Daniel Ortega

(b. 1945)

Daniel Ortega — leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and President of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 (and again from 2007 to present). Leader of the revolutionary government that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. In the 1980s, the Sandinistas were at the center of a fierce debate in American churches about solidarity, liberation, and U.S. foreign policy in Central America.

Connection

Phyllis Anderson met Ortega during a fact-finding mission to Latin America in 1982, organized by the Iowa District of the American Lutheran Church. The Sandinista government connection was already noted in Phyllis's note as a 1980 Nicaragua visit — this entry confirms and names the person at the center of that story.

Why Herbert Would Be Delighted

The American Lutheran Church sending a fact-finding delegation to Nicaragua in 1982 — in the middle of the Contra war — was itself an act of theological courage. Phyllis was there, and she met the man the Reagan administration was trying to overthrow. For Herbert, whose progressive commitments include Central American solidarity, this is a connection with real weight.

Cross-Connections

• Jon Sobrino – also met by Phyllis on the same Latin American fact-finding circuit; two figures at the center of 1980s liberation theology and solidarity politics