La Libertad (Nicaragua), 1945

By Orlando Núñez Soto

Daniel Ortega Saavedra, known as Commander Ortega in Nicaragua, left school at a young age to join the guerrilla of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He spent seven years in the prisons of the Somoza dictatorship. In one of the actions of the Sandinista guerrilla, he was rescued from prison and taken to Cuba.

He led the revolution and coordinated the national leadership of the FSLN and the Government Junta that governed the country during the revolutionary period. Since then, he has been the primary target of criticism from the Nicaraguan opposition, the U.S. government, and Sandinista dissenters, mainly for maintaining radically anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic positions.

He is currently serving his third term as president of Nicaragua. Elected for the first time in 1985, he lost re-election to Violeta Chamorro in 1990 but continued to be a decisive political force in the country as the Secretary General of the FSLN. He ran for office again in 1996 and 2001 without success, but won in the subsequent attempt in 2006 and was re-elected in 2011. He maintains close relations with the Latin American left, particularly with the regimes of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Content updated on 12/05/2017 at 14:03.