Daniel Ortega
Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedrais a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007; previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as Coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstructionand then as President. A leader in the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front, his policies in government have seen the implementation of leftist reforms across Nicaragua...
NationalityNicaraguan
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth11 November 1945
CityLa Libertad, Nicaragua
CountryNicaragua
The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism.
During the meeting with President Carter, we proposed the development of a new kind of relationship with the United States.
It wasn't a completely free election because there was open interference from the United States, from President Bush, in the form of financial and political support to our opponents, as well as threats that the blockade would not be lifted and all the rest of it if UNO didn't win. The decisive moment was the invasion of Panama.
Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.
His intelligence. He?s skillful and he?s very, very intelligent. He always just makes that right play.
What we asked for were weapons so that we could defend ourselves -- that's what we asked of the Soviet Union, of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, of the Algerians, of the Vietnamese; and that's what we received so that we could arm the Nicaraguan people and defend ourselves in that war imposed on us by Ronald Reagan's Administration over a number of years.
We grew up in a situation where we didn't know what freedom or justice were, and therefore we didn't know what democracy was.
One has to bear in mind that during my childhood and adolescence, I suffered the repression of the Somoza dictatorship in every way: economically, socially, as well as at the hands of the police -- because if we went out on the street to play baseball, for example, the police would come and beat us up and put us in prison.
Legalisation doesn't make sense.
Rambo only exists in the movies.
The fact is that the United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans.