Tortilla con Sal, May 28th 2020
Interview with Arlen Hernandez,
journalist with Tu Nueva Radio Ya
23 April 2020
Tortilla con Sal : Arlen, you were present the day the coup promoters attacked the facilities of Tu Nueva Radio Ya, on May 28th, 2018. Can you tell us about the attack and also explain some of the context in which it happened?
Arlen Hernández : In reality, a media like this requires all our effort and talent, everything that we have learned both from the university and in practice. And referring a little to that terrible situation in 2018 in the attempted coup d'état, someone might ask why attack Tu Nueva Radio Ya? And it's a very simple reason.
Tu Nueva Radio Ya, since its inception, has always represented the interests of our people. It has always been on the side of our people in difficult moments and also in happy moments. But even more so when a response is required. That's why Tu Nueva Radio Ya, since its creation in 1990, has always held the first place in audience approval and that's why big business has blocked us financially because even though their advertising may be successful on Tu Nueva Radio Ya, they simply don't give it to us because we represent the Nicaraguan people and because we are Sandinista, because we have Sandinista criteria, which is to say, we defend the rights of our people.
Since 1990 Tu Nueva Radio Ya has always been like that, as I said through good times and bad. Remember that here when the landslide of Las Casitas occurred, a Sandinista mayoress from Chinandega, from that place, denounced the disaster via Tu Nueva Radio Ya, at that time Dr. Arnoldo Alemán was President and he did not listen. He turned a deaf ear and did not listen to the denunciation and the call for help that this population was making in the area of Las Casitas and unfortunately approximately 3000 people died there, or a little more, we don't know because there are no details.
This is why Tu Nueva Radio Ya, even before April 2018, was suffering cybernetic attacks, attacks to discredit our work. As you know, Nicaragua shares the idiosyncrasies of Latin Americans, laughing or making a joke of the situations that happen to us. If I were to fall down now, perhaps you would laugh if the images were broadcast, but... we laugh at everything, and really Tu Nueva Radio Ya, in addition to publicizing the political, economic and social news, is also attentive to the situations that families are experiencing, to traffic accidents, to the hospitals, to the people who have been admitted, to those who do not know about bodies that have been abandoned for a month or two and the families do not know.
So, from this concept of social service, Tu Nueva Radio Ya had already won the affection of the people regardless of religious creed, political thought or social status. Everyone here listens to us. So even when there is a catastrophic situation, like an earthquake, then everyone puts on Tu Nueva Radio Ya because they know we have the immediate news. One of the main characteristics of Tu Nueva Radio Ya besides the social service is the immediacy of its news, what happens both nationally and internationally. If right now there was, shall we say, the eruption of a volcano, an earthquake, a big airplane accident, here we are going to say it, here we are going to say it first so that everyone can know.
So, even before April 18thl, we were suffering from cyber attacks with the aim of taking us off air, of eliminating us completely. Through the social networks, our journalism was being deprecated in order to argue for or justify the burning of Tu Nueva Radio Ya. But not only the infrastructure of Tu Nueva Radio Ya, also the workers who were inside. It was a way of saying "they make fun of the people, they do a bad job, so we have to burn them".
From that point of view, they set out to burn all of us to death, more than twenty-two workers who were there, unarmed, and we were going to burn to death. That was the intention. And beyond that, also to silence the voice of the people. Because Tu Nueva Radio Ya always had its microphones open to everyone in difficult political, economic, and social situations of all kinds, Tu Nueva Radio Ya has always been present, including all through 1990 to 2006, when the People's conquests were reversed and the neoliberal model came with its fiercest claws, privatizing education and health.
There were no medicines in the hospitals. Here where the population came to bring their prescriptions and say "look we need this support" so from here we'd call on other people perhaps with greater resources, or who may have had this medicine to hand, for them to please bring it here to be able to resolve the people's problems. Or if if someone needed an MRI. Many people in the countryside came here to the city because there were no hospitals near them, no specialized centers, so they might sell their farm when many times those laboratory tests or examinations were not necessary. It was simply business for the people there in the hospitals. And people who didn't have a farm or a small cow to pawn or to sell would come to Tu Nueva Radio Ya and from here they were able to solve their problem. To give one example.
So also for children of scarce resources, families that perhaps did not have anything to eat, here we resolved their hardship. This is to say, not only is the fact of informing national and international news of service to people but also representing the rights of our people. And definitely, the failed coup d'état in Nicaragua, by those small groups, those puchitos, could not prevail and will not be able to prevails because the Nicaraguan people really have a strong consciousness.
And this is why we see that our National Police, our azulitos, continue to work guaranteeing the security of all families, without distinction, of making this country a bulwark in Central America against organized crime, against drug trafficking, in the same way that the Nicaraguan army also works very hard, working without rest around the clock. We also see the health system at work now addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nicaragua's socialist model, gives that battle via its effective health system. Today we reported the third person killed by this pandemic, by this virus. So far, 15 people are being monitored responsibly and carefully. There is no community transmission so far. From March 11th when the pandemic was declared until today, April 23rd, only 10 confirmed cases have been reported. Three have died, six have recovered, and one is currently being monitored and is being attended to by health authorities.
And I mention this because we do not defend a verbal model or a process of words, but one of actions and what we see from day to day. Here we also cover the distribution of property titles and what this represents is the security that no one is going to take away from you your plot of land, your lot, your house. Many times families have been waiting for more than 30 years for that document which allows them to live in their property without anyone taking it from them.
This is a right that has been restored. Some rich person may say, or some insensitive person may say, "that's the government's job", or build a highway from San Carlos in Rio San Juan to Acoyapa,"that's the government's job" or uniting the Pacific with the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, someone may say, "that's the government's job, that's why we pay taxes. But no. It is a matter of goodwill, and above all of guaranteeing that the commitments that government, in this case, the Sandinista Front, has always maintained with the People, are fulfilled because it is also a legacy of our heroes and martyrs.
We see the fulfillment of that idea today with free health, education, better housing, with access to land titles, with the fact that many families, enterprising women have the right to a healthy, fair credit free of usury.
That is a very important program that has to do with financing women, entrepreneurs, because on the amount a private commercial bank lends you, for example, a thousand dollars, they can charge you in annual interest between 10% to 15% and sometimes even more, annually. So that these programs financing women are revolving funds via a solidarity group, with say three or four women taking a loan.
If one of them fails, the rest of the group take on the debt and pay it off. And that's how it goes little by little and it's two percent interest for that loan. So there are possibilities to continue developing and boosting this family-based economy that is so vital, so important and which is reflected throughout neighborhoods through the sale of beans, of tortillas, the sale of food that is a daily thing here in Nicaragua. And that's why this government is determined to strengthen that family economy because it represents 80 percent of the national economy in Nicaragua
TcS : So, as you say, by defending all these achievements you became the targets of the coup plotters in April 2018...
Arlen : In 2018 there were five attempts by the coup promoters, in two of them, on May 28th when they burned us out and on May 30th when they finished off destroying the facilities. And really they were trying to kill off the collective of Tu Nueva Radio Ya, to destroy both the people who were inside the radio and the infrastructure with the intention of silencing the truth because that is how it is. The truth is on our side and we are not going to stop telling it. Regardless of the cybernetic attacks we continue to receive because they wanted to take down the web page that is on air 24 hours so that both nationals and those who are outside the country can have access to what our country lives, accessing the truth that we are transmit daily to our listeners and yes it is indeed an attack against the Truth. It is an attack against the interests of the people, because we represent that truth, that daily life of the Nicaraguan people.
TcS : You talk little or nothing about the personal aspect of the attack on Your New Radio Now. Can you tell us something about the impact of the attack on you personally?
Arlen : Well, I 'll tell you something. When it happened it was a little before twelve noon. We were at work and suddenly we saw in the monitoring room that that 100% Ashes or 100% Lies as people call it are saying that armed people were coming out of our facilities, when that was a lie, a fake report. It was false news. So immediately we went to the broadcasting cabin to report that situation and suddenly the shots started, Molotov cocktails, stones, attackers trying to enter the facility through the roof...
What was going through my mind? Some people may say I surely must have been afraid. But really I was angry, because I said to myself we don't hurt anyone. How is it possible that they have fallen into this situation? I was also thinking about my mother because she was at home always monitoring the media as is natural for Nicaraguans at lunchtime, they want to be informed. And I was saying to myself "I hope nothing happens to her..." And well, it di happen in the end. I think a consequence of all that stress back then was that she passed away last year.
So I was thinking of my colleagues and suddenly, several colleagues started crying. The guys who were in doing broadcasting were trying to help or see what was going on because we felt confused, we never expected that they would attack us, try to kill us, burn us. And well, I was in the broadcasting cabin denouncing what was going on. But I wasn't afraid, I was angry at the situation.
Also that one is left deep inside with the anguish of not really knowing what to do. Of course you do your job. You have to report it. But the fact that you feel vulnerable in that situation, that creates anguish and the way you react at the time over... What to do... How to help your colleagues who are in distress. It was a very terrible moment. It was very difficult.
However, we are still here, standing firm. We don't regret continuing with this work. We believe in what we are doing because we represent the truth and we speak the great truth which is what the life of Nicaragua's people.
TcS : Were you ever asked about what happened in the burning down of the radio, by human rights organizations, for example from the United Nations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or Amnesty International?
Arlen: At no time did anyone ask us what had happened to us from any national or international human rights organization. Much less from international news agencies and the local newspapers here that claim to represent truth and justice. They did not ask us about what happened. What's more, when the attack was happening, they were creating their images capturing everything that was happening so as to multiply it at a national and international level saying that Nicaragua's People were rising up, that is, distorting what was happening, distorting the fact that it wasn't Nicaragua's People attacking us.
It was a little bunch of coup mongers, bought and paid for, as we know, by the United States, by the United States embassy here in Nicaragua using large amounts of money to try to wreck the peace and stability created by the Sandinista government. That's all. In any case, nobody, none of the agencies or human rights organizations came to ask us what happened. None. No one.
TcS : And now how do you see the future?
Arlen: Two years after they wanted to see us killed and to put an end to Tu Nueva Radio Ya, we are still committed to this revolutionary process, to the government represented by the Sandinista Front, to the government represented by Comandante Daniel and Vice President Rosario. Because we are clear about the historical geopolitics of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean, against those nations with great resources, with strategic territories on the planet and which they, like fierce wolves, intend to destroy. We are clear who the enemy is, who the enemy is still and why they are doing it.
We know that they are looking for natural resources, as in the current situation in Venezuela, where they are trying to overthrow a government legitimately elected by the people. Why? Because before 1998, before President Chavez arrived, they were taking the oil without taxes. They were carrying it off and the only beneficiaries were some wealthy families, while the poor died of hunger.
And as we know Cuba has been fighting against this fierce economic and financial blockade since October 1962. They continue to fight on the basis of truth, on the basis of a model that really focuses on the human person. We are convinced that capitalism represents slavery, exploitation and the production of paper money. Socialism represents the human person in all their potential, all their talent to get ahead, in order to be prosperous both in physically and spiritually which is the Peace that we can feel from inside ourselves and that we can live on the outside always prioritizing humanity with social justice.