Alex Enrique Machado Vásquez (El burrito)
25 Years Old - Worker
Alex Enrique Machado Vásquez
“He wanted to fight for a free Nicaragua for his children”
Murdered in León on July 5, 2018
Alex Enrique Machado Vásquez, who was 25 when he was killed, wanted to see a free Nicaragua. His mom, Luisa Emilia, says that he was a good boy who helped her and was committed to her. He also really loved his sister Mayling and was a good dad to his two sons, four-year-old Alexander Caleb and ten-month-old Alex Gamaliel.
His mother and sister describe him as a very popular guy who never got upset when people played jokes on him. He was known affectionately as “el burro” (the donkey) because he was tall and big with curly hair and a dimply smile. His mother says that he was calm and that everyone loved him. When he had no work he went to the corner of the street to joke around, play ball and play cards for bets. He was in a soccer team that had won trophies and also included Junior Gaitán, one of the guys murdered in Masaya. He worked for eight years as a builder’s assistant in the Navy at Puerto Sandino but resigned four months before his death.
Luisa Emilia recalls that Alex became fully involved in the roadblocks almost at the end because he wanted to see a free Nicaragua. “I don’t want my sons to live through this kind of situation,” he told his mother. The indigenous neighborhood of Sutiaba was full of roadblocks and Alex went around them all. The closest one was at the corner, half a block from his house.
It was there that Alex was murdered at nine in the morning on July 5. “The Clean-Up Plan was coming from the Municipal Slaughterhouse, and there were roadblocks all along that route,” explains his sister Mayling. “A bulldozer with a sniper on top came along knocking down the roadblocks and the Police and paramilitaries came shooting. At the corner, the paramilitaries pulled guys out of their houses and beat them, then they went into the houses and stole everything. They stole a motorbike, cell phones, money, sodas, everything, from a lady who has a local store.”
On their block the people closed their doors on the police officers and paramilitaries, who entered firing their weapons. Alex’s mother leaned out into the street and heard a woman shouting, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!”
“Then I see a girl who was running directly towards me with my brother,” she recalls, choking up. “He keeps looking at me, hugs me and says, ‘You’ve got to be strong.’ ‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘Because they killed “el burrito” (the little donkey),’ he tells me. I never imagined they’d kill my son!”
“Before they killed my son,” she continues, “I went to the roadblock on the corner where he was. I said, ‘Let’s go, love, let’s go. They’re coming with weapons.’ ‘No, mom,’ he tells me. ‘I want my Nicaragua to be free. My sons aren’t going to grow up like this.’”
“They shot Alex about four blocks from our house,” explains his sister, “and the first bullet hit him in the stomach. He was alive when they put him in the pick-up truck, but at the morgue he had nine bullet wounds: three in his abdomen, three in his chest and three in the head.”
Alex’s wake and burial took place under fierce police harassment. Mayling says that they could only hold the wake for two hours: “We didn’t have time to hold a vigil because the Police kept passing by. The burial was at eight in the morning. In less than five minutes they changed my life completely.”
As Luisa Emilia concludes, “When they take a child from you, they take away a part of your soul. I want justice.”
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