December 12, 2025
NicaNotes
December 12, 2025
Sharing the Bounty: Cultural Celebrations in Nicaragua Give Back
By Becca Renk Foster
(Becca Renk Foster is originally from Idaho, USA. For 25 years, she has lived and worked in sustainable community development in Nicaragua. She coordinates the work of Casa Benjamín Linder in Managua and serves on the coordinating committee of the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.)
Many Nicaraguan families and even government offices put up altars and distribute fruit, sweets and small gifts to neighbors to show gratitude for favors received during the year at the celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary Photo: Becca Renk
When 25-year-old Dayana Martinez graduated from university earlier this year and began applying for jobs in her field of graphic design, she made a promise to the Virgin Mary. For Martinez, who had been running her own printing business from home all through college, the chance to earn a steady salary and have health care and retirement benefits was important.
“If I get a job, I will give toys to children in December.”
Martínez got the job she applied for and has been setting aside a portion of her salary since to fulfill her promise to the Blessed Virgin. She has purchased toys for 50 boys and 50 girls, and will give them to children in a rural village. For Martinez, giving to others is a natural way to show gratitude. Growing up, she often accompanied her mother, who owns a café, in handing out plates of food in December to people who wash windshields at stoplights.
Martínez’ family isn’t the only one in Nicaragua with this tradition. Starting on the 30th of November when legally-mandated Christmas bonuses – equivalent to one month’s salary – are paid, Nicaraguans from all walks of life share their bounty in their communities.
This culture of giving back is inspired by celebrations of the biggest holiday of the year in Nicaragua, Purisima, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Patron of Nicaragua. The feast celebrates Catholic belief in Mary’s conception without original sin in the womb of her mother St. Anne so she could be a fitting mother of Jesus.
Purísima is a Catholic holiday, but over the past decade, Catholicism has plummeted in Nicaragua. Recent polls show that only 28.3% of Nicaraguans today identify as Catholics, as opposed to 94% in the mid-90s and 48.9% in 2017.
Today there is a rift between the Catholic hierarchy in Nicaragua and its abandoned base. This rupture started with the U.S.-led coup attempt in 2018, when violent criminals held the country hostage for months with thousands of road blocks. In addition to crippling the country’s economy and causing the loss of thousands of jobs, these roadblocks were centers of terrible violence where Sandinista supporters were beaten, raped, tortured and murdered with priests watching and sometimes participating in the horrifying violence. There is video evidence of priests storing weapons in churches, beating people, dousing people in gasoline, and directing gangs to disappear bodies.
Many of the bishops, priests, seminarians and lay people associated with the Church were later convicted of treason, money laundering and other crimes. They, as well as a priest convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl and another convicted of beating his girlfriend were released into the custody of the Vatican in late 2023 and early 2024, at the request of Pope Francis. The Nicaraguan people, however, had seen what the priests did with their own eyes, and have been less forgiving than the Holy See. Unsurprisingly, many parishioners have since turned away from the Catholic Church.
They are not, however, necessarily turning away from tradition and belief. Of those that have left Catholicism recently, polls show that about half turned to Protestant churches (38.3% of Nicaraguans are now Protestants), while the other half now identify as “believers with no denomination,” a category held by 33.3% of Nicaraguans today.
In fact, many young people like Martínez are picking up and carrying on Catholic cultural traditions, even while eschewing the Church. Purísima is the largest of these traditions.
The Blessed Virgin of the Immaculate Conception became the de facto patron of the country during Spanish colonization. According to Luis Morales, the Co-Secretary of Creative Economy, her image was first brought to the country by the captain of a Spanish fleet, Pedro Cepeda, who fell ill in route and stopped for several days in the port of El Realejo in Chinandega. Cepeda carried the image of the Immaculate Virgin in his luggage, and it was brought out of the ship’s hold while they were anchored to avoid damage. When Cepeda had recovered his health, he set sail once again, but was turned back by a storm.
“Three times he left with the intention of continuing his journey, and three times a storm turned him back, until Cepeda decided that the image of the Virgin wanted to stay in Nicaragua,” recounts Morales.
Another popular legend tells of an image of the Blessed Virgin of the Immaculate Concepcion at her namesake fort near Nicaragua’s southern border on the San Juan River. During an attack on the fort by English pirates, the image of the blessed virgin was taken out of the fort’s chapel, put into a wooden box and thrown into the river to protect it.
Instead of floating downriver as it would naturally have done, the box reappeared upriver and across Lake Nicaragua in Granada, where it floated past two women washing clothes. The box remained out of their reach, however, until a priest came along, opened it, and found the image of the Virgin. A cathedral was built in her honor in Granada.
With belief in these and other miraculous tales of the Blessed Virgin, the Nicaraguan people began to adopt her as their patron.
Originally, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 7 December was celebrated inside churches by praying the rosary. Afterwards priests would give the faithful food and drink. During the National War from 1852 to 1856, however, when Nicaragua was defending itself from William Walker and his U.S. mercenaries, the people were unable to celebrate the Feast.
As the war was ending, Morales says, Monsignor Gordiano Carranza in Leon decided to take the Purísima altars out into the streets and homes. Parishioners were worried about the danger of going door to door singing when violence was still rampant.
“The priest told them, ‘Go out in groups so you are not alone,’” says cultural researcher Wilmor Lopez. “When you run into another group, you shout ‘Who causes so much joy?’ And they will answer, ‘The Immaculate Conception of Mary!’ It will be a spiritual slogan.”
This was the first recorded instance of celebrating Purísima with the Gritería, the Shouting.
“This joy was meant to counteract the sadness of the war,” explains Morales. Since the 1850s, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception has been celebrated in the streets, in people’s yards and homes, with a characteristic spirit of joy that is vibrant enough to counteract the sadness and hardships of daily life.
People of all economic backgrounds make promises to the Virgin Mary, then scrimp and save all year to fulfill those promises by giving gifts to those who come to sing at the altars they put up on 7 December. Candy, toys, food, even Tupperware and plastic brooms are given to groups of carolers – as many as 5,000 people might visit a single altar in one night – in a tradition of sharing good fortune with the community.
In the 1980s, Nicaragua’s revolutionary government began the practice of public institutions sponsoring altars along Managua’s main street. Today, visitors from all over the country come to take in the incredible light display along the Bolivar to Chavez Avenue at night.
This year, amid fireworks, noise makers and singing, my family and I walked the length of the avenue with thousands of other families. We watched the Ministry of the Environment give trees to carolers, the Ministry of Electricity and Mines give out traditional candies at their altar of the Virgin flanked by wind mills, and the Ministry for the Promotion of Commerce and Industry handing out boxes of Kellogg’s cornflakes and traditional toasted corn drinks.
Driving home over cobblestones painted in the white and yellow colors associated with the Catholic Church, cheerful flags flew over entire blocks, confetti littered the streets, singing floated out over the hazy clouds of fireworks smoke, and even late into the night long lines of faithful waiting to sing to the Virgin – and receive gifts – stretched from houses with homemade altars. Nearly every second block there was a vibrant altar decorated with Christmas lights and madroño flowers, and next to it stood a family busy sharing their bounty with their neighbors.
The following day, none of the beauty, joy or even sheer numbers of the celebration were reported by the international press, who couldn’t decide whether the Nicaraguan government had “stifled or co-opted” Purísima celebrations amid what they called “intensifying persecution of religion” as reported by the “exiled priests and the U.S. government.”
This reaction from convicted criminals claiming to represent the people of Nicaragua is unsurprising, however, because what this year’s ongoing and growing celebrations demonstrate is the utter irrelevance of the Catholic Church hierarchy in the spiritual and cultural life of the country. They show that, in fact, Purisima doesn’t belong to the Church, it belongs the people of Nicaragua.
“This is how we Nicaraguans show our gratitude,” says Lopez. “I celebrate because the Virgin gave to me all year, because my harvest was good, because my sales were good…We Nicaraguans are grateful. Our humble, working people are grateful.”
Briefs
By Nan McCurdy
Nicaragua nearly as ‘safe’ as the United States
The 2025 Global Safety Index shows Nicaragua to be almost as ‘safe’ as the US, and is the safest place in Latin America except for Cuba and Panama: See link:
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_b ... id®ion=019
Ortega: US Must Cease Threats and Leave Venezuela in Peace
On December 9, at the graduation ceremony for 26 cadets as officers in the Nicaraguan Army, Co-President Daniel Ortega demanded that the US government stop threatening the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Sandinista leader said, “The US government has deployed military forces in different parts of the Caribbean, and it also has military units in the Pacific Ocean that are supposedly there to combat drug trafficking.” He continued, “Meanwhile, the US has been bombing small boats and dinghies that they say are carrying drugs without knowing whether they are carrying drugs or not. They simply see a small boat and sink it.” He noted that, at the same time, Bolivarian leaders and people have said very clearly, “We are defending peace.”
Ortega went on to say that, in contrast to the US forces, “The Nicaraguan army is protecting the border from drug traffickers. Soldiers are promoting and implementing programs to repair roads that are in poor condition in many places we have not yet managed to reach. They are preparing conditions so that vehicles traveling there can have better conditions when traveling, that is, doing road construction work so that when the pavement arrives, when the concrete arrives, the roads will be open.”
The Nicaraguan Co-President stated that Washington should focus on putting its own house in order. The US president will not solve anything by threatening Latin American countries, “because the problem lies there, in his own yard,” he said. (La Primerisima, 9 December 2025)
Tripling the Number of Agricultural Products for Export
The director of the Institute for Agricultural Protection and Health (IPSA), Ricardo Somarriba, reported that Nicaragua has gone from exporting only 22 agricultural products before 2007 to 61 certified products today, representing exponential growth driven by innovation, investment, and the opening of new markets. “Before, we were talking about 22 products. Today, we are talking about 61, and we continue to add more.” Eggs are a product that “we never thought could be exported, but thanks to the vision of businessman José Tapia, who installed two modern facilities with a capacity for 150,000 laying hens, enabled Nicaragua to export powdered eggs with a shelf life of two years to Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Cuba.”
Somarriba sees “a historic window of opportunity” due to the closure, on January 28, of one of the largest slaughterhouses in the United States, which processed 5,000 head of cattle per day. “The United States is comparing its current livestock levels with those of 1950. They don’t have enough meat. That’s where we come in,” he explained.
Currently, 70% of Nicaraguan meat goes to the US, much of it ending up in hamburgers sold by fast food chains. In terms of dairy products, exports to the US have grown from just 40 containers a few years ago to over 400 containers a year today, with a total of 3,348 containers shipped to various countries. In honey, the number of hives has grown from 25,000 to more than 50,000. Nicaraguan honey, which is high quality and comes from multiple flowers, is in high demand in Germany and the rest of Europe. These figures, which include a boom in coffee, sugar, and beef, position the country as a key player in global markets such as the US, China, and Europe, with 43.1% growth in agriculture. Nicaraguan red beans have multiplied their export impact in recent years, going from 358 quintals in 2019 to a projected 1.79 million in 2025, a 400% jump that reflects market diversification and IPSA-certified quality. (La Primerisima, 5 December 2025)
Increase in Owned Homes with Public Deeds
Beyond walls and roofs, true dignity comes from the security of knowing that the land and your home belong to you. The National Institute of Development Information’s (INIDE’s) 2024 Housing Characteristics Report reveals a momentous achievement: 64.2% of homes in Nicaragua are owned and have public deeds. This 1.1% increase over the previous year reflects the massive success of the titling and legalization programs promoted by the Sandinista government through the Attorney General’s Office. The country’s housing structure also shows strength: 99.2% of homes are individual houses, almost completely eliminating the precarious cardboard and plastic dwellings that were characteristic of the Somoza and neoliberal eras. Today, Nicaraguan families are building their future on their own legal foundations and have many more housing options than they did 60 years ago. Human development in Nicaragua is also measured by the modernization of services and equipment within the home. INIDE 2024 data reflects a country moving toward modernity and preventive health. There has been a qualitative leap in family health: 65.9% of households now use butane or propane gas for cooking, reducing the use of firewood and protecting the lungs of women and children. In addition, the quality of construction is evident: 94.9% of roofs are made of zinc; 41.3% of walls are made of cement or concrete blocks. According to the INIDE study, 92.2% of households have cell phones. Internet access exceeds the threshold of 50.9%. Electricity coverage in homes reaches 90.9% of the network and 6.1% with solar energy, and in terms of access to drinking water, 77.5% are connected to the public network, an increase of almost 1%; 10.2% are supplied by wells; 57.5% of households have televisions; 44.5% have cable TV service; 32.8% have color televisions; 25.8% of households have motorcycles; 24% use automatic washing machines; 11.4% have computers; 11% have their own car or truck; 5.1% have a conventional telephone. (Informe Pastran, 5 December 2025)
Government Guarantees Care for Nearly 17,000 Children in CDIs
The Ministry of Family Affairs provides comprehensive care for 16,900 children from the 276 Child Development Centers (CDIs) operating throughout the country. According to the deputy minister Henry Álvarez, children who finished third level of preschool (equivalent to kindergarten) received diplomas. Next year, the children will begin a new cycle of studies in primary school. “Simultaneously, the Ministry of Family Affairs has been holding these graduation events in all CDIs nationwide. This is part of the national early childhood policy,” said Álvarez. “From early childhood, we have multiple tasks to attend to. We coordinate with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education to measure height and weight in centimeters. We ensure that enrolled children have their birth certificates, receive snacks and lunch, and remain here while their parents work,” he said. (La Primerisima, 6 December 2025)
More than 407,000 Women Treated in Cancer Campaign
Through the Nora Astorga National Campaign for Early Detection of Breast Cancer, the Ministry of Health has treated 407,002 women over the age of 40 since October 13 of this year. The women have undergone clinical breast exams, ultrasounds, and mammograms. This coming December 10 marks the 77th anniversary of the birth of heroine Nora Astorga (who died of breast cancer), celebrating her life, struggle, and courage, reaffirming the commitment to continue protecting the health of Nicaraguan women. During the campaign, 19 women with breast cancer have already received specialized care before undergoing the appropriate treatment. (La Primerisima, 9 December 2025)
https://afgj.org/nicanotes-sharing-the- ... -give-back
