'Not even Orwell could have dreamed up a country like this': Journalists flee Nicaragua
On Father's Day last year, Octavio Enríquez shared pizza and soda with his two children. Then he told them he was leaving.
A Nicaraguan journalist known for rigorous investigations, his latest reporting had led him dangerously close to President Daniel Ortega, a former leftist revolutionary who ruled his nation — one of the poorest and most corrupt in the Western Hemisphere — with little mercy.
Enríquez, 42, was preparing a series of stories that exposed Ortega's links to nearly two dozen businesses that had received millions of dollars in government contracts. But the reporter worried he would be jailed before he could publish.
“Never be ashamed of your father," Enríquez said as he hugged his children and headed under cover of darkness for a border crossing. "I’m on the right side of history."
