from his grandfather. "I learned to communicate with that camera before I could speak. Today it connects me with the memory of my family," he shared.
And *Raul J. keeps a picture of the last Christmas spent with his grandparents, taken a month before leaving. Both passed away two years later. "It's painful, but essential not to forget," he said in a low voice, trying to contain himself.
The intimate corner of *Lucia: she prioritized in her backpack objects that represent her happy childhood in Nicaragua Image: La Prensa
Nobody leaves because they want to
On October 30, Linda Núñez, sociologist and coordinator of Education and Memory of the Human Rights Collective Nunca Más (Never Again), presented in San José the report Nadie se va porque quiere. Voces desde el exilio (Nobody leaves because they want to. Voices from exile), an investigation by Eduardo González Cueva and María Alicia Álvarez based on the testimonies of 40 people displaced by repression.
The study, supported by the Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative (Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos, in Spanish) and American Jewish World Service (AJWS), documents how the Nicaraguan regime's persecution has forced thousands to flee: activists, opponents, journalists, human rights defenders. The crackdown that followed the April 2018 protests was the tipping point.
More than 800,000 people have left the country. Some fled after death threats, others after arbitrary arrests or constant surveillance.
Of those interviewed, 45 per cent managed to barely prepare for their departure. The rest fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The experience of exile, the report points out, fractures life projects, separates families, destroys stability and leaves a wound that never heals.
The stories describe anguish, guilt, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Many also face xenophobia and discrimination in their host countries, with no access to psychological support.
Even so, 87.5 per cent report that they dream of returning, despite knowing they will return to a different Nicaragua.
"This report documents crimes against humanity," said Núñez. "The Ortega-Murillo regime has destroyed not only individuals, but also their environments." Among the testimonies, one stands out: an exile keeps the key to his house as a symbol of hope. "Only the body passes, but the soul stays on the other side," said Núñez.
A Nicaraguan family hid their passports in a chess box to avoid the army seizing them on their migratory route Image: La Prensa
Sailboat and anchor
The objects that exiles carry are not only memories: they are sailboats that push them forward and anchors that tie them to what they were. This is how Mexican psychologist Perla Guerra explained it to *Castro when he asked her about the emotional meaning of his keys. "An object is a treasure if it gives you hope and comfort. If it causes you suffering, maybe you haven't healed enough," she told him.
Specialists agree that these objects help exiles process migratory mourning, maintain memories and reconstruct identities broken by exile. But they warn that excessive attachment can also hinder adaptation.
*Carmen, mother of *Lucia, received the recommendation to carefully observe how her daughter interacted with her stuffed animals.
"They can be a source of comfort, but if there is an inordinate attachment, you have to create an environment that gives her security without being trapped in the past," she was advised.
In December 2024, Mexican journalist Patricia Mayorga - displaced by violence in Chihuahua - shared her experience at a meeting on migration in San José. She asked attendees to take with them the objects they had carried in their exodus and to tell their stories.
Keys, backpacks, photos, amulets, books...were piled on the table, each with its emotional charge. "These objects," said Mayorga, "help to cope with the transition, but it is also necessary to learn to let go in order to heal."
She herselfhad filled her home in exile with memories of Chihuahua. This transformed her surroundings into a space of gratitude rather than nostalgia.
"I didn't make an altar to cry," she said. Instead, the exercise opened up a necessary debate: to what extent is it healthy to hold onto such objects? How do they influence our ability to heal?
*Castro was also there. He had returned from California to join his family in Costa Rica. He said that, with pain, he decided to send back to Nicaragua the keys he had been carrying since his first day of exile. The police had begun to harass his family and he feared for them. So, he handed over control of the house to relatives.
It was his way of coming full circle. To accept that he might not open that door again, but also to take one more step toward the reconstruction of his life. The metallic sound of the keys, which once accompanied him as a promise, is now just an echo that belongs to another life.
*The real names have been changed for security reasons.
This text is part of the series Contar el Exilio (Narrating the Exile), produced in collaboration with DW Akademie, the Institute for Press and Freedom of Expression (IPLEX) and the Latin American Network of Journalism in Exile (RELPEX). This series, in turn, is part of the Space for Freedom project within the framework of the Hannah Arendt Initiative, funded by Germany's Federal Foreign Office.