1959-1979 - Ortega - The Prophet Armed
There are two versions of Ortega's early life, and it is difficult for the casual student of his life history to pry them apart. Surely both versions have been "improved" relative to the "true" facts, but the matter of which account is most discrepant from the truth is not apparent. The "soft" version provides few details of his early life, and he moves from birth to full blown revolutionary without much intervening incident. The "hard" version of his life makes him out to be a "red diaper baby", born to revolutionary parents, surrounded by revolutionary siblings, and taking up the cause of revolution at a tender age. The "soft" version might make him more acceptable to international sympathizers, while the "hard" version is surely more inspirational for domestic consumption.
Daniel Ortega was born 11 November 1945 in La Libertad, Chontales, Nicaragua to poor middle-class parents. He was one of three sons of Daniel Ortega Serda, an accountant for a mining firm. The family later moved to Managua, where his father owned a small export-import business. Daniel Ortega Cerda and Lidia Saavedra during the 1940s had actively opposed the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, after which Daniel's parents both became adamantly opposed to the ruling dictator.
His father Daniel fought in A.C.Sandino's 1927-1934 rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua, for which he served three months in prison. Their mother, Lidia Saavedra, became active in the 1970s in protests and went to jail for these actions. According to one account, she was imprisoned by Somoza's National Guard for being in possession of "love letters", which police estimated were coded missives. Humberto (born 1948), a top military strategist, eventually became minister of defense of the revolutionary government in 1979. Daniel's younger brother Camilo (born 1950) also became Sandinista revolutionaries, and died fighting in the insurrection (1978). Sister Germania also died.
Married in 1979 with poetess Rosario Murillo Zambrana (Managua, June 22, 1951), professor, writer and Nicaraguan activist. They had seven children. She worked with the FSLN after 1969 and was captured by the Somoza regime's security forces in 1979. After the victory she became general secretary of the Sandinista Cultural Workers Association and in 1985 became an FSLN delegate in the National Assembly.
Ortega received his education in private and Catholic schools. He was an active Catholic during his youth, becoming a catechist and giving Bible studies to those who lived in poor neighborhoods. His seriousness, intelligence, oratorical skills, and religious devotion suggested to many that he would become a priest. He made good grades, but his parents sent him to four different high schools — trying fruitlessly to keep him out of a growing student opposition movement in the late 1950s.
From an early age, Daniel was a political aspirant with revolutionary leanings. After Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime in 1959. Ortega, still in high school in Managua, took part in a widespread student struggle against the Somoza regime. The protests of 1959 were organized by the Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth, which Ortega joined in 1960.
He was first arrested for political activities in 1960 when he was 15. He studied at the Jesuit-run Central American University in Managua in 1961, but dropped out of college in 1963 to work with the underground political group called Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (also called the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the FSLN or, popularly, the Sandinistas). Founded in 1961, the FSLN was a Marxist-Leninist vanguard revolutionary party. Ortega emerged as a leader in the urban resistance campaign against the US-trained forces of the ruling Somoza family. The Somoza family had ruled the country since 1936.
In 1964 he was captured in Guatemala, and along with other Sandinistas deported to Nicaragua, where he again was imprisoned and tortured. Free in 1965, he cofounded the newspaperEl Estudiante (The Student ), the official paper of the Revolutionary Student Front (Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario—FER), the university support wing of the FSLN. By 1965 he had earned sufficient respect from other top Sandinistas that they named him to the FSLN's Dirección Nacional (National Directorate), the organization's top policy council.
In 1966-1967 Ortega headed the Internal Front, an urban underground that robbed several banks and in 1967 assassinated Gonzalo Lacayo, a reputed National Guard torturer. In November 1967 the security police captured Ortega. He was jailed for taking part in the armed robbery of a branch of Bank of America [brandishing a machine gun]to raise funds for the revolutionary group, which was seeking to overthrow the dictator Anastasio Somoza. He shared a taste for such "revolutionary expropriations" with other notable revolutionists as Dilma Russeff, later president of Brazil, and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, later better known as the ruler of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.
Ortega was tortured in prison before being released in 1974 along with thirteen other Sandinistas as part of an exchange deal. They were exchanged for important somocistas government officials whom the guerrilla had captured. After he regained his freedom he fled to Cuba, where he remained for some time. In Cuba he trained for several months of guerrilla. He returned clandestinely to Nicaragua to rejoin the FSLN and begin the struggle against the Somoza regime.
Inspired by the guerrilla leader Augusto Sandino, who was murdered by the Somoza family in 1934 when leading the struggle for justice against foreign intervention, Ortega became one of several leaders of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinistas). The Sandinistas fought a guerrilla war against Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in the 1970s.
In 1976 he resumed clandestine organizing in Managua and Masaya. He helped his brother Humberto and others shape the strategy of the Tercerista (Third Force) tendency of the FSLN. The Terceristas allied with the rapidly growing non-Marxist opposition, and their ranks swelled. Militarily much bolder than the other tendencies in 1977-1978, the Terceristas helped spark a general popular insurrection in September and October of 1978.
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