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.
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