The Diplomat
Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez has received the nationalities of Colombia and Ecuador in Madrid in recent days, after Daniel Ortega stripped him of his Nicaraguan nationality as part of a crackdown on dissent.
Ramírez, who became vice-president of the Nicaraguan government under Daniel Ortega between 1985 and 1990, has long been highly critical of the former Sandinista leader and the drift the country is taking.
Based in Spain and holding Spanish nationality since 2018, Ramírez, together with his wife, Gertrudis Guerrero, took the oath of Colombian nationality on 29 August at the Colombian Embassy, in the presence of the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Álvaro Leyva, and the ambassador, Eduardo Ávila.
Leyva said that the nationality was granted to him for his contributions to the enrichment of culture and peace. The writer responded by saying: “Many thanks to President Gustavo Petro, and to you, Foreign Minister Leyva, for giving my wife Tulita and me a homeland, whose threshold we cross happily because we know that we have been on our own land since before. What has been taken from us with sinister hands, Colombia gives back to us with a generous hand”.
And yesterday, at the Ecuadorian Embassy, the country’s ambassador to Spain, Andrés Vallejo, handed Ramírez the Ecuadorian passport, after he received his nationality in July from the hands of the country’s president, Guillermo Lasso. In his X account, Lasso said it was an “honour” that the writer has Ecuadorian nationality and said it was “a tribute to freedom and a challenge to tyranny”.
For his part, Sergio Ramírez said he was “truly grateful and honoured” to receive the passport, in a further show of support for the more than a hundred opponents labelled by Ortega as traitors to the homeland and stripped of Nicaraguan nationality.
