The Government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, will withdraw the legal status of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, a decision that will lead to the inevitable dissolution of the institution. The Government has taken the measure with respect to the Academy and 83 other civil society companies, legally considered NGOs, considering that they have failed to comply with the laws on the matter, including not registering in the registry of “foreign agents”.
It is difficult to justify that reproach considering the history of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, which was founded in Managua in 1928, by order of the Nicaraguan Legislature. Since then, the institution has worked uninterruptedly in coordination with the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE). In its current composition appears the writer Sergio Ramírez, former prime minister of Nicaragua in the first governments of Daniel Ortega, sentenced to prison and exiled last fall.
“The Nicaraguan government is not only going against the Academy, it is going against any possibility of free thought in the country,” Venezuelan Francisco Javier Pérez, director of ASAE, told EL MUNDO. “They have identified the dissidence of Ramírez, of Gioconda Belli and, before, of Segi Cardenal with a political sense of the Academy, something that has never existed institutionally. The first action against the Academy was to consider it an NGO. That is already very inaccurate Now, by withdrawing its legal status, it puts operational limitations on it. You cannot have a bank account, for example. But a language academy is not a legal status, nor is it a current account, nor four walls, which in fact, have never existed. , because the Nicaraguan Academy has never been helped to have a headquarters nor does it receive a penny in subsidies. If necessary, an academy can live in a cafe, as was the case a century ago.”
Pérez clarifies that his Nicaraguan colleagues have so far not suffered personal attacks or acts of intimidation, although he is concerned about them. However, he considers the cancellation “a very serious act that repeats the recipe that we have already seen in Cuba and in Venezuela with universities and cultural institutions.”
The Nicaraguan Academy has responded to the Government’s measure by denying the accusations and publishing a report summarizing its current work. His colleagues from ASALE and the Royal Spanish Academy have launched an alarm to save the institution. “The RAE, which defends the freedoms of thought, expression and association as the first values of any system of coexistence, strongly supports and vindicates the legitimate right of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language to serve its fellow citizens and to make possible the participation of Nicaragua , in terms of equality, in the preservation of the superior cultural asset both of the nation itself and of the community of nations and peoples that share the same language, today the common heritage of almost six hundred million people around the world”, has spread the Spanish Academy in a statement.
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