“La dictadura no puede ocultar la verdad,” read the last words of a defiant frontpage headline last year in La Prensa, the near century-old Nicaraguan daily, one of Central America’s most venerable newspapers. The dictatorship can’t hide the truth!

Denied supplies of paper and ink, that headline, on the morning of August 12, 2021, was the last time La Prensa appeared in print. Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president since 2007, had, since violent protests in 2018, been tightening his already vice-like grip on the country’s throat, squeezing the life out of its once voluble press. La Prensa might be going out of print, the headline asserted, but it was still in business.

As La Prensa prepared to go digital, their newsroom was seized by police. Renata Holmann texted her father, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, the newspaper’s publisher, to say she was proud of him and his efforts to keep the paper running. “Don’t worry,” Holmann texted his daughter back, “I will be okay.”

On August 14, 2021, in the early hours of the morning, Holmann was detained. He was held in pretrial detention until March, when behind closed doors he was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to nine years in prison. His cousins, Cristiana Chamorro Barrios and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, both on La Prensa’s board, were also imprisoned by judges that week for money laundering and the misappropriation of funds.