Word: sandinista
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President Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's macho and mustachioed Sandinista commandante of the 1970s and '80s, may claim the mantle of revolutionary "new man," but Latin America's feminists insist Ortega is a dirty old man. Throughout the continent, Ortega is being hounded by feminist groups over his alleged sexual abuse of stepdaughter Zoilamerica Narvaez during the 1980s. The allegation first surfaced in 1998, but was eventually dismissed by a Sandinista judge without investigation or trial - despite an investigation by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, which determined that the case had merit. In most democracies, the furor would have been...
...Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who has long been accused by feminists of being a silent accomplice in her daughter's alleged abuse, are fighting back with a Sandinista inquisition. Ortega has used all his tentacles - Sandinista media outlets, government ministries and fanatical party structures - to investigate, slander and harass Nicaragua's feminist movement, which is being informally accused of everything from money laundering and conspiring with the CIA, to "illegally" promoting abortion, pornography and "assassinating children...
...Daniel of the Old Testament prophesied a new earthly kingdom, but was thrown into a den of lions as punishment for his faith. No fate so dramatic awaits his Nicaraguan namesake President Daniel Ortega, although the controversial Sandinista leader is convinced the lions are circling...
...result might be disorienting to some of the Sandinistas' more traditional Christian base: Ortega, dressed in pastels in order to channel positive energy, delivers a meandering speech on the danger of devils and the love of Christ and of Sandino, while sitting in front of psychedelic painting of an eyeball in the center of a hand surrounded by snakes - a colorful mural painted by Murillo behind Ortega's chair in Sandinista headquarters, to protect him from evil...
...contrast with the religious experience of the first Sandinista government, during the 1980s, couldn't be starker: Back then, some of the leading figures in the movement, and in Ortega's cabinet, were Catholic priests who championed Liberation Theology - the leftist interpretation of Christian scripture as a revolutionary call for activism in pursuit of social, political and economic justice. The Sandinista priests were rebuked by Pope John Paul II over their involvement in politics; the pontiff's public scolding in 1983 of then Culture Minister Father Ernesto Cardenal coming as a major blow to the Sandinistas' standing among their predominantly...