Hundreds of Nicaraguans gathered at flower-decorated altars in Miami church parking lots Sunday evening to mark the Dec. 8 feast of the Immaculate Conception, filling streets near St. John Bosco Catholic Parish with traditional hymns to the Virgin Mary. The celebration carried particular weight this year as Nicaragua’s government has intensified its crackdown on religious expression and the Trump administration has moved to curtail temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguan migrants in the United States.
The annual ritual, known as “gritería,” centers on families building home altars and visiting neighbors while singing and distributing food and religious items — a tradition that human rights advocates, exiled clergy, and U.S. officials say the Nicaraguan government has suppressed or co-opted as part of what they describe as one of the world’s most severe ongoing religious persecutions.
A tradition carried in exile
Neri Flores traveled from Chicago to set up an altar with his parents for Sunday’s vigil, installing a painting of the Immaculate Conception at the center of a large rental SUV parked near the church. His mother carried that painting across the U.S.-Mexican border when she was pregnant with him in the early 1980s.
“We’re going to do it no matter what,” Flores said. “It’s tradition, family, giving back to the community, keeping up the faith and positive vibes.”
Next to them, another family set up a larger altar with half a dozen statues of the Virgin Mary, with four generations helping out. Michael Garcia, who was born in Miami but whose grandmother brought one of the statues when she fled Nicaragua, said the Virgin’s intercession was foundational to his family. “All the blessings that we have are thanks to her,” Garcia said. “For the Virgin, there is no impossible.”
More than a thousand gather at St. John Bosco
At St. John Bosco Catholic Parish — where most of the 3,000 member families are from Nicaragua and Honduras, and many are undocumented — more than a thousand people lined up Sunday evening to sing and pray at altars set up in the parking lot and along the major thoroughfare in front of the church.
Some altars featured elaborate balloon arches, twinkling strings of lights, and large sound systems. Others held just a small statue of the Virgin Mary framed by fresh palm fronds in a car’s hatchback.
As visitors reached each altar, they erupted in the traditional “grito” — a call-and-response cry with Spanish for “Who causes so much joy? Mary’s conception!” — printed on T-shirts throughout the crowd. Families and community groups that created altars donated toys, traditional foods such as yucca and chicharrones, and small religious items like rosaries, with most planning to serve at least 500 people.
“Today’s event is all about a gesture of trust,” said the Rev. Yader Centeno, the Nicaraguan-born pastor of St. John Bosco. “For the people who are here, it’s a moment to strengthen their faith. And to share a message with those back in Nicaragua that here, we are free.”
Scarlet Desbas, finishing the setup of her hatchback altar by plugging lights into the car battery, said the celebration transcended borders. “I’m super happy. To have this tradition outside of my country is something grand,” Desbas said. “Our ancestors inculcated in us this faith.”
Nicaragua’s crackdown on religion
The mid-19th century Vatican proclamation of the dogma that Mary was conceived free from original sin gave the feast day worldwide popularity. In Nicaragua, it anchored a distinctive tradition of home altars and house-to-house singing. But that practice has been suppressed or co-opted by the government of copresidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as part of an intensifying persecution of religion.
Since violently repressing civic protests in 2018, Ortega and Murillo have gone after Catholic priests and nuns, whom they accuse of supporting unrest. Clergy and lay observers say the church has become one of the few institutions resisting state violence and aiding its victims.
Hundreds of Christian clergy and lay people have been imprisoned or exiled, many religious festivities have been barred, and many of the remaining faithful in Nicaragua say they are under strict surveillance, according to the AP.
Claudia Fuertes, who came to the United States nearly two decades ago, set up a giant white-and-blue balloon arch — traditional colors for the feast day and also Nicaragua’s flag — to frame the altar on the back of a pickup truck parked next to the St. John Bosco sanctuary. “I have faith that Nicaragua one day will be free,” Fuertes said.
Exiled clergy deliver sermons from Miami
The Rev. Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, left Nicaragua in 2019 after the late Pope Francis urged him to do so to save his life. In recent months, under the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, Báez has resumed delivering what attendees described as powerful and blunt sermons at Miami Masses.
At St. Agatha Catholic Parish on Sunday, Báez urged the congregation to speak out against those who use faith to oppress the vulnerable and those who bow before worldly powers. He then led them in the traditional grito. “The Virgin is not going to forget our people and one day, Nicaragua will be free,” Báez said.
The Rev. Marcos Somarriba, pastor of St. Agatha, who came from Nicaragua as a teenager decades ago, said President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — with their ties to Florida’s diaspora communities — should understand what drives Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Venezuelans to seek refuge in the United States. “The U.S. government should take clear measures to protect the peoples, the Nicaraguans, who have come here because they have lost their homeland,” Somarriba said.
Immigration fears shadow the celebration
The Trump administration has sought to end expanded and temporary legal protections for around 430,000 migrants from Nicaragua, as well as from Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti, as part of a broader effort to reduce immigration that has spread fear across many communities.
Social media rumors about immigration enforcement had led some people to hesitate before attending Sunday’s celebration. Oscar Carballo said he won over reluctant relatives before doing the rounds at the altars himself. Standing near an image of the Virgin Mary, he said the gathering evoked home. “Here you feel like in the patio of your home,” Carballo said. “The only thing I ask her is that we can stay here, and that there might be peace. Everywhere.”