Cristhiam Emilio Cadenas

“His dream was to graduate as an engineer”

Murdered on April 20, 2018, in León

Cristhiam Emilio Cadenas was 23 years old and studied agroecological engineering at the UNAN-León. He was a member of the UNAN University Center (CUUN). He liked soccer and played in the neighborhood league.

Alexander Sarria Cardenas notes that Cristhiam Emilio was always his brother, from the time his family adopted him the week he was born. Emilio, as he was known, was very popular among the students. “He was a happy person, a joker, and very compassionate. His dream was to graduate as an engineer,” he remembers.

Facts

On April 21, at around 2:00 in the afternoon, his girlfriend called me and said she’d been told about a burned body found at the billiard hall. I recognized his pants. He was taken to the morgue and they told us to get a coffin. We got one, and buried him,” explains his brother.

Questions about his death remain, and his brother has many. If the official investigation concluded that Emilio died because of inhaling toxic gases, why was his body completely burned but his clothing was not? Why was his body mutilated, without arms, legs or teeth? The regime maintains its story, blaming the protesters for burning the CUUN and for killing Cristhiam Emilio.

Alexander Sarria Cadenas recounts that on April 29, he received word that his brother Cristhiam Emilio “El Chino,” had disappeared. “I was worried and spent the day looking everywhere, but couldn’t find him,” he recalls. On April 20 in the morning, there was a huge demonstration near the Oscar Danilo Rosales Argüello Teaching Hospital (HEODRA), and there was a fire at the CUUN University (University Center of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, UNAN) in the afternoon, which reached the Lezama Billiard Hall. That night, everything was dark in León.

“I kept looking for him and returned again to the UNAN and the streets near the CUUN with the hope of finding him.