José Daniel Ortega Saavedra ( ; ; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician, revolutionary, and former guerrilla fighter who, under various titles, has been the leader of Nicaragua since 2007 and previously from 1979 to 1990. He first came to power as the coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction from 1979 to 1985, and then served as president of Nicaragua from 1985 until 1990. He reassumed the presidency in 2007 and has served alongside his wife Rosario Murillo as co-president since February 2025. Ortega has been described as an authoritarian leader and has invited comparisons to Anastasio Somoza. Multiple media outlets and politicians in the international community have referred to him and his wife as dictators. In July 2026, Ortega declared an end to elections in Nicaragua.
Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution, and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 general election by Violeta Chamorro.
Ortega was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 general election. In office, he allied with fellow Latin American socialists. His second administration abandoned most of his earlier leftist principles, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies. Under his tenure, Nicaragua has experienced democratic backsliding. In June 2018, organizations such as Amnesty International and the Organization of American States reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against anti-government protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country.
His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers, and resumed his repression of the Catholic Church after a brief rapprochement, imprisoning prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos.
Early life Early childhood Ortega was born in La Libertad in Chontales Department, into a working-class family. His parents, Daniel Simeón Ortega Cerda and Lidia Albertina Saavedra Rivas, were opposed to the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Ortega's mother was imprisoned by Somoza's National Guard for being in possession of "love letters", which police said were coded political missives. Ortega and his two brothers grew up to become revolutionaries. His late brother Humberto Ortega was a former general, military leader, and published writer, and the third brother Camilo Ortega died fighting the Somoza regime in 1978. They had a sister, Germania, who died.
Juigalpa and Managua Seeking stable employment, the family migrated from La Libertad to the provincial capital of Juigalpa, and then to a middle-class neighborhood in Managua. In Managua, Ortega and his brother studied at the upper-middle-class high school, the LaSalle Institute, where Ortega was classmates with Arnoldo Aleman, who would go on to be mayor of Managua (1990–1995) and later President of Nicaragua (1997–2002). Ortega's father Daniel Ortega Cedra detested US military intervention in Nicaragua and Washington's support for the Somoza government. He imparted this anti-American sentiment to his sons.
Early political activity Ortega was first arrested for political activities at the age of 15 and quickly joined the then-underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1963. In 1964, Ortega travelled to Guatemala, where the police arrested him and turned him over to the Nicaraguan National Guard. After his release from detention, Ortega arranged the assassination of his torturer, Guardsman Gonzalo Lacayo, in August 1967.
Imprisonment He was imprisoned in 1967 for an armed robbery of a branch of the Bank of America. Ortega was released in late 1974, along with other Sandinista prisoners, in exchange for Somocista hostages. While imprisoned at the Modelo jail, just outside Managua, Ortega wrote poems, including "En la prisión" ("In the Prison"), which was published in the literary journal Casa de las Américas in 1971. The poem's closing lines refer to the prisoners not having known Managua "in a miniskirt". This phrase has sometimes been reported as the title of a separate poem, but biographer Kenneth E. Morris suggests that no such separate poem may exist and that the reports may instead refer to the ending of "In the Prison". During his imprisonment, Ortega was tortured. While he was incarcerated at El Modelo, his mother helped stage protests and hunger strikes for political prisoners; this resulted in improving the treatment of incarcerated Sandinistas.
Exile in Cuba Upon release in 1974, Ortega was exiled to Cuba. There he received training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government. He later secretly returned to Nicaragua.
Sectional division within the FSLN In the late 1970s, divisions over the FSLN's campaign against Somoza led Ortega and his brother Humberto to form the Insurrectionist, or Tercerista (Third Way) faction. The Terceristas sought to combine the distinct guerrilla war strategies of the two other factions, Tomás Borge's Guerra Prolongada Popular (GPP, or Prolonged People's War), and Jaime Wheelock's Proletarian Tendency. The Ortega brothers forged alliances with a wide array of anti-Somoza forces, including Catholic and Protestant activists, and other non-Marxist civil society groups. The Terceristas became the most effective faction in wielding political and military strength, and their push for FSLN solidarity received the support of revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro.
Sandinista revolution and first presidency (1979–1990)
When Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN in July 1979, Ortega became a member of the five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, which included Sandinista militant Moisés Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of a murdered journalist. In September 1979, United States President Carter hosted Ortega at the White House, and warned him against arming other Central American leftist guerrilla movements. Ortega said the Sandinistas were not involved in neighboring countries. When Ortega questioned the Americans about CIA support for anti-Sandinista groups, Carter and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the reports were false. After the meeting, Carter asked Congress for $75 million in aid to Nicaragua, contingent on the Sandinista government's promise not to aid other guerrillas.
The FSLN came to dominate the junta, Robelo and Chamorro resigned, and in 1981 Ortega became the coordinator of the Junta. As the only member of the FSLN National Directorate in the Junta, he was the effective leader of the country. After attaining power, the FSLN embarked upon an ambitious programme of social reform. They arranged to redistribute of land to about 100,000 families. They also launched a literacy drive, made health care improvements that ended polio through mass vaccinations, and reduced the frequency of other treatable diseases.Mastering Modern World History by Norman Lowe, second edition The Sandinista nationalization efforts affected mostly banks and industries owned by the extended Somoza family. More than half of all farms, businesses, and industries remained in private hands. The revolutionary government wanted to preserve a mixed economy and support private sector investment. The Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) opposed the Sandinistas' economic reform. The main organization of Nicaraguan big business was composed of prosperous families from the Pacific coast cities, who dominated commerce and banking.Baumeister, Eduardo. "The politics of land reform" in , p. 250.
Indigenous people formed two rebel groups – the Misura and Misurasata, comprising between 500 and 2,000 fighters. They were joined in the north by Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) and in the south by former Sandinistas and peasantry who, under the leadership of Edén Pastora, were resisting forced collectivization. Ortega's administration took a hard line against opposition to his policies: On 21 February 1981, the Sandinista army killed 7 Miskito Indians and wounded 17 and 10,000 individuals had been moved by 1982. Thousands of Indians fled to take refuge across the border in Honduras, and Ortega's government imprisoned 300 in Nicaragua. Anthropologist Gilles Bataillon termed this "politics of ethnocide" in Nicaragua.
In 1980 the Sandinista government launched the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign and said the illiteracy rate fell from 50% to 13% in the span of five months. Robert F. Arnove said the figures were excessive because many "unteachable" illiterates were omitted from the statistics, and many people declared literate were found to be unable to read or write a simple sentence. Richard Kraft said that even if the figures were exaggerated, the "accomplishment is without precedent in educational history". In 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua the Nadezhda K. Krupskaya prize in recognition of its efforts. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006, Literacy for Life. The FSLN also focused on improving the Nicaraguan health system, particularly through vaccination campaigns and the construction of public hospitals. These actions reduced child mortality by half, to 40 deaths per thousand. By 1982, the World Health Organization deemed Nicaragua a model for primary health care. During this period, Nicaragua won the UNESCO prize for exceptional health progress.
In 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining with Soviet-backed Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries, such as El Salvador. People within the Reagan administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels as anti-Sandinista guerrillas, some of whom were former officers from Somoza's National Guard. These were known collectively as the Contras. This resulted in one of the largest political scandals in US history known as the Iran–Contra affair. Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied the Boland Amendment, selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds in order to secretly fund the Contras.