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At six o'clock in the afternoon, La Prensa press is a huge sleeping monster. The Goss Urbanite, with nearly 50 years of life and 18 modules of rodos and pine nuts occupies a huge gallery that, at that time, remains in the shadows. Basically, twenty rolls of paper are stacked on top of each other. They are the last left.
The press, with 93 years of life, It is the oldest newspaper in Nicaragua and could live its last months. At least in its printed version. His agony is not due to the bloody global battle between digital and print, not even the economic crisis that strikes all businesses. Your executioner has a name and a first name: Daniel Ortega. And his method of execution is the drowning by the retention of the paper and the ink that gives it life.
In the same situation, The new newspaper, another national circulation newspaper, and the popular newspaper Today & # 39; hui.
Since last September, the government of Daniel Ortega decided to keep the paper, the ink and other entries that import print media. "These are orders from above"Customs officials say when they are asked for an explanation.
"What they want is that people do not have access to information. They have a lot of media that describe a reality as they wantn ", explains the journalist Eduardo Enríquez, editor of La Prensa for 20 years." We had to reduce the size of the editions. Let's go from 36 pages to 24 and now to 12 extend life a little longer with paper in inventory. "
The newspaper is already exhausted. The newspapers have survived until now by using other types of paper that they had in their presses for other publications. A more expensive paper. In this way, Nicaraguans receive some emaciated newspapers that appear for the moment in semi-adherent paper. Then they will use the glossy paper reserves that will mark the final phase of the forms. Then death will come. This process could last about two months, depending on the vicissitudes that everyone intends to survive.
Douglas Carcache, Deputy Director of The new newspaper, said that they tried to buy other companies that import paper for other purposes and that they all refused because they claim to have been warned by the government they can not sell paper in El Nuevo Diario and La Prensa.
Carcache recognizes that paper retention has been a blow to his diary. "We have suffered a double blow, on the one hand the retention of paper and on the other hand the economic crisis that affects all companies.Some companies have closed or reduced their advertising and marketing budgets.
The New newspaper drastically reduced his page and works, and closed Q & # 39; Hubo, a popular tabloid of the same media company. "We have decided to give priority to the traditional newspaper, because at the moment, people are interested in what is happening and the traditional media are the benchmark for credibility," said Mr. Carcache.
The wave of demonstrations that began last April and the violent reaction of the Ortega regime, the numbers in the media started to increase. The prints run out fast and the web reads double. "It's funny," reflects Carcache, "we are at the best time to do journalism but we are at the worst moment for freedom of expression"
During the dictatorship of Somoza, The press He suffered closures, harbadment and at the end of the war he was even set on fire and bombed by air force planes. In January 1978, its director Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, He was killed by thugs when he went to the newspaper.
The Sandinistas also submitted to The press censorship and closures in the 1980s. However, she was Chair of the Board of Directors of The press, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, widow of the badbadinated director, who defeated Daniel Ortega in the 1990 elections. This defeat marked the end of the Sandinista revolution.
"In no dictatorship we had kept the role, as now"says Jaime Chamorro, brother of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and current director of La Prensa." In the 1980s, when we ran out of paper, the same government sold us Russian paper. Maybe because they were more interested in dollars, "he calculates.
Drowning by paper retention is almost the same recipe applied by the Nicolás Maduro regime to independent impressions in Venezuela. Last December, the print version of the newspaper stopped appearing The National, One of the few print media in circulation in Venezuela, as a result of the economic sanctions and hardships the government imposed on paper imports.
On January 18, La Prensa launched a desperate cry to publish its blank blanket with a single caption below: "Did you imagine living without information?"In the editorial of that day, he said:" With the seizure of 92 tons of paper, ink, plates, rubber, developer and spare parts for the press, the scheme endangers the dissemination of the printed version of the Journal. The intention is clear, that the independent print media stop circulating in Nicaragua. "
"We will fight to the point where we can and with all the legal resources we have and will continue to bring the news to our readers.We are studying the adjustments that can be made to last as long as possible." said Chamorro.
Chamorro explains that they have resorted to the law twice. The Customs Court ruled in favor of releasing the role of the media, but Customs refuse to publish the document "because it is an order of the presidency".
Internet is the refuge. The journalist Eduardo Enríquez said that La Prensa had been preparing for a few years for the digital platform to dominate, but recognizes the importance of reading the printed form in Nicaragua. "People are reading on paper and looking for it, what has happened here is that the government has artificially blocked the entry into the paper, if we have exhausted the remaining paper inventory and that the regime did not decide to publish it, we would go to one hundred percent digital. It would send many people who are not directly connected to the new generation to unemployment: agents, voceadores"
This poses a dilemma to impressions in Nicaragua: How to survive digitally in a country where only two out of ten people have access to the Internet, the lowest rate in Central America? So much The press as The new newspaper recently started charge for reading on the web as a way to survive those bad times. However, Enriquez says that with the number of subscribers that the newspaper has up to now is insufficient to keep up, if the form were to go away.
The retention of paper on the print media is part of a darker image. Sign up for a offensive that the Ortega regime maintains against independent media. During this crisis, a journalist, Angel Gahona, was killed while he was covering a demonstration. Miguel Mora and Lucía Pineda Ubau, two well-known journalists, were imprisoned on TV News of one hundred percent, imprisoned and prosecuted. The buildings of Hundred percent News and the newspaper Confidential, by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, are occupied militarily without any legal explanation. Some 60 journalists went into exile to protect their lives and their freedoms.
Don Jaime Chamorro hopes that Daniel Ortega will honor his commitment to release the role he has kidnapped in negotiations with the opposition. "I hope it happens," he said hopefully. Assure that Ortega will not see him die The press. "It will be a hundred years old," he says.
Álvaro Rivera, Head of Printing The press, has 32 years of management of the mechanical monster that's the rotary. As if it was a dragon tamer, Rivera boasts of Goss Urbanite. "It started with four modules and we added modules and improved them."
For the moment, Rivera is the only soul wandering in the darkened gallery. A year ago, at the same time, everything was moving in the press. "We work at a capacity of 20%"Rivera said, the press printed six hours in a row and the rest of the time was spent on maintenance. he works only two hours and we even said goodbye to the maintenance staff. We do it ourselves, "he explains.
At nine o'clock in the evening, the metallic monster will spread with rhythmic rattles. The smell of fresh ink will come back and, even for a while, as it's been half a century, she will throw up the papers of tomorrow.
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