Nicaraguan indigenous leader and former lawmaker Brooklyn Rivera has died in state custody at the age of 73, according to local media reports citing his family.
Rivera had been detained since September 2023, following his arrest during a wider government crackdown on political dissent. Authorities confirmed his detention only last week, after repeated demands for proof of life from his family, as well as the U.S. government and the United Nations. His relatives had previously said officials had neither acknowledged holding him nor allowed visits.
Images released alongside the confirmation showed Rivera in critical condition. Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry said he was suffering from multiple organ failure and a serious lung infection, and required mechanical ventilation. U.S. officials accused the government of attempting to deflect responsibility for his treatment.
A prominent figure in Nicaragua’s political history, Rivera led the Misurasata indigenous movement and later co-founded the Yatama party. Once an ally of President Daniel Ortega’s government, his party was barred from participating in elections in 2023.
Who was Brooklyn Rivera Bryan?
Brooklyn Rivera Bryan was born on September 24, 1952, in the Miskito community of Li Dakwra on Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast, according to SOS Defenders.
He began his activism in the 1960s and was a member of the indigenous organisation Miskito, Sumo and Rama Sandinista Alliance, known as MISURASATA, during the 1970s and 1980s. He was forced into exile in Costa Rica in 1980 after persecution by the Sandinista authorities.
SOS Defenders says Rivera later became a key figure in the armed Miskito resistance against the Sandinista government during the 1980s. He survived a military attack in January 1986 that killed three Indigenous people.
In 1987, he helped unify the Miskito resistance to form Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Asla Takanka, known as YATAMA. He also participated in peace negotiations that produced the Sapoá Agreement, which granted limited autonomy to Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast regions.
Between 1990 and 1994, Rivera served as minister-director of the Institute for Development of the Atlantic Coast under President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, according to SOS Defenders.
YATAMA entered electoral politics in 1990. A 2017 Cultural Survival article by Laura Hobson Herlihy said Rivera was elected as a deputy to Nicaragua’s National Assembly in 2007 through an electoral alliance with the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which lasted until 2014.
The FSLN-controlled assembly stripped him of his deputy status in 2015. He was re-elected as an independent in 2016 and again as a regional deputy in 2021.
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