Gerald José Vásquez López

“The Dancer of the Barricades”

Murdered in Managua on July 13, 2018

Susana López Gutiérrez, mother of Gerald Vásquez, recalls that her son was 20 years old and was in his third year of studies for an Advanced Technical Degree in Construction at the UNAN. In addition to his university studies, Gerald had been a folkloric dancer since he was five years old. Folkloric dance was his passion and he always danced at activities. He also taught folkloric dance.

His sister, Paola Vásquez, described him as “a young man who was charismatic, friendly, responsible and respectful” of everyone. “His view was that what the government was doing with the students wasn’t right; he rejected the repression and the injustices toward the elderly in the pension law… He thought about his grandmother. He also cried a lot when he heard about the death of Richard Pavón. He felt that Richard was like his brother and that he couldn’t do anything to go help the young people that were protesting because he had to go out and sell to help his mother,” the young woman says.

On May 7, he joined the struggle for the autonomy of the university and he did so freely. In the barricades at the UNAN, they called him “the dancer of the barricades”.

Susana arrived at the Vivian Pellas Hospital on the morning of July 15 to identify the body of her son. “I couldn’t believe it. He had promised me that he was going to return. I couldn’t conceive of how the paramilitaries, the army and the police could go along with killing the youth. The way that I lost my son is so painful; I don’t understand how this government has killed unarmed young people. The students were fighting for university autonomy,” his mother says.

Gerald Vásquez died after being hit with a bullet fired by government troops into the interior of the Divina Misericordia Church, where more than one hundred students had taken refuge to escape a ferocious armed attack against the UNAN campus.

Facts

On July 13, 2018, the government implemented what they called Operation Clean-up in the National Autonomous University (UNAN) in Managua, using police and paramilitaries to block access to the area. They used weapons of war to attack the students who had been entrenched on the campus since the previous May 7. As part of the operation, a portion of the Arlen Siu Child Care Center was burned and the university campus was sacked by groups of violent Sandinistas.

The pastor of the Divina Misericordia Church decided to give refuge to the university students in the church, including Gerald Vásquez, in the midst of a ferocious armed attack by police and paramilitaries against the church premises, which lasted more than 10 hours. In the early morning hours of July 14, Gerald was shot in the head and was transported to the Metropolitano Hospital, and was dead on arrival.