Dora María Téllez

Dora María Téllez Argüello (born 1955) 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 revolution that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979.

Operation Chanchera An increase in government repression and rise of political prisoners being taken prompted Téllez to go underground in 1976. The revolutionaries captured 1,500 civilian hostages and threatened their lives unless their demands were met. This event revealed the potential vulnerability of the Somoza regime and helped the FSLN win support from Latin American governments and unite and mobilize diverse factions of the opposition to the regime. Specifically, Téllez has been quoted discussing the specific health inequalities present in the mining industry in Nicaragua.

Political career Early experience within the FSLN political party included Téllez's position as the Political Secretary for Managua. The first congress of the FSLN had an election in 1990 which prompted discontent regarding the election process; however the Directorate decided that the election of a new body would nevertheless be done by slate rather than by voting for individual members. This stunted the potential political candidacy of Téllez, who was being supported by many rank-and-file members.

In 1995 Téllez co-founded the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) after resigning her seat in the FSLN. The MRS political party opposed the current corruption in the Nicaraguan government and appointed Herty Lewites to run as the party's candidate in the 2006 presidential election against Daniel Ortega. Four months before the election was to be held, Lewites died of natural causes. Ortega and his supporters stripped the MRS of its legal status about one week later. Téllez suspended her hunger strike on June 16, after doctors told her she would suffer irreparable damage if she continued her fast. She vowed to begin "a new stage of struggle" against what she termed the dictatorial policies of Daniel Ortega.

Imprisonment and release In June 2021, she was arrested by the Ortega government in a wave of arrests of opposition presidential candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election as well as other opposition leaders, journalists, businessmen, peasants, feminists, and social activists. She was sentenced in February 2022, in an express hearing that took place within the prison where she was held. The Prosecutor's Office requested 15 years in prison, plus disqualification from holding public office.

She was freed after 605 days of imprisonment along with 222 other Nicaraguan prisoners. She was expelled to the United States and her Nicaraguan nationality, along with that of the other prisoners, was revoked. The Spanish government offered to guarantee nationality to all prisoners. Shortly after her release, she recounted the conditions of psychological torture and violation of international law regarding prisoners to which she was subjected, although she said that there was no physical torture or violence against her. She spoke about the death of one her companions due to lack of medical attention, the former revolutionary general Hugo Torres Jiménez.

Academic life as a historian Téllez wrote publications on Nicaraguan history that underscore the importance of the north-central region of the country to the nation's political and economic history. Her book, "Muera la Gobierna: colonizacion en Matagalpa y Jinotega 1820-1890" documents the process of internal colonization and land dispossession carried out by the Nicaraguan state in the northern region of Nicaragua between 1820 and 1890. She was incorporated as a member of the Academy of Geography and History of Nicaragua in recognition for her contributions, and she was also distinguished as a corresponding Member of the Academy of Geography and History of Guatemala.

In 2004 she was appointed Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor in Latin American studies at the Harvard Divinity School, but was barred from obtaining an entry visa to the United States under the Patriot Act, on grounds that she was a terrorist, citing as evidence the raid on the Nicaraguan National Palace in Managua. This prompted 122 members of the academic community from Harvard and 15 other North American universities to publish a statement in her defense, stating: