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. 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. An increase in government repression and rise of political prisoners being taken prompted Téllez to go underground in 1976. While underground she did educational work in the mountains. As "Commander Two", at age 22, she was third in command in Operation Chanchera, on August 22, 1978, that occupied the Nicaraguan National Palace in Managua, where the Nicaraguan National Assembly was in session. The revolutionaries captured 1,500 civilian hostages and threatened their lives unless their demands were met. The demands included a prisoner release and a monetary ransom. There was a subsequent release of key Sandinista political prisoners and a million-dollar ransom payment, which Téllez played a role in negotiating. 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. Following the operation, thousands of youths and women joined the Sandinista movement. A popular insurrection grew along with the FSLN and contributed to the fall of the Somoza regime on July 19, 1979. Upon her arrival in Panama with the released Sandinistas in August 1978, Téllez trained in Cuba and Panama to become a military commander.