When they were 30 days away from graduating from a technical career, 180 young people were left hopeless. Forty workers and teachers were left unemployed.
By Ivan Olivares (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – The cancellation of the legal status and registration of the Victoria Technological Institute (ITV), which was sponsored by the Nicaraguan Brewery Company, left around 180 students who were pursuing various technical careers in this educational institution, which had been authorized since 2013 by the National Council of Universities, in an educational and labor limbo.
The closure was unexpected. So much so that neither the administrative staff nor the teachers, and even less the students, knew about it until it was finalized, according to the testimonies of three students, JP, Rafael, and Anielka, as well as a teacher (Ignacio) and an administrative worker (Saul), who agreed to speak with CONFIDENCIAL on the condition that they be identified with pseudonyms.
The closure of ITV is “an outrage against the most deprived young population of Nicaragua,” says Professor Ignacio, considering the number of students who studied on scholarships, the quality of education they received, and the increased job opportunities their graduates had.
When they were just over 30 days away from graduating from their respective technical careers, the 180 students received the news of the closure of an institute where “neither the children of the Ortegas, nor the children of Sandinista entrepreneurs, and much less those of the Pellas family or other big businesspeople studied,” said the professor.
Those who studied there were “the son of the lady who sells tortillas, the daughter of the lady who sells cold water, the young man who gets up at four in the morning to load sacks at the Oriental market to have money for his bus fare to go to receive his technical specialization classes in a responsible institute,” says Ignacio, citing real cases.
“What the government did is a vile and blatant theft from Nicaraguan youth,” says Ignacio, without forgetting that the closure of the educational institution meant leaving almost forty workers unemployed, including teachers and administrative staff.
Ignacio had to emigrate abroad even before ITV closed, but so did Saul, a man of few words when talking to a journalist, who only limited himself to saying, “I’m looking for a job,” after working for such a prestigious entity as ITV.
At the end of 2018, the regime headed by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo first ordered their deputies in the National Assembly, and later the Ministry of the Interior, to cancel around 3,660 NGOs, including those that requested voluntary dissolution to get ahead of the guillotine.
The stories of JP, Rafael, and Anielka are marked by three common emotions: crying, anger, and uncertainty, plus a feeling of being victims of an injustice they cannot understand.
JP: It Was a Selfish Decision
I heard about ITV in 2022 from some friends I went to a fair with at the Olof Palme (Convention Center) to see what careers we could study after graduating high school. After completing the process, I was worried for a few days because my friends were being called to confirm they had been admitted, and I hadn’t heard anything. I thought, they got in, and I didn’t, so I prayed to God until they
