Word: ortega
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ortega's rise within Sandinista ranks was rapid. In 1963, after a brief stint studying law, he joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and by 1967, at the age of 22, he was already the head of the urban-resistance campaign. He helped found the Tercerista faction, or Third Party, within the divided Sandinista movement, which forged an alliance with the widespread middle-class opposition to Somoza. Mainly on the strength of that bond, the Sandinistas came to power. After serving as the first among equals in the party command and in the nine-man National Directorate...
...Ortega is known as the directorate's pragmatist. Partly because he was willing to negotiate with the bourgeoisie during the tense days of the Terceristas, he is sometimes considered more moderate than other members of the directorate. His moderation, however, is reportedly challenged by the hard-line Marxism of Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez. Still, says one Sandinista official, Ortega "doesn't pull any punches...
...Ortega derives some of his political popularity from having spent seven years in Somoza's prisons. In 1967, he was captured and jailed for participating in a bank robbery. During his incarceration, Ortega composed poetry. His most famous is called "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion." After years of hunger--and, he claims, torture--he was freed in 1974 when a group of Sandinistas barged into a fancy Managua Christmas party, took a number of guests hostage and successfully demanded that Somoza release ! certain guerrillas, among them Ortega. He was then hustled off to Cuba, where...
While he was in prison, Ortega and Rosario Murillo, one of the leading poets in the Sandinista movement, exchanged poems. (Poetry is a national passion in Nicaragua.) Murillo, who was educated in a British convent school, helped Ortega stay in contact with other prisoners and the outside world. She later became his common-law wife...
...Ortega and Murillo have a big family. Murillo, in her early 30s and a high- ranking Sandinista in her own right, has two children by her first husband, whom she married when she returned to Nicaragua at the age of 15. Ortega reportedly has one child from a previous relationship. The Ortegas have had five children together, ranging from seven months to five years...