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Cinthia Samantha Padilla Jirón is a Nicaraguan activist, feminist, artist, former political prisoner, and member of the Concertación Democratica Nicaraguense / Monteverde.
In 2014, Padilla Jirón joined as a volunteer firefighter in the Benemérito Cuerpo de Bomberos de Masaya and in 2017 in the Directorate General of Firefighters, where she spent a few years until anti-government protests broke out. With the order not to provide care to injured people in April of 2018, she left voluntarily. In 2018, she decided to join the anti-government protests in Granada and her hometown Masaya, and as a consequence in July 2018, left for Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, Padilla Jirón engaged in various activist and engagement groups such as Ciudadanía y Liderazgos Democráticos Juveniles, part of Fundación Arias para la Paz, and the Fundación Nicaragüense para el Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUNIDES) and the Alianza de Jóvenes y Estudiantes Nicaragüenses (AJEN). In 2020, she graduated from the Academia Liberal de América Latina (ALA).
In 2020, Padilla Jirón decided to return to Nicaragua where she joined the opposition group Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco (UNAB). In 2021, she accused the government of electoral fraud. Soon after, she was kidnapped by paramilitaries. Padilla Jirón was held 14 months in the Mujeres de la Esperanza jail and on February 9, 2023, was expulsed from Nicaragua via plane to the US and stripped of her nationality alongside 221 other political prisoners.
On January 16, 2024, she was granted Spanish citizenship thanks to Spain’s offer of solidarity with stateless Nicaraguans.
Padilla Jirón was an event speaker at the Dialogue.