Q COSTARICA — Brooklyn Rivera, a historic leader of the Miskito people and president of the indigenous Yatama party, died on May 30, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. in a Managua hospital, according to the Nicaraguan government.
Brooklyn Rivera had been detained for almost three years, since September 2023. According to official reports, Rivera died from health complications, although human rights organizations and family members maintain that the regime is responsible for his enforced disappearance for 971 days without providing any information about his whereabouts or condition.
On Friday, May 29, 2026, the United States government demanded the release of Brooklyn Rivera before his death in state custody on Sunday.
According to Confidencial Digital, the dictatorship concealed his death and initially refused to release his body. The online news portal operated by Carlos Chamorro, exiled in Costa Rica, reported that the dictatorship concealed the death of the Indigenous leader for more than fifteen hours. “It wasn’t until noon on May 31, 2026, that they acknowledged what had happened, but they didn’t say when or at what time he died. They also didn’t mention that he was a political prisoner and that they had kept him in enforced disappearance for almost three years,” reported Confidencial.
Deaths and Disappearances
The Brooklyn Rivera case is not isolated. There is some variation in the exact figures depending on the source—some report 6 deaths, others, like La Prensa, Nicaragua’s major newspaper, say 8, probably because different organizations use different criteria for counting cases.
What is clear is that Brooklyn Rivera’s death has intensified international pressure on Daniel Ortega’s regime and has brought renewed attention to the conditions of political prisoners in Nicaragua.
Brooklyn Rivera’s death in police custody immediately evoked the tragic patterns that preceded the deaths in state custody of fellow political prisoners Hugo Torres Jiménez, a historic guerrilla commander, in February 2022, and Humberto Ortega Saavedra, a retired army general and brother of dictator Daniel Ortega, in September 2024.
As for the disappeared, the situation is also alarming. According to Infobae, the regime published “proof of life” for only two political prisoners, but nine others remain missing. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS), reports at least 47 political prisoners and 11 disappeared persons in Nicaragua.