1979-1990 - The Prophet Unarmed
When President Anastasio Somoza was chased out of Nicaragua by the Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua in July 1979, the task of governing the country was entrusted to a five-person Governing Council of National Reconstruction (JGRN, Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional) in which Ortega served as coordinator. He belonged to the 'group tercerista' the FSLN, the most moderate of the three groups that made the guerrilla struggle against Somoza.
The process by which Daniel Ortega moved from robbing banks for the revolution to leading one of the principal revolutinary factions is not well attested. Surely his prior leadership experience was one factor - 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 1974 he fled to Cuba, where he remained for some time. Nicolas Maduro also spent some time in Cuba before returning to Venezuela. As with Maduro, surely this period in Cuba included a fair amount of training, and talent spotting by Soviet intelligence.
After the victory of the revolution in 1979, Daniel immediately confiscated the Managua residence of current National Assembly deputy Jaime Morales. Ortega subsequently stole other houses and property surrounding the Morales residence and created his own private compound on an entire block in downtown Managua.
After two Junta members – Alfonso Robelo and Violeta Chamorro – resigned from the junta because of its radical policies, the Sandinistas under Ortega’s leadership became undisputed heads of the new government that undertook a program for the economic transformation of the war-torn country, partly inspired by Fidel Castro’s socialist system in Cuba.
In the presidential and legislative elections in 1984, Ortega was elected president. He faced the task of rebuilding a country devastated . He sought foreign help trying to safeguard the neutral position and the mixed national economy of Nicaragua. When Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in 1981, the policy of this country changed, and the US passed financial maneuvers and military and diplomatic pressure, including highlighted the support provided to the financial support counter-revolutionary guerrillas ('contras') who attacked the Sandinista forces.
Ortega's sometimes abrasive or confrontational public style at times caused friction for the revolutionary government, especially with the United States. Daniel and Humberto Ortega participated in the FSLN leadership council that collectively ordered the arrest and torture of thousands of people at prisons and prison camps all over Nicaragua. The largest torture camp for political prisoners was in what is now the free trade zone near Managua's airport. The Ortega brothers and their FSLN associates also ordered numerous murders and disappearances, including the killings of hundreds of Miskitos on the Atlantic coast and the internment of thousands more in concentration camps in 1981 and 1982.
In 1998 Zoilamerica Narvaez, the daughter of Rosario Murillo and the step-daughter of Daniel Ortega, made allegations that Ortega had raped and sexually abused her over a period of many years. However, Ortega used his immunity as a National Assembly deputy and his control of the courts to ensure that the case never went to trial. Having ensured he would never face trial, Ortega then actively sabotaged all efforts by the Nicaraguan government to provide justice to Narvaez and used his mother and Rosario Murillo in a public relations campaign intended to bury the allegations. Such misogynistic attitudes were common in the FSLN, as is the tolerance of domestic and sexual violence. When FSLN National Assembly deputies voted to lower the criminal penalties for statutory rape in March 2006, FSLN deputy Nathan Sevilla justified the vote by stating that sex with minors was "normal" in rural Nicaragua and thus should not be considered a serious crime.
Daniel Ortega had close relations with numerous international terrorist groups for decades. During the 1980s, he invited international terrorists from Italy, Lebanon, Libya, the Palestinian territories, and Spain to come to Nicaragua to find safe haven and plan future terrorist operations. Many of these persons became Nicaraguan citizens.
In 1984 Daniel Ortega negotiated a deal with Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar whereby Escobar received refuge for several months in Nicaragua after he had ordered the killing of the Colombian Minister of Justice. At the same time, Escobar's drug trafficking operation received Ortega,s approval to land and load airplanes in Nicaragua as they sought to ship cocaine to the United States. In return, Ortega and the FSLN received large cash payments from Escobar. Interior Minister Tomas Borge and his subordinates went so far as to assist Escobar with the loading and unloading of drugs onto his airplanes in Nicaragua. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) managed to place a hidden camera on one of Escobar's airplanes and obtained film of Escobar and Ministry of the Interior officials loading cocaine onto one of Escobar,s planes at Managua,s international airport. CBS news later broadcast the film and the entire story of Escobar-Ortega-FSLN collaboration is related in detail in a 2005 book by Astrid Legarda Martinez: El Verdadero Pablo: Sangre, Traicion y Muerte (Colombia, Ediciones Dipon).
FSLN leaders, including Humberto Ortega, admitted publicly that leaders of the Argentine leftist terrorist group "Los Montoneros" resided in Nicaragua and engaged in military activities with the FSLN for an extended period in 1979-1981. Humberto Ortega admitted that Fernando Vaca Narvaja, the leader of the group, resided in his house in Managua.
Ortega publicly admitted many of his terrorist connections, including the fact that he received elections money from the government of Libya. Many 1980s terrorists still lived in Nicaragua and have acquired Nicaraguan citizenship (including at least one prominent member of the Italian Red Brigades), Ortega publicly associated with many of these individuals in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. The Pablo Escobar footage was filmed June 24, 1984.
Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on links between the Contras and drug imports to the US concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the US-backed president of Panama.
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