Key People

Bios of Authors and Activists

See also mini-bios written for elementary and up that can be read during morning announcements and a meet and greet lesson featuring Central Americans of note.

In workshops on Central America, we begin with the question on the home page of this website, “How many Central Americans of note can you name? They can be in any walk of life (literature, sports, politics, etc.) and they can be from history or today.” Only a few hands go up to respond.

The question surfaces the realization that most of us know very little about Central American history or people. Workshop participants often guess “Cesar Chavez” or “Che Guevara” who are well known Latino/Latin Americans, but not from Central America.

Even in schools with large numbers of students with Central American heritage, at best the staff can name one person, usually Rigoberta Menchú who won a Nobel Peace Prize or Archbishop Oscar Romero who was in the news because of his beatification.

To help school staff fill this gap, we introduce a lesson where participants take on the identity of one of a few dozen people of note in Central American history. They interact in a meet and greet role play.

Below are a few of the people featured in the role play. They are Central American authors, poets, revolutionaries, priests, and musicians. We hope that these brief introductions encourage readers to learn about the people listed below and many more.

Please note that our goal is to add many more names and bios. Your donations will help us expand the list. 

Manlio Argueta

El Salvador

(1935– ) Manlio Argueta was born in San Miguel, El Salvador. A student at the University of San Salvador, he helped found the University Literary Circle in 1956. He lived in exile in Costa Rica from 1972 until the end of the Salvadoran Civil War. His works include A Place Called Milagro de la Paz, Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District, Cuzcatlan: Where the Southern Sea Beats, Magic Dogs of the Volcanoes, and One Day of Life, which was banned in El Salvador during the civil war but earned fifth place on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best Latin American novels of the twentieth century. He currently serves as the Director of the National Library of El Salvador. Read an interview with Argueta by Claudia Arias.

He was a member of the Committed Generation.

Prudencia Ayala

El Salvador

(1885–1936) Prudencia Ayala was a Salvadoran Afro-indigenous writer, social activist, and early campaigner for women's rights in El Salvador and first woman to run for president in El Salvador and Latin America. She dropped out of school in second grade and was largely self-taught. She learned to sew and worked as a seamstress. In 1913, after publishing opinion pieces in the newspaper, Ayala became recognized as an activist. She was vocal in many political and social movements, including anti-imperialism, feminism, Central American reunification, and against the U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. Ayala published poems and several books. She also had a reputation for fortune telling, and her predictions were published in Santa Ana’s newspapers. In 1930, Ayala attempted to run as a Unionist presidential candidate in El Salvador despite the nation barring women from voting. Her platform included the support of unions, transparency in government, the limitation of the distribution and consumption of liquor, respect of freedom of worship, and the legal recognition of children born out of wedlock. Her presidential nomination was rejected by the Salvadoran Supreme Court, but the debate that followed helped spark the feminist movement that permitted women’s suffrage to be reconsidered in 1939 and finally approved in 1950. Learn more about Prudencia Ayala in this animated video from Museo de la Palabra y la Imagén.

Roque Dalton

El Salvador

(1935–1975) Roque Dalton was born in Quetzaltepeque, El Salvador. After a year at the University of Santiago, Chile, he attended the University of San Salvador, where he helped found the University Literary Circle in 1956, just before the Salvadoran military set fire to the building. He was arrested in 1959, 1960, and 1965 for his political involvement with the Communist party, escaping his last imprisonment when an earthquake shattered the outer wall of his cell. He lived in exile in Mexico, Cuba, and Prague, winning the Casa de las Américas poetry prize in 1969 for his book Tavern and Other Places. In 1973, he reentered El Salvador in disguise and joined the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP) as a soldier-poet. During the next eighteen months he wrote Clandestine Poems. As a member of the ERP, he worked to establish bonds between the guerrillas and civil society, but was accused of collaborating with the CIA and assassinated by other members of the ERP in May 1975, four days before his fortieth birthday. He is the author of many books, including Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle and Miguel Marmol.

He was a member of the Committed Generation.

Alvaro Rogelio Gómez Estrada

El Salvador

(1944– ) Alvaro Rogelio Gómez Estrada was born in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala. He has written a variety of literature including novels, stories, legends, and poetry and has won awards for his work in both national and international contests. The French Alliance of Quetzaltenango conferred to him the honorary titles of Freedom Poet and Great Teacher of Poetry.

Claudia Lars

EL Salvador

Claudia Lars was born in Armenia, El Salvador in 1899 as Margarita del Carmen Brannon Vega. She traveled to the United States where she worked as a Spanish teacher at the Berlitz School in Brooklyn. Her first book of poems, “Triste Mirajes,” (“Sad Mirage”) was published without her consent by General Juan Jose Cañas. Claudia traveled to the United States a second time where she worked packing peaches, translating stories for Walt Disney, and contributed to an anti-fascist newspaper. She was then appointed to work at the El Salvadorian embassy in Guatemala. She later moved to Canada where she worked in the editorial department in the Ministry of Culture and was in charge of the magazine, “Culture.” Claudia wrote 19 books of poetry and a memoir and received international recognition for her work. 

Farabundo Marti

El Salvador

(1893–1932) Farabundo Marti was born in Teotepeque, a small farming community in El Salvador. He was studying political science and jurisprudence at the University of El Salvador during the harsh conditions under the El Salvadoran dictatorship led by Maximiliano Hernandez Martínez, including a devastating economic recession. After repeatedly witnessing how El Salvador’s rich elite exploited the poor in his country, he dropped out of school to fight in the peasant movement. He was exiled multiple times for his efforts, but persevered and helped create the Communist Party of Central America. He was instrumental in the development of the “International Red Aid” program, which was similar in function to American Red Cross. In 1932, Marti helped organize a massive peasant uprising against Martinez, his elite supporters, and the national army. The uprising was crushed by the army in what became known as La Matanza or the Massacre. On February 1st, 1932, government forces shot and killed Marti. He is considered a martyr by many of El Salvador’s people and his name is honored by the political party, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Archbishop Oscar Romero

El Salvador

(1917–1980) Archbishop Oscar Romero was a religious leader and activist in El Salvador during the 1960s and 1970s. He was appointed archbishop because during the early part of his career he was a conservative and traditional religious figure. After a fellow priest and friend, Rutilio Grande, was assassinated for his political and social work with El Salvador’s peasants and poor, Romero was transformed. Romero began to fight fervently for the rights of the oppressed and was a key figure in the religious movement to practice “liberation theology”. His high position within the Catholic Church allowed him to speak out for the poor and oppressed, and he became known across the country as the “Voice of the Voiceless.” He championed the human rights of the people of El Salvador, using YSAX, the archdiocesan radio station, to give sermons and speeches about the injustices committed against his fellow El Salvadorans. Romero was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. In February of 1980, he wrote a letter to President Carter asking him to halt U.S military assistance to the Salvadoran government. On March 24th, 1980, an assassin shot and killed Archbishop Romero while he was giving mass in small hospital church. Over 250,000 people attended his funeral, which became a protest against the government. He became an icon to El Salvador’s revolution, and was canonized as a saint in 2018.

Maria Serrano

El Salvador

(1950– ) Maria Serrano, born in El Salvador, was a young mother when she began organizing her fellow campesinos (farmers) to ask for land and rights from the corrupt Salvadoran government during the U.S.-backed civil war. After being threatened and harassed by the military, Serrano fled to the hills with her family to join the guerrilla forces of the FMLN in their fight against the government. She quickly became a passionate and effective leader of the group. Serrano spent three years organizing peasants across the country. In 1988, she granted a group of filmmakers access to both her personal life and the frontlines of the war, and in 1991 they created an award-winning documentary about her life called Maria’s Story. After the peace accords, she became a legislator in the National Assembly and served her country as Minister of the Interior, where she continued her quest to bring dignity and rights to the poor of El Salvador.

Humberto Ak’abal

Guatemala

(1952–2019) Humberto Ak’abal was born in Momostenango, Guatemala. He grew up in a Mayan K’iche peasant village, and moved to Guatemala City to work as a street vendor. In the 1980s he began to write in K’iche, but although he translated his own poems into Spanish, he could not find a publisher willing to print his work until 1992. Since then, he has won many prizes for his poetry, including the 2004 Guatemala National Prize in Literature, which he turned down because it is named for Miguel Asturias. Ak-abal explains that Asturias’ 1923 essay, The Social Problem of the Indian, contributed to the marginalization of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. His works include Aquí Era El Paraíso, Poems I Brought Down from the Mountain, Drum of Stone, and Honeyword.

Otto René Castillo

Guatemala

(1934–1967) Otto René Castillo was born in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. He supported the progressive social reforms of President Jacobo Arbenz during Guatemala’s 10 Years of Spring and was exiled after a CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew the democratic government in 1954. He went into exile in El Salvador where he attended the University of San Salvador and helped found the University Literary Circle. He returned to Guatemala in 1957, but went into exile again in Europe. In 1966, he returned to Guatemala to join the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces). He was captured by government forces the following year and was interrogated and tortured before being burned alive. His poetry continues to inspire Guatemalans to fight for social justice and equality, and is found in Tecum Oman, Let’s Go!, and Tomorrow Triumphant.

Oscar de Leon Palacios

Guatemala

(1909–1966) Oscar de Leon Palacios was a teacher, editor, and writer. He was known as “the teacher of the mountain.” One of his greatest contributions to Guatemalan society was his work in advancing rural education. He created a free program where teachers could receive the title “Teacher of Rural Education.” The president at the time, Carlos Castillo Armas, gave him a medal recognizing him as a distinguished teacher. 

Marilena Lopez

Guatemala

(1902–1980) Marilena Lopez was born in Guatemala City. She was an actress, essayist, playwright, and puppeteer. She created the first theater dedicated completely to puppet theater which influenced other schools around the country to implement puppet theaters. This rise in popularity then gave way to the theater festivals of the 1970s. Marilena Lopez promoted puppet theater as a way to teach young children while having fun. 

Myrna Mack Chang

(1949–1990) Myrna Mack Chang was born in Barrio San Nicolás, Retalhuleu, in southwestern Guatemala. Her parents were ethnic Chinese. Myrna trained as a teacher, then as a social worker, then as an anthropologist. Upon completing education at the University of Durham in England, Mack Chang returned to Guatemala in 1982 where she began working as a journalist. Along with colleagues at Inforpress Centroamericana, in 1986 Mack Chang founded the Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences in Guatemala (AVANSCO), a social science center with a mission to research the social, cultural, and political impact of the Guatemalan Civil War and human rights abuses committed by the military government against the marginalized and internally displaced Indigenous Maya communities. For her advocacy for the Maya community, she was labeled an “internal enemy” by the government. On September 11, 1990, while she was leaving AVANSCO headquarters for her home, she was attacked and stabbed twenty-seven times. Her sister Helen Mack Chang pursued justice for her sister’s murder, achieving convictions of one assailant and a high-ranking colonel in ground-breaking cases in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Guatemalan government acknowledged responsibility in 2004 and has paid compensation to Helen Mack and her family.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Guatemala

(1959– ) Rigoberta Menchú was born in Chimel, Guatemala to a K’iche’ Mayan peasant family. Growing up, her family had little money or land and spent long hours picking coffee on large plantations which paid them poorly and always kept them in debt. From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father, advocating for the rights of Indigenous farmers. Menchú became active in movements within the Catholic Church for social reform and women’s rights — demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and respect for human dignity. The Guatemalan government arrested, tortured, and killed her family. This only deepened her courage, and she joined the Committee of the Peasant Union and the 31st of January Popular Front, rebel groups in the Guatemalan Civil War. In 1981, Menchú was forced to flee to Mexico, and there she dicatated the book I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos. The testimony gained her international renown, and in 1992, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of indigenous rights. She is the author of The Girl from Chimel, The Secret Legacy, and The Honey Jar. She continues to advocate for indigenous rights, and ran for the Guatemalan presidency in 2007 and 2011.

Luisa Moreno

Guatemala

(1907–1992) Luisa Moreno was born in Guatemala City. She attended primary school in the United States and returned to Guatemala as a teenager before moving to Mexico City. In 1928, she moved to New York City, where she supported her family as a seamstress in a garment factory, experiencing the sweatshop conditions in the factories. Moreno soon became a labor organizer.

She unionized Black and Latina cigar rollers and other tobacco workers in Florida and helped a dwindling cigar workers’ union that had been terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan. She organized cane workers in Louisiana, pecan shellers in San Antonio (with Emma Tenayuca), and tuna-packing workers in San Diego. Her organizing work with sugar beet workers in Colorado was memorialized in song. She was elected as the first woman and the first Latina member of the California Congress of Industrial Organizations Council (CIO) and helped organize a Hispanic civil rights assembly called El Congreso de Pueblos que Hablan Español.

In 1948, she became one of thousands of activists investigated by the State Senate Committee on Un-American Activities, and she was threatened with deportation unless she would testify against another labor organizer. She refused, in her words, to be “a free woman with a mortgaged soul.” She burned her personal memoirs, correspondence, and photos after she learned that her gardener had been paid by the FBI to read her personal documents. Although not guilty of any crime, she did not want her friends and colleagues to have to endure harassment and humiliation. Moreno later regretted not saving these papers, which were a priceless collection on early labor unions in San Diego. Luisa Moreno left the United States in 1950 after a warrant of deportation was issued on the grounds that she had once been a member of the Communist party. She continued to support an array of social justice causes as she lived the rest of her life in Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala. Read more about Luisa Morena at SanDiegoHistory.org and Smithsonian Magazine.

Nora Murillo

Guatemala

(1964– ) Nora Murillo is a poet, social worker, and professor. She was born in Livingston, Guatemala as part of the Garifuna minority, a community of people who are descendants or African, Island Caribbean, and Arawak peoples. She became a social worker to address the limited access to healthcare, education, and jobs in her community. She is a professor at the San Carlos University of Guatemala, at the University Center of Izabal. Her passion is poetry, to which she has devoted most of her life. Her writing centers on her African heritage and the struggles of women surrounded by patriarchal institutions and society. In 2000, her book Abrir la puerta (Open the Door), won the Alaide Foppo Poetry Prize. To share her love of literature, she is working on transforming the house she grew up in into a children’s community library. 

Adrián Ramírez Flores

Guatemala

(1920–1977) Adrían Ramírez Flores was born in Guatemala City in 1920. He was a teacher and writer whose work was dedicated to the perception and expression of children. He worked at a night school where he taught educators about the language and literature of children. He held several public postions including director of the Normal School of Musical Education, director of the Institute of Humanities, Coordinator of Special Projects for the United States, and Sub Secretary of Public Education in 1962. He also served as an international representative for Congress.

Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores

Honduras

(1971–2016) Berta Cáceres was an environmental organizer. Her mother, a midwife and activist, cared for refugees from El Salvador during the violence in the 1980s. She became mayor of their town and governor of the state at a time when few women held these roles.

In 1993, Cáceres became a student activist and cofounded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) to help Lenca Indigenous communities like hers improve their livelihoods, gain territorial rights, and fight illegal development. In 2006, residents of Rio Blanco asked COPINH for help to fight against the Agua Zarca Dam on a sacred Lenca river. They lodged appeals to state, national, and international authorities, but the government forged ahead. In April 2013, she organized a road blockade to prevent access to the dam site. For over a year the Lenca people used a system of alerts to stay informed and maintain a peaceful presence at the site.

They received death threats and were attacked by security contractors and the Honduran army. But she liked to say, “They fear us because we’re fearless.” After the murder of activist Tomas Garcia, some companies began to pull out of the project, citing ongoing community resistance and outrage. On March 3, 2016, Berta Cáceres was murdered in her home. COPINH continues to help the Lenca people reclaim ancestral lands and stop environmental damage from mining, dams, and logging operations. The Agua Zarca Dam has not been completed. Read more at the Zinn Education Project.

Miriam Miranda

Honduras

(unknown– ) Miriam Miranda is a Garífuna activist who advocates for the rights of the Garínagu. The Garínagu are descendants of West Africans who escaped the slave trade in the early 1600’s and intermarried with Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Today, the Garínagu live primarily in coastal communities along Honduras and other Central American countries. Through her role as leader of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), Miranda has coordinated efforts to counter land theft by mega-tourism enterprises, reclaim ancestral territory, promote sustainable environmental practices, counter drug traffickers, and support community leadership development. Miranda has received the Óscar Romero Human Rights Award, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance's International Food Sovereignty Prize, and the Carlos Escaleras environmental prize. Read more.

Fredi Onan Vicen Peña

Honduras

(1978– ) Fredi Onan Vicen Peña is a coffee farmer in Honduras. His family farm has produced quality coffee for a very long time, but recently, his farm has faced extreme weather and patterns like he's never seen before. Climate change has wiped out entire harvests, disrupted growing cycles, and promoted the spread of pests. His plants are now plagued with coffee rust.

His brothers and children have fled north in a desperate attempt at survival, leaving their coffee farms abandoned.

For small producers like himself, there is no way to get ahead of this. He has been learning about other species that are more resistant to disease and drought, and has started working with other crops like cacao and avocados.

Source: Semple Kirk. “Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change.” New York Times, 13 Apr 2019.

Claribel Alegría

Nicaragua

(1924–2018) Claribel Alegría was born in Nicaragua, but grew up in Santa Ana, El Salvador. She attended George Washington University in Washington, DC. While traveling through Europe with her husband and translator, Darwin “Bud” Flakoll, she became an exile when she spoke out against the Salvadoran military’s role in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. A celebrated poet, novelist, and translator, her books include Luisa in Realityland, Ashes of Izalco, Otredad - Otherness, On the Front Line: Guerrilla Poems of El Salvador, and I Survive, which won the Casa de las Américas prize for poetry. She lived in Managua, Nicaragua at the time of her death. 

She was a member of the Committed Generation.

Gioconda Belli

NICARAGUA

(1948– )Gioconda Belli was born in Managua, Nicaragua. She joined the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) in 1970 and was involved in the underground resistance movement until 1975 when she had to flee the Somoza regime’s secret police and go into exile. When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, she held various government positions, working primarily in communications, journalism, and public relations. She left the Sandinista Party in 1993 is now a vocal critic of the Ortega government. Her works include The Butterfly Workshop, El Infinito en la Palma de la Mano, The Inhabited Woman, The Scroll of Seduction, The Country Under My Skin, and Line of Fire , which won the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978. Belli’s website.

Ernesto Cardenal

NICARAGUA

(1925–2020) Ernesto Cardenal was born in Granada, Nicaragua. As a young man, he worked to overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Somoza. In 1965, he was ordained a Catholic priest. From 1965-1977 he lived in the Solentiname Islands, where he helped found the peasant artist colony which originated primitivist style painting. He was a close collaborator with the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), and after the revolution, served as the Minister of Culture for the new government from 1979-1987. Pope John Paul II publicly chastised him in 1983 and ordered him to stop administering the sacraments. He left the FSLN in 1994, and became part of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). In 2019 Pope Francis Pope Francis granted him absolution from all canonical censorships. His works include Zero Hour, The Origin of Species and Other Poems, The Doubtful Straight, Psalms, and The Gospel of Solentiname.

Ruben Dario

NICARAGUA

(1867–1916) Ruben Dario was born in Metapa, Nicaragua. In 1880, he published his first set of poetry at the young age of 13. He continued writing and by the late 1800s he had created a Spanish-American literary movement called “modernism.” Modernism incorporated unique rhythms and symbols, and broke from the traditional poetry form. For many years he traveled the world as a journalist, visiting Argentina, Chile, France, and Spain on assignment. Between 1882 and 1915 he served as a Nicaraguan diplomat and as the Nicaraguan ambassador to France and Spain. He was also famous for his criticism of Spanish colonialism. In 1892, during the 400th anniversary celebration of the conquest led by Christopher Columbus, Dario read a poem to the Spanish court protesting the conquest and exposing the injustices it caused. He is the author of Stories and Poems and Azul.

Carlos Mejia Godoy

NICARAGUA

(1943– ) Carlos Mejia Godoy was born in Somoto, Nicaragua. He is a folk musician, guitarist, and songwriter who, along with his brother Luis Enrique, led the transformation of the Central American music scene in the 1970s. Godoy and his brother helped bring about the New Song Movement, a movement born as musicians began to write lyrics about the social and political issues of their country. Many of Godoy’s best songs were written during the Sandinista movement to inspire peasants and revolutionaries in their fight. Accompanied by his band “los de Palacagüina,” Godoy’s music frequently addressed the political climate in Nicaragua. One of his famous songs during the late 1970s instructed Nicaraguan revolutionaries on how to use, assemble, and disassemble the rifles people were capturing from dictator Somoza’s National Guard during street battles. Some of his other more well known songs include Nicaragua, Nicaraguita and La Tuela Cuecho.

Sergio Ramírez

NICARAGUA

(1942– ) Sergio Ramírez as born in Masatepe, Nicaragua. In the 1960s, he gained prominence as an intellectual and participated in the resistance against the Somoza government. He declared his support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1977 as a member of the Group of Twelve, leading members of civil society who spoke out against Somoza. Ramírez was part of the transitional revolutionary junta in 1979, and was elected vice president in 1984. He broke with the FSLN in 1996, and now works primarily as a writer. His works include La Fugitiva / The Fugitive, Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution, Cuentos, and Margarita, está linda la mar.

Augusto Sandino

NICARAGUA

(1895–1934) Augusto Sandino was born in Niquinohomo, a small town in Nicaragua. During his youth, he worked at an oil company in Mexico and became inspired by the message of social equality advocated for by Mexican labor unions. Sandino fought on the side of the Liberal party during the Nicaraguan civil war, often called the “Constitution War.” The United States supported the Nicaraguan government by sending in the Marine Corps. After the war had ended, U.S. troops continued their military occupation, by claiming to oversee social stability during the presidential election. From 1927-1933, Sandino led a rebellion against the United States military occupation of Nicaragua. Sandino fought against the Nicaraguan government and their repressive policies, which included the crushing of a people’s uprising against the corrupt President Adolfo Díaz in 1912. The group he led was named “The Defending Army of National Sovereignty” and their motto was, “Motherland and Liberty.” Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by the forces of General Anastasio Somoza García, who went on to seize power two years later. Sandino is remembered today as a courageous revolutionary who fought for an independent and autonomous Nicaragua, free from foreign intervention. Learn more at the Sandino Rebellion website.

Arlen Siu Bermundéz

Nicaragua

(1955–1975) Arlen Siu was born in Jinotepe, Nicaragua. Her father was an immigrant from China and her mother was a native Nicaraguan. Arlen Siu attended La Escuela Normal de Señoritas in Jinotepe and aspired to become a teacher. She continued her studies at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN). There she sang with Marlene Alvarez and the band Grupo Pancasán. Siu was 18 when she joined the Sandinistas. By then, she had already attained a level of national celebrity as a talented musician. Her writings and songs highlighted the central role of peasant women, most famously, her song "Maria Rural." She was killed by soldiers from Somoza’s National Guard at the age of 20 during an ambush near El Sauce, Leon, Nicaragua. After her death, her picture was often displayed at FSLN celebrations throughout Nicaragua. Managua and El Rama have neighborhoods named after her, and a park in León is also named after her. Read more.

Dora Maria Téllez

Nicaragua

(1955– ) Dora Maria Téllez is a Nicaraguan historian and political activist. As a medical student in the 1970s, Téllez became active in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and went on to become a comandante in the revolution that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. She served in president Daniel Ortega’s government as Health Minister from 1985 to 1990, driven by a vision of a future Nicaragua with a universal health service. She later left the FSLN over concerns about repression and corruption, working to build a new opposition party. Over the next few decades she established herself as an historian and advocate for women’s and gay rights and as a vocal critic of human rights violations by Ortega’s government. In 2021, in the run up to the Nicaraguan presidential election, Ortega arrested virtually all opposition candidates and prominent critics of his regime, including Téllez. She and 221 other political prisoners were held in prison or under house arrest until February 9, 2023, when they were informed that the government had decided to banish them to the United States and take away their Nicaraguan nationality. Read more.

José Coronel Urtecho

Nicaragua

(1906–1994) José Coronel Urtecho was a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, playwright, diplomat, and historian. He was born in Granada, Nicaragua. His father was an influential politcian and journalist and worked for the government under José Santos Zelaya. After the United States militarily invaded Nicaragua and forced Zelaya into exile, his father died under unknown circumstances when José was six. His mother then moved with him and his sister to San Francisco. He returned to Granada in 1927 where be began writing for the newspaper, Nicaraguan Daily. He helped found the Vanguard Literary Movement in 1928 which greatly influenced Nicarguan literature. 

Our goal is to add many more names to this list. Your donations will help us expand this website. In the meantime, you can find more short bios in Central America: An Introductory Lesson.