Daniel Ortega

Biography

Daniel Ortega was born in 1945 in La Libertad, Chontales, to working-class parents opposed to the Somoza dictatorship, and grew up in Juigalpa and Managua. Arrested for political activity as a teenager, he joined the underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1963. He was jailed in 1967 for a bank robbery carried out for the movement and spent several years in prison before being freed in a hostage exchange.

After the FSLN overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in July 1979, Ortega joined the five-member Junta of National Reconstruction and became its coordinator. His government pursued nationalisation, land reform and a literacy campaign while fighting the US-backed Contra rebels. He won the 1984 presidential election but, amid war and economic collapse, lost to Violeta Chamorro in 1990.

After defeats in 1996 and 2001, Ortega won the presidency again in 2006 and has held it since, serving as co-president with his wife Rosario Murillo from 2025. His later rule has been marked by democratic backsliding: a violent crackdown on the 2018 protests, the jailing of rival candidates before the 2021 election, and the closure of NGOs, universities and newspapers. In July 2026 he declared an end to elections in Nicaragua.