Álvaro Leiva: the man of the white flag
Doctor Álvaro Leiva has earned prominence in recent months. As head of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH) he keeps track of the victims of government repression and strives to save lives.
July 8, 2018
This article was translated by Katie Scaief and myself. Click on title for original article in Spanish, published in La Prensa.
Álvaro Leiva measures one meter and 60 centimeters tall [5 feet 3 inches] and has a trustworthy face. Two and a half months ago his image wasn’t significantly well-known, but now most Nicaraguans would be able to recognize him on the street. He has been seen traveling on the roads of Masaya with a white flag, mediating in the middle of hostage exchanges, freeing prisoners and even sobbing uncontrollably after the bloody repression the City of Flowers [Masaya] suffered during the crisis Nicaragua is experiencing.
Now the white flag has become part of his image. When he carries it with him, in the middle of shootouts, he believes it strengthens him. He holds it tight to his body and feels it’s as if he “receives powers,” as if the flag transforms him into a species of Hulk, immune to the bullets, the mortars, and the rocks. However, deep down he knows this isn’t true and he is also fearful, just like any other human aware of mortality would be in these circumstances.
On January 2015 he took on the role of executive secretary of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH), a task that the bishop of Estelí, Abelardo Mata, put in his hands when the ANPDH was only operating in the northern part of the country. Now the association has grown nationally and internationally, and has taken the lead in keeping track of the number of dead, disappeared, and injured that the repression of the government of Daniel Ortega causes on a daily basis.
In recent months Doctor Leiva has earned the affection of the people (although he is not without those who wish him harm or even send him death threats), and it is those very people who took him out of the street to protect him when, armed with his white flag, he has acted to stop the bullets that kill the inhabitants of Masaya. He often feels hopeless, he affirms, and he wishes he could become a protagonist of one of those superhero movies he used to watch so often when he had time to watch TV.
Now he spends his days monitoring news, responding to journalists’ phone calls, visiting cities that are under attack by police and paramilitaries, responding to mail and reading the mass of messages that he receives on a daily basis because his phone numbers are in the public domain: some 2,400 just in WhatsApp, without counting traditional SMS text messages. The messages are grievances of every kind and level of severity, such as sightings of what are now sadly called “death squadrons,” looting, assaults, disappearances, shootings, tortures, and murders.
Since last April 18, Álvaro Leiva has lost 25 pounds, sleeps an average four hours a night and never turns off his cell phone. He can’t shake the feeling that not responding to a call could mean the difference between life and death for more Nicaraguans.
[Photo caption] June 21, 2018. Father Edwin Román, (in black, on the left) and doctor Álvaro Leiva welcome the bishops of the Episcopal Conference, who traveled to Masaya with the aim of stopping a new massacre.
The priest and the lawyer
Father Edwin Román, parish priest of the San Miguel church and doctor Álvaro Leiva are like Batman and Robin; although the priest couldn’t say which of the two is Batman. In his view they have complemented each other in the work of saving lives and freeing prisoners in Masaya, the town they both live in; one of the cities most besieged by the government police and paramilitary forces.
A few weeks ago they ran half a block arm in arm, under a rain of bullets and mortars. They needed to arrive urgently at the San Miguel parish, because when they returned from freeing prisoners from El Chipote they had been informed that in the Church, the cadaver of a shoemaker who had recently been shot in a confrontation was awaiting them. That day they saw the possibility of murder up close. They also encountered it the time an AK-47 bullet pierced the doctor’s house while the priest was visiting him.
They met each other two and a half years ago, when father Román came to Masaya and by coincidence or destiny he officiated the funeral mass of María del Pilar Sánchez, Álvaro Leiva’s mother. Following this mass they became friends. Afterwards, the priest asked Leiva to help in his campaign in service of the population that had been repressed and assassinated in protests.
From there, various circles in Leiva’s life came together. As a youth he had wanted to become a priest, and now he works shoulder to shoulder with the priest who officiated the mass of his mother, the woman who on her deathbed took his arm and told him, “Son, never forget to speak for those who don’t have a voice.”
“God called him to this Human Rights mission, which is immensely humanitarian. (Álvaro Leiva) is a very humble man, very human, very Christian, with a very close family. A man of prayer and communion. I have seen in him a deep empathy towards the people. He is a man who saves lives, who risks his life under bullets.”
Father Edwin Román, parish priest of San Miguel
Origins
Álvaro Leiva Sánchez comes from two families of business owners; his parents lived from the businesses, as did his grandparents. However, he didn’t inherit talent for the trade. Long before being a human rights advocate, he tried his luck operating a storage warehouse for baggage in the Mercado Oriental [a large market in Managua], but the crisis of the ‘90’s affected him and his project failed.
Before that he lived in Guatemala, having migrating there in 1988 after abandoning a career in medicine and marrying Maydana Modesta Martínez, the woman who prevented him from ever becoming a priest. On Guatemalan soil he got work as a messenger and custodian of a photography business, and by his third year he was already manager of sales.
In 1995 he decided to return to Nicaragua and he tried his hand as a businessman. After his [baggage] business’ debacle he went to look for opportunities in the United States, where he worked in construction and once again rose to become the lead responsible for the projects. In 2003 he returned to his country, and at age 40 he began to study law, the profession for which he is now called “doctor.”
When he began his career as a human rights activist he began to appear in the media and his mother, he remembers, loved to see him on television. She died at age 69, a victim of cancer, just four months after her son took on the role of executive secretary at the ANPDH after six years as a legal advisor of the Permanent Commission of Human Rights of Nicaragua (CPDH).
It was May 1st in the morning and it was “raining heavily,” doctor Leiva remembers- although in reality that winter [rainy season] was chaotic and in May it didn’t actually rain. Mrs. María died at 5:30, and her son felt her pass when her fingers stopped pressing his arm. After that only “a void” remained, he says, wiping his tears with a handkerchief. “A void combined with sadness.”
Still, they had time before her death to talk about the future she would not see. And his mother was able to give him her final recommendations. She asked him to be the voice of those who are never heard and he promised to never abandon whoever needed him.
Childhood, and seminary interrupted by love
Leiva’s family in Monimbó is popularly known as “the monkey Leiva’s.” In Masaya everyone get a nickname, laughs doctor Leiva. His paternal grandfather, Mr. Nicolás Leiva, used to tell him that from time immemorial they earned the nickname for being “indigenous, short, having small foreheads, and having lots of hair.” “I have a forehead. I’m more modern,” the secretary of the ANPDH roared with laughter.
Although his family is from Masaya, he was born at Hospital El Retiro, in Managua, on July 15, 1963. It was Monday, the day that “even chickens don’t lay eggs,” and he entered the world at 6:15 in the morning. “That’s why I’m a sleepyhead,” those close to him used to tell him. “But now I haven’t slept well for about 11 years, since I began my work in human rights,” he commented.
He passed the first nine years of his life in Managua, then after the 1972 earthquake the Leiva Sánchez family saw it necessary to move to Masaya to survive working in business.
There in the “City of Flowers”, Álvaro Leiva met David Noguera, Walter Lacayo and a young man with a soft voice named Silvio José Báez. Beginning in 1982 they would hang out in the afternoon in Silvio’s mother’s house. There they drank soda, ate cookies, prayed, and encouraged each other in the “priestly vocation” because the four of them wanted to be priests. Three of them achieved it.
The path for Álvaro was another: that of marriage. He knew it the first time he saw Maydana: fair, thin, with light eyes and brown hair, sitting in the doorway of her house, a very Masayan custom.
He was riding his bicycle through the San Jerónimo neighborhood when he saw her and he quickly invented a strategy: pretend to repair his bike chain until the two of them could make eye contact. After that, he found an excuse every day to pass down that street, and in no time this turned into love.
“She is a good mother, a good daughter, a good sister, and a good wife. My mother would tell her jokingly, ‘You are a heroine for putting up with Álvaro’s character.’” doctor Leiva confessed, and he acknowledged that he’s a bit rigid. He likes to do things the way that he planned them and if he can’t, he loses patience. He doesn’t tolerate irresponsibility or that anyone waste his time by not being punctual.
He used to argue with irresponsible people, but “as I get older I’m becoming more understanding,” he reassures. “One learns to be flexible.”
Maydana continues to be understanding, and for that she has never asked him to leave the cause of human rights, even though she knows that her husband’s work brings with it many risks. For his part, Álvaro continues to be religious. As a reminder of his earlier priestly aspirations he goes to mass every Sunday and for all things in his life he thanks “God and the holy Virgin.”
Times of the dictatorship
The night of April 18, Álvaro Leiva was going over documents related to the subject that concerned him most in that moment: deprivations of liberty in the penitentiary system — men who already should have been freed but remained imprisoned. He was in the middle of this when social media exploded with images and videos of youth and journalists being beaten by government riot police in [the street of] Camino de Oriente and outside of the Central American University.
The images moved him, but they did not surprise him. For years he had maintained that in Nicaragua there was a dictatorship, and for a long time he had denounced recurring violations of human rights. He had even seen in his dreams the social chaos that the country is now confronting in reality. He comments, “Not like a premonition, but as something that could be seen coming.”
Since that day he has not had peace. He doesn’t sleep well, he doesn’t eat well, and he doesn’t have time to entertain himself with Netflix. He doesn’t stop counting the dead, the injured, the tortured, and the disappeared. Besides, he knows that he has to be ready to send alert messages, like he did last June 21, when at 5:30 am he informed the media that the city of Masaya had awoken under attack, and his efforts contributed to the bishops’ journey from Managua to Masaya to [try to] avoid a new massacre.
That day Nicaragua saw him cry like a child as he sobbed, “They are massacring my town.” Afterwards doctor Leiva did not leave the priests; he went from barricade to barricade and in the police station he participated in the negotiation of the cease-fire. He carried his white flag.
Career in Human Rights
Twelve years ago Álvaro Leiva took his first steps towards becoming a defender of human rights. He did so in the Democratic Federation of Public Service Workers, where he worked as secretary of Labor Issues and Human Rights.
In 2009 he began to give legal and technical aid in the Permanent Commission of Human Rights of Nicaragua (CDPH), and three and a half years ago he took on the role of executive secretary in the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH), which he assumed after meeting Abelardo Mata, bishop of the Diocese of Estelí and honorary president of the association.
Since January 2016 he has been an honorary delegate for Nicaragua and Central America for the Human Rights and International Missions Program of the Canadian Human Rights International Organization (CHRIO).
The ANPDH recently earned the French-German Award for Human Rights in Nicaragua, granted by the Ambassador of France.
