Nicaraguan rebel icon launches hunger strike

A former Sandinista guerrilla leader declared a hunger strike to protest what she calls the Nicaraguan government's authoritarian shift.
Posted on Fri, Jun. 06, 2008

BY TIM ROGERS
Special to The Miami Herald
Former Nicaraguan guerrilla commander Dora Maria Tellez, founder of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, sits in a hammock near the Supreme Electoral Council in Managua to protest a government move to invalidate her political party

MANAGUA --
A veteran guerrilla leader who helped spark a revolution here 30 years ago is again putting her life on the line to protest a government she claims is returning Nicaragua to its dark, dictatorial past.

Dora María Téllez, 52, started a hunger strike this week, plopping down in downtown Managua to ''sound the alarm bell'' against what she says are President Daniel Ortega's authoritarian intentions.

The former rebel leader and ex-minister of health under the first Sandinista government in the 1980s says her protest is a continuation of the revolutionary struggle she started three decades ago against the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.

In 1978, Téllez, then 22, captured the nation's attention as the courageous ''Comandante 2'' who, along with legendary guerrilla icon Edén ''Comandante Cero'' Pastora, led a small band of Sandinista rebels in a daring takeover of the legislative National Palace.

That event exposed the vulnerability of the Somoza dictatorship and gave Nicaraguans hope that revolutionary change was possible. The following year, she helped topple the Somoza dictatorship by leading the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to its first major military victories in the northern cities of León and Chinandega.

Thirty years later, the Sandinista Front has gone from a clandestine rebel movement to the government establishment, but Téllez says the threat of dictatorship remains.

''When we took over the National Palace we were fighting for the same thing because the politicians weren't respecting the rights of everyone else,'' Téllez told The Miami Herald Thursday while swinging from a nylon hammock set up under a makeshift plastic tarp where she's camping out next to Managua's main roundabout.

''Now, 30 years later, we have a group of people, a political elite, who want to [run government] as if it were a dictatorship,'' she said.

POWER PACT

Téllez, who is on a water and salt diet, says that Ortega and incarcerated former President Arnoldo Alemán -- who is still considered the ''maximum leader'' of the opposition Liberal Constitutional Party -- are in the process of reworking their infamous power-sharing pact to redivide state institutions and cut out minority parties.

Political analysts have speculated that the final negotiation point of the new pact will be freedom for Alemán in exchange for constitutional reforms to allow Ortega to remain in power indefinitely.

Also upsetting to Téllez is a recent ruling by the Supreme Electoral Council, which Ortega's party controls, to eliminate four minority parties -- including Téllez's Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) -- from the ballot in municipal elections scheduled for Nov. 2. Téllez says that is further proof that the so-called pacto is still alive and well.

''Daniel wants to be alone on the electoral ballot; he wants to remain in power by making an arrangement with Alemán to stay in power indefinitely,'' Téllez said, as she waved to passing cars that honked in support of her protest.

Yet some revolutionaries, even those who don't identify with Ortega today, think it's a mistake to compare the current government to the Somoza dictatorship.

''Ortega and Somoza are a thousand light years apart,'' said Pastora, 71, who fought alongside Téllez during the takeover of the National Palace. ``It is political error to say that the Ortega government is a dictatorship.''

Pastora, who also went on a 34-day hunger strike in 1998 to restore his Nicaraguan citizenship, said he thinks Téllez's hunger strike is not the right move, and says the fact that she's even allowed to protest civically against the government is proof that Nicaragua is not under a dictatorship.

Pastora, who in the 1980s defected from the Sandinista Front to battle the government for being ''Marxists disguised as Sandinistas,'' said the Ortega government in the 1980s was a dictatorship, one Téllez and the rest of the MRS leaders supported at the time.

PARTY DEFECTIONS

After the first Ortega government was voted out of power in 1990, Téllez, along with a large group of Sandinista intellectuals, led an FSLN brain drain by defecting from the party on the grounds it had been hijacked by Ortega.

The MRS, founded in 1995, currently holds three legislative seats in the National Assembly and has become a leading opposition voice from the left.

The political right is also raising concerns about Ortega's dictatorial intentions.

Eduardo Montealegre, the Liberal Party's candidate for mayor of Managua who finished second to Ortega in the 2006 presidential elections, says he thinks Ortega is trying to ''eliminate me politically.'' The former banker says he fears Ortega's recent public accusation that he stole $600 million in the 2000 banking-system collapse is now going to be used to remove him from the race.

Public opinion is leery of Ortega. A poll released in May by M&R Consultants showed that 64 percent of those surveyed describe Ortega as an authoritarian ruler who wants to implement a dictatorship.

Even self-described Sandinistas are having a hard time with the Ortega government.

''Like many Sandinistas, Ortega wasn't an ideal candidate, but we saw him as an option after three neoliberal governments,'' said Cecilia Espinoza, a social worker involved in Nicaragua's feminist movement.

``But after assuming power, I could see that there was a great difference between Ortega's discourse in favor of the poor and his politics that don't respect people's rights, especially women's.''

The disgruntled Téllez says she's had enough of the Ortega government and plans to strike indefinitely, unless the CSE rules to reinstate the minority parties on the election ballot.

''The role of a revolutionary in Nicaragua is to oppose attempts to install a dictatorship,'' Téllez said. ``If I were born again, I would choose the same path in life.''