Humberto Ortega

Humberto Ortega Saavedra (10 January 1947 – 30 September 2024) was a Nicaraguan revolutionary, military leader, writer and businessman. One of the nine members of the National Directorate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), he co-founded the Tercerista tendency faction within the FSLN and was the "major theorist" His parents Daniel Ortega Cerda and Lidia Saavedra, committed Nicaraguan nationalists, had six children: Humberto, Daniel Ortega, Camilo Ortega (1950–1978), Germania and two more who died in infancy. He and other Brigade members were suspended from the FSLN for eight months for "ultra-leftist tendencies," including unauthorized military actions.

In 1971, Ortega was part of an FSLN delegation with Fonseca, Agüero and Rufo Marín that received General Staff military training in North Korea. Humberto Ortega was "major theorist"

After his security detail shot and killed a 16-year-old in 1990, in 1994 a military tribunal acquitted Ortega of allegations he was involved in a cover-up. This elaborated on his thesis of "El Centrismo", having turned toward centrism in later years. a departure from earlier views like a 1981 threat to "hang the bourgeoisie from the light posts".

In May 2024, Ortega was stripped of his communication devices, given a police summons, and placed under house arrest following the publication of an interview with Infobae during which he described his brother's regime as "authoritarian, dictatorial" and said there was no one to take power when Daniel dies, including his wife and vice president Rosario Murrillo. Trejos's daughter with Aguero, Elízabeth, later adopted the surname Ortega.

Ortega died at the Dr. Alejandro Dávila Bolaños Military Hospital in Managua on 30 September 2024, at the age of 77. He had suffered from heart problems, and had been hospitalized since 12 June 2024.