WNora Josefina Astorga Gadea de Jenkins was a Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter in the Nicaraguan Revolution, a lawyer, politician, judge and the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations from 1986 to 1988.
WMónica Baltodano was a commander of the guerrilla revolutionary group known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front during the Nicaraguan Revolution. She worked in the movement for several decades, and after experiencing the corruption and authoritarianism within the movement, she left in 2005 to form the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo, known as El Rescate.
WGioconda Belli is a Nicaraguan author, novelist and poet.
WEnrique Bermúdez Varela, known as Comandante 380, was a Nicaraguan soldier and rebel who founded and commanded the Nicaraguan Contras. In this capacity, he became a central global figure in one of the most prominent conflicts of the Cold War.
WTomás Borge Martínez was a cofounder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and was Interior Minister of Nicaragua during one of the administrations of Daniel Ortega. He was also a renowned statesman, writer, and politician. Tomás Borge also held the titles of "Vice-Secretary and President of the FSLN", member of the Nicaraguan Parliament and National Congress, and Ambassador to Peru. Considered a hardliner, he led the "prolonged people's war" tendency within the FSLN until his death.
WOmar Cabezas Lacayo is a Nicaraguan author, revolutionary and politician. He was a commander in the guerrilla war against Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and prominent Sandinista party member. He is perhaps most famous outside of Nicaragua for his book entitled Fire From the Mountain, which is a personal account of his days as a guerrilla fighting the Somoza dynasty.
WAdolfo Calero Portocarrero was a Nicaraguan businessman and the leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest rebel group of the Contras, opposing the Sandinista government.
WErnesto Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987. He was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019.
WClaudia Lucía Chamorro Barrios is a Nicaraguan writer, public health official, and former ambassador of Nicaragua to Cuba and Costa Rica. She served as a diplomat on behalf of the Sandinista government in the 1980s. She later became a critic of the FSLN. She is the author of a memoir, Tiempo de Vivir.
WVioleta Chamorro is a Nicaraguan politician who served as President of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997. She was the first and, to date, only woman to hold the position of president in Nicaragua.
WArturo José Cruz Porras, sometimes called Arturo Cruz Sr. to distinguish him from his son, was a Nicaraguan banker and technocrat. He became prominent in politics during the Sandinista (FSLN) era. After repeatedly resigning from positions in protest, opinion divided between those who lauded him as a statesman and man of principle, and those who derided him as an ineffectual hand-wringer.
WArturo José Cruz Sequeira, also known as Arturo Cruz Jr., is a Nicaraguan Contra, diplomat and professor. The son of Nicaraguan politician Arturo Cruz, he became involved in the exile politics of the Contra rebels opposing the Sandinista (FSLN) government in the 1980s, and later served as the Ambassador of Nicaragua to the United States for two years from 2007 to 2009. Prior to his ambassadorship, Cruz was a tenured professor at Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas Business School in Managua, Nicaragua, and a visiting professor at the Advanced School of Economics and Business in San Salvador, El Salvador. Cruz is a pre-candidate for president in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election. On June 5, 2021, he was arrested by the government of Daniel Ortega.
WMiguel d’Escoto Brockmann was an American-born Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Society. As the President of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009, he presided over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was also nominated as Libyan Representative to the UN in March 2011. He died on 8 June 2017, having suffered a stroke several months earlier.
WCarlos Fonseca Amador was a Nicaraguan teacher, librarian and revolutionary who founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of the Zelaya Department, Nicaragua, three years before the FSLN took power.
WMoisés Omar Halleslevens Acevedo is the former Vice President of Nicaragua, serving during the third term of President Daniel Ortega.
WHerty Lewites Rodríguez was a Nicaraguan politician. He was Mayor of Managua and a candidate for president in the 2006 Nicaraguan general election when he died suddenly.
WBenjamin Ernest "Ben" Linder, was an American engineer. While working on a small hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua, Linder was killed by the Contras, a loose confederation of rebel groups funded by the U.S. government. Coming at a time when U.S. support for the Contras was already highly controversial, Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and further polarized opinion in the United States.
WRosario María Murillo Zambrana is the vice president and first lady of Nicaragua. She is married to the current president Daniel Ortega. She was also first lady when, in 1985, her husband became president six years after the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the Somoza dynasty. Murillo has served as the Nicaraguan government's lead spokesperson, government minister, head of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers, and Communications Coordinator of the Council on Communication and Citizenry. She was sworn in as vice president of Nicaragua on 10 January 2017. In August 2021, she was made subject to personal sanctions by the European Union, over alleged human rights violations.
WJosé Daniel Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan politician serving as President of Nicaragua since 2007; previously, he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as Coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction (1979–1985) and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). A leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's previously left-wing radical politics moderated more and more, pursuing pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church, with the adoption of strong anti-abortion policies by his government in the 2000s, and adoption of strong religious rhetoric by the previously atheist Ortega. After the retirement of Fidel Castro in 2008, Ortega is one of the longest non-royal rulers in the world and the longest serving non-royal leader in the Americas.
WGeneral Humberto Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan military leader, often self-called leading Latin American revolutionary strategist, and published writer. He was Minister of Defense between the victory of the Sandinista revolution in 1979 under the National Reconstruction Government, through the first presidency of his brother Daniel Ortega, and through the presidency of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro who defeated Daniel Ortega in the elections of 1990.
WMagaly Quintana Pereyra was a Nicaraguan feminist historian and activist. She was director of Catholic Women for the Right to Choose, advocating for the right to therapeutic abortion following its ban in Nicaragua in 2006. She also led advocacy opposing violence against women, raising awareness of femicide in the country. In 2018, she joined the anti-government protests.
WSergio Ramírez Mercado is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega.
WLuis Alfonso Robelo Callejas, a Nicaraguan businessman, was the founder of the Nicaraguan Democratic Movement (MDN).
WArlen Siu Bermúdez was a singer-songwriter, essayist and Sandinista revolutionary, who became one of the first casualties during the insurrection against Somoza.
WHugo Spadafora Franco was an Italian and Panamanian physician and guerrilla fighter in Guinea-Bissau and Nicaragua. He criticized the military in Panama, which led to his murder by the government of Manuel Noriega in 1985.
WDora María Téllez Argüello is a Nicaraguan historian known for her involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a young university medical student in León in the 1970s, Téllez was recruited by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Téllez went on to become a comandante and fought alongside later president Daniel Ortega in the popular revolt that ousted the Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in 1979. In the subsequent FSLN government, she served as Health Minister under Ortega and has also been an advocate for women's rights. She ultimately became a critic of repression and corruption under President Ortega and left the FSLN in 1995 to found the party Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), later renamed Unamos. Along with several other opposition figures, she was arrested in June 2021 by the Ortega government.
WFrancisco Urcuyo Maliaños was a Nicaraguan politician, who served as Vice President of Anastasio Somoza Debayle from May 1967 to May 1972. He was born in Rivas.
WJaime Wheelock Román is a Nicaraguan politician. Member of The Sandinista Liberation Front from 1967, he was named as a member of the National Directorate in 1973. Wheelock graduated as lawyer and sociologist by University of Chile and FLACSO, Chile. He was the leader of the "Proletarian Tendency" in the 1970s, and one of the nine commanders of the Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution that overthrew the Somoza regime. After 1979 he became minister for agriculture and agrarian reform in the Sandinista government of the 1980s. After 1990 he obtained a master's degree in public administration at Harvard University. Wheelock has written several books: Imperialismo y Dictadura, Raíces Indígenas de la Lucha anticolonialista en Nicaragua, Diciembre Victorioso, El Desarrollo Economico de Nicaragua, and La Reforma Agraria Sandinista, amongst other publications. Since 1996 he has been the President of the NGO Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia IPADE.