Nicaraguan dictatorship bans Bibles from entering the country

(ZENIT News / Managua, 12.17.2025).- At Nicaragua’s borders, a new and largely unpublicized line has been drawn. It is not only weapons, drones, or sensitive equipment that now risk confiscation, but printed words themselves. Among them, the Bible.

Travelers heading to Managua from neighboring Costa Rica are being warned before boarding buses that books, magazines, newspapers, and even religious texts may not be allowed into the country. Notices posted at bus terminals and advisories circulated by regional transport companies urge passengers to leave such items behind to avoid problems at the border. According to multiple transport operators, the restriction has been quietly enforced for several months.

For human rights advocates, the ban is not an isolated administrative decision but another piece in a broader pattern of state control. Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a UK-based organization that monitors freedom of religion or belief, has denounced the measure as part of Nicaragua’s sustained campaign against independent religious life and free expression. The organization has called on the country’s authorities to reverse the policy immediately, warning that the prohibition of sacred texts signals a deepening hostility toward spiritual autonomy.

The mechanics of the ban are deceptively simple. Transport companies operating routes from Costa Rica and Honduras to Nicaragua have updated their lists of prohibited items, placing Bibles and other printed materials alongside drones, cameras, and certain consumer goods. Representatives from several regional bus operators have confirmed that the policy originates not with the companies themselves but with Nicaraguan authorities, who retain wide discretion at border crossings.

The symbolism, however, is anything but simple. In a country where Christianity remains woven into family life and cultural memory, restricting the entry of religious texts carries a weight that extends beyond logistics. Critics argue that controlling access to books, especially sacred ones, is a way of narrowing the moral and intellectual space in which citizens can operate, particularly at a time when churches have been among the few remaining institutions capable of mobilizing independent voices.

This latest restriction unfolds against a grim backdrop. Since 2018, Nicaragua has witnessed a systematic rollback of civil liberties. Thousands of independent civil society organizations have lost their legal status, including well over a thousand religious groups. Clergy and lay leaders have faced surveillance, harassment, and detention, while public religious events and processions have been sharply curtailed or outright banned unless aligned with official approval.

The pressure has not been limited to churches. Independent media outlets have been squeezed through regulatory and economic means, including restrictions on importing ink and paper. One of the country’s most established newspapers was forced to close after decades of publication, an episode that observers now see as a precursor to broader controls on printed material.

From this perspective, the Bible ban appears less like an anomaly and more like an extension of an existing strategy: limit circulation, reduce visibility, and fragment communities that operate outside state structures. Religious texts, after all, are not merely devotional objects; they are vehicles of memory, identity, and moral language that resist easy domestication.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide has urged the international community to pay close attention, warning that small, technical measures often signal larger ambitions. Its representatives have appealed for creative forms of support for Nicaraguan civil society, both within the country and among communities in exile, arguing that silence only accelerates the erosion of fundamental freedoms.

For now, the restriction remains in place, enforced quietly at border checkpoints and reflected in the cautious advice of transport companies. There are no dramatic announcements, no official decrees widely circulated. Instead, there is a growing sense that in Nicaragua, even the act of carrying a book across a border has become political.

In a nation where faith has long offered consolation amid hardship, the effort to regulate which words may enter the country raises an unsettling question: what does it mean for a state to fear a book?

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