Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan politician who has been the co-president of Nicaragua since 18 February 2025, alongside his wife Rosario Murillo. He was the president of Nicaragua from 1985 to 1990 and from 2007 to 2025. He previously led Nicaragua as the first coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction from 1979 to 1985. Ortega has been described as an authoritarian leader and has invited comparisons to Anastasio Somoza. Media and politicians in the international community have referred to him as a dictator.
Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution, and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election by Violeta Chamorro.
Ortega was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. In office, he allied with fellow Latin American socialists. In contrast to his previous political career, his second administration abandoned most of his earlier leftist principles, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies. Under his tenure, Nicaragua has experienced democratic backsliding. In June 2018, organizations such as Amnesty International and the Organization of American States reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against anti-government protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country.
His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers, and resumed his repression of the Catholic Church after a brief rapprochement, imprisoning prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos.
Early life
Early childhood
Ortega was born in La Libertad in Chontales Department, into a working-class family. His parents, Daniel Ortega Cerda and Lidia Saavedra, were opposed to the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Ortega's mother was imprisoned by Somoza's National Guard for being in possession of "love letters", which police said were coded political missives. Ortega and his two brothers grew up to become revolutionaries. His late brother Humberto Ortega was a former general, military leader, and published writer, and the third brother Camilo Ortega died fighting the Somoza regime in 1978. They had a sister, Germania, who died.Juigalpa and Managua
Seeking stable employment, the family migrated from La Libertad to the provincial capital of Juigalpa, and then to a middle-class neighborhood in Managua. In Managua, Ortega and his brother studied at the upper-middle class high school, the LaSalle Institute, where Ortega was classmates with Arnoldo Aleman, who would go on to be mayor of Managua and later President of Nicaragua. Ortega's father Daniel Ortega Cedra detested US military intervention in Nicaragua and Washington's support for the Somoza government. He imparted this anti-American sentiment to his sons.Early political activity
From an early age, Ortega opposed Nicaragua's president Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and became involved in the underground movement against his government. Ortega and his brother Humberto formed the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista faction, culminating in the Nicaraguan Revolution. After the overthrow and exile of Somoza Debayle's government, Ortega became leader of the ruling multi-partisan Junta of National Reconstruction.Ortega was first arrested for political activities at the age of 15, and quickly joined the then-underground Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1963. In 1964, Ortega travelled to Guatemala, where the police arrested him and turned him over to the Nicaraguan National Guard. After his release from detainment, Ortega arranged the assassination of his torturer, Guardsman Gonzalo Lacayo, in August 1967.
Imprisonment
He was imprisoned in 1967 for taking part in armed robbery of a branch of the Bank of America. Ortega was released in late 1974, along with other Sandinista prisoners, in exchange for Somocista hostages. While imprisoned at the El Modelo jail, just outside Managua, Ortega wrote poems, one of which he titled "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion". During his imprisonment, Ortega was tortured. While he was incarcerated at El Modelo, his mother helped stage protests and hunger strikes for political prisoners; this resulted in improving the treatment of incarcerated Sandinistas.Exile in Cuba
Upon release in 1974, Ortega was exiled to Cuba. There he received training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government. He later returned secretly to Nicaragua.Sectional division within the FSLN
In the late 1970s, divisions over the FSLN's campaign against Somoza led Ortega and his brother Humberto to form the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista faction. The Terceristas sought to combine the distinct guerrilla war strategies of the two other factions, Tomás Borge's Guerra Prolongada Popular, and Jaime Wheelock's Proletarian Tendency. The Ortega brothers forged alliances with a wide array of anti-Somoza forces, including Catholic and Protestant activists, and other non-Marxist civil society groups. The Terceristas became the most effective faction in wielding political and military strength, and their push for FSLN solidarity received the support of revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro.Marriage and family
Ortega married Rosario Murillo in 1979 in a secret ceremony. They moved to Costa Rica with her three children from a previous marriage. Ortega remarried Murillo in 2005 in order to have the marriage recognized by the Catholic Church, as part of his effort to reconcile with the church. The couple has eight children, three of them together. Murillo serves as the Ortega government's spokeswoman and a government minister, among other positions. Ortega adopted stepdaughter Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo in 1986, through a court case. In 1998, she accused him of sexually abusing her as a child.Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)
When Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN in July 1979, Ortega became a member of the five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, which included Sandinista militant Moisés Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of a murdered journalist. In September 1979, United States President Carter hosted Ortega at the White House, and warned him against arming other Central American leftist guerrilla movements. At the time, Ortega spoke truthfully when he denied Sandinista involvement in neighboring countries. When Ortega questioned the Americans about CIA support for anti-Sandinista groups, Carter and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the reports were false. After the meeting, Carter asked Congress for $75 million in aid to Nicaragua, contingent on the Sandinista government's promise not to aid other guerrillas.The FSLN came to dominate the junta, Robelo and Chamorro resigned, and in 1981 Ortega became the coordinator of the Junta. As the only member of the FSLN National Directorate in the Junta, he was the effective leader of the country. After attaining power, the FSLN embarked upon an ambitious programme of social reform. They arranged to redistribute of land to about 100,000 families; launched a literacy drive, and made health care improvements that ended polio through mass vaccinations, and reduced the frequency of other treatable diseases. The Sandinista nationalization efforts affected mostly banks and industries owned by the extended Somoza family. More than half of all farms, businesses, and industries remained in private hands. The revolutionary government wanted to preserve a mixed economy and support private sector investment. The Superior Council of Private Enterprise opposed the Sandinistas' economic reform. The main organization of Nicaraguan big business was composed of prosperous families from the Pacific coast cities, who dominated commerce and banking. Ortega took a very hard line against opposition to his policies: On 21 February 1981, the Sandinista army killed 7 Miskito Indians and wounded 17.
Ortega's administration forced displacement of many of the indigenous population: 10,000 individuals had been moved by 1982. Thousands of Indians fled to take refuge across the border in Honduras, and Ortega's government imprisoned 14,000 in Nicaragua. Anthropologist Gilles Bataillon termed this "politics of ethnocide" in Nicaragua. The Indians formed two rebel groups – the Misura and Misurasata. They were joined in the north by Nicaraguan Democratic Force and in the south by former Sandinistas and peasantry who, under the leadership of Edén Pastora, were resisting forced collectivization.
In 1980 the Sandinista government launched the massive Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign and said the illiteracy rate fell from 50% to 13% in the span of five months. Robert F. Arnove said the figures were excessive because many "unteachable" illiterates were omitted from the statistics, and many people declared literate were found to be unable to read or write a simple sentence. Richard Kraft said that even if the figures were exaggerated, the "accomplishment is without precedent in educational history". In 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua the Nadezhda K. Krupskaya prize in recognition of its efforts. The FSLN also focused on improving the Nicaraguan health system, particularly through vaccination campaigns and the construction of public hospitals. These actions reduced child mortality by half, to 40 deaths per thousand. By 1982, the World Health Organization deemed Nicaragua a model for primary health care. During this period, Nicaragua won the UNESCO prize for exceptional health progress.
In 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining with Soviet-backed Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries, such as El Salvador. People within the Reagan administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels as anti-Sandinista guerrillas, some of whom were former officers from Somoza's National Guard. These were known collectively as the Contras. This resulted in one of the largest political scandals in US history,. Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied the Boland Amendment, selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds in order to secretly fund the Contras.
The Contra war claimed 30,000 lives in Nicaragua. The tactics used by the Sandinista government to fight the Contras have been widely condemned for their suppression of civil rights. On 15 March 1982, the junta declared a state of siege, which allowed it to close independent radio stations, suspend the right of association, and limit the freedom of trade unions. Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights condemned Sandinista human rights violations, accusing them of killing and forcibly disappearing thousands of persons in the first few years of the war.
File:Felipe González junto a Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega y Alfonso Guerra en el palacio de la Moncloa. Pool Moncloa. 16 de febrero de 1984.jpeg|thumb|right| Ortega with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González, Cuban President Fidel Castro and Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Alfonso Guerra in Madrid, 1984
At the 1984 general election Ortega won the presidency with 67% of the vote and took office on 10 January 1985. In the early phases of the campaign, Ortega enjoyed many institutional advantages, and used the full power of the press, police, and Supreme Electoral Council against the fractured opposition. In the weeks before the November election, Ortega gave a U.N. speech denouncing talks held in Rio de Janeiro on electoral reform. But by 22 October, the Sandinistas signed an accord with opposition parties to reform electoral and campaign laws, making the process more fair and transparent. While campaigning, Ortega promoted the Sandinistas' achievements, and at a rally said that "Democracy is literacy, democracy is land reform, democracy is education and public health." International observers judged the election to be the first free election held in the country in more than half a century. A report by an Irish governmentary delegation stated: "The electoral process was carried out with total integrity. The seven parties participating in the elections represented a broad spectrum of political ideologies." The general counsel of New York's Human Rights Commission described the election as "free, fair and hotly contested". A study by the US Latin American Studies Association concluded that the FSLN "did little more to take advantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere routinely do". However, the Reagan administration described the elections as "a Soviet-style sham", and contemporary North-American press coverage tended to cast doubt on the election's legitimacy.
Thirty-three per cent of the Nicaraguan voters cast ballots for one of six opposition parties—three to the right of the Sandinistas, three to the left—which had campaigned with the aid of government funds and free TV and radio time. Two conservative parties captured a combined 23% of the vote. They held rallies across the country and blasted the Sandinistas in harsh terms. Most foreign and independent observers noted this pluralism in debunking the Reagan administration charge—ubiquitous in the US media—that it was a "Soviet-style sham" election. Some opposition parties boycotted the election, allegedly under pressure from US embassy officials, and so it was denounced as being unfair by the Reagan administration. Reagan thus maintained that he was justified to continue supporting what he referred to as the Contras' "democratic resistance".
The illegal intervention of the Contras continued after Ortega's democratic election. Peace talks between five Central American heads of state in July 1987 led to the signing of the Central American Peace Accords, and the beginning of a roadmap to the end of the conflict. In 1988, the Contras first entered into peace talks with the Sandinista government, although the violence continued, as did their US support. Despite US opposition, disarmament of the Contras began in 1989.