Dora María Téllez

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Dora María Téllez (born 1947) is a Nicaraguan historian most famous as an icon of the Sandinista Revolution which deposed the Somoza regime. She is among the most popular figures of recent Latin American history. As a young medical student in the late 1970s, Téllez became a commandante in the popular revolt to oust the Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. As "Commander Two" she led a brigade that occupied the Nicaraguan national palace and took the city of Leon in June 1979, the first city to fall to the Sandinistas in the revolution. She later served as minister of health in the first Sandinista administration, initiating a public health campaign that won Nicaragua the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's prize for exceptional health progress. In 1995 she founded the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) after leaving the FSLN.

In 2004 she was appointed Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American studies at the Harvard Divinity School, but was barred from obtaining an entry visa to the US on grounds that she was a terrorist.^[1][2] This prompted 122 members of the academic community from Harvard and 15 other North American universities to publish a statement in her defense, noting

“

The accusation made by the State Department against Dora María Téllez... amounts to political persecution of those who have engaged in overthrowing the atrocious dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua...This regime was almost universally viewed as criminal and inhumane, and yet it was financially and militarily supported by the United States...In reference to dictatorships, just as the State Department cannot affirm that the activities of Nelson Mandela against the atrocious dictatorship of apartheid in South Africa were terrorist activities, neither can it affirm that Dora María’s activities against the atrocious Somoza dictatorship were terrorist.[3]

”

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