Outside the Metropolitan Cathedral of Managua there were two hearse carriages ready for Doña Lidia Saavedra, the mother of Daniel and Humberto Ortega. The matriarch died in May 2005, a year before her eldest son returned to the presidency of Nicaragua. Each of the children had hired a funeral home on their own because there was a disagreement: where to bury the old woman. The Sandinista leader wanted to bury her in the General Cemetery of Managua and the former head of the Nicaraguan Army in the Gardens of Memory. The discussion exploded when the present body mass ended. Rosario Murillo, current vice president, participated in it, and who has had a bitter relationship with her brother-in-law since the eighties.
“Daniel was very affected by his mother’s death and it was Rosario who fought the most with Humberto over where to bury her. Even the cardinal at that time, Miguel Obando y Bravo, had to mediate to be able to carry out the burial, which was ultimately carried out in the General Cemetery of Managua. That was one of the few times, after the Sandinista Revolution, that the brothers could be seen together. They have always been estranged,” says a source close to the Ortega Murillo family.
The episode of the brothers fighting at the foot of their mother’s coffin illustrates the tense relationship that Daniel Ortega has had with his younger brother, especially at the family level and to a lesser extent politically. In the midst of that relationship, the “co-president” Murillo has always been friction, until it reached its climax on May 19, when the presidential couple ordered the police to surround Humberto Ortega, after the retired military man said in an interview with Infobae that There will be no successors to maintain the authoritarian and dynastic project when Daniel dies.
The statement went down very badly with the general’s sister-in-law. She is the main driver of the dynastic transition, with her son Laureano Ortega Murillo the most likely to receive the witness from the dictator.
Murillo had already been at odds with Humberto Ortega’s family before the Sandinista Revolution triumphed in 1979. The then first lady in the revolutionary stage did not get along with her brother-in-law’s wife, a Costa Rican named Ligia Trejos. She was more dedicated to her children, and she had less public projection than Murillo.
Although the animosity was mutual, sources close to the Ortega Murillo family remember that the current “co-president” disdained Trejos and Humberto for their “opulent” lifestyle. “Rosario addressed Humberto’s children in a derogatory manner; “She even criticized them for the clothes they wore,” says the voice close to the presidential family. “She used those things to question Humberto politically and weaken the relationship she had with Daniel, because the brothers did have a political connection.”
External influences
Another source told EL PAÍS that Murillo always had “an obsession” with separating Daniel Ortega from outside influences. This has been achieved today, although this was not the case in the eighties. Although he is the younger brother, Humberto, a former military leader, he always had a range of influence over the Sandinista leader. The sources consulted agree that despite the differences, Daniel usually took into account Humberto’s considerations of military strategy, politics or diplomacy.
The younger Ortega sometimes arrived at El Carmen, the residence of the presidential couple in Managua. They were exclusive visits to Daniel. They were talking in the library, far from Rosario. When they finished, the general did not sit down to eat or greet his nephews. Other times the brothers met alone at the Army General Staff.
“As a soldier, Humberto is very pragmatic and has always seen Rosario as crazy, impulsive, violent and aggressive. But it is not only because of her emotional position, Humberto is realistic: he knows of the internal antipathies that her leadership has always generated,” says one of her sources.
“A disgrace”
Humberto also dislikes Rosario Murillo. The soldier said in the eighties that “it was a disgrace” to his brother and complained about the “great influence” that he had on his brother. “She is like a dominant boss,” Róger Miranda Bengochea, who was the general’s personal assistant, recounts in a memoir. Since he was dismissed as head of the Army in 1994 by former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Humberto went into retirement. He dedicated himself to his private life, his business and his political positions appeared only in the books he wrote and, rarely, in opinion columns or interviews.
The Ortega Murillo family’s repression of the 2018 social protests caused the former head of the Army to distance himself from the authoritarian drift of the Government of his brother and sister-in-law. During Operation Cleanup, the retired general asked Daniel in a public letter to “deactivate the police forces” and “bring forward elections.” The response from power came months later, when he accused his younger brother of “becoming a pawn of the oligarchy and the empire.” The former military man continued to give his opinions on the sociopolitical panorama of the country. Although he criticized his brother, he sometimes exempted her from his responsibility for the allegations of crimes against humanity made by the United Nations.
![Humberto Ortega](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/BRMJNIUJJ5F6ZP3WLFX3HDUFCQ.png?auth=59ce96952dd21a7c0bd273bc913e38763f64d5835f1a9e76c74ae66aed119bf1&width=414)
This May 19, Humberto gave an interview to journalist Fabián Medina for the Argentine portal Infobae. In it he issued very harsh criticisms against the Ortega Murillo couple. He was emphatic on the issue of succession and ruled out the possibilities of his sister-in-law and her nephew Laureano inheriting power.
“Not even Somoza could establish his son (…) With Daniel’s absence, it would be very fragile to sustain everything that he has managed to sustain until now with great effort and enormous complexities. Not only internally, but also with the allied forces of the left and the governments of the region. The only one they know is Daniel,” he said.
The source linked to the family assured that Murillo received Humberto’s statements as public humiliation. “Indeed, neither Laureano nor Rosario have support from the historical Sandinista bases. Rosario has no social base and the young people she has surrounded herself with probably don’t know her well. Her entourage is the friends of her children… but beyond the references that Humberto could make, what made her most angry is that the general does not know the leadership of her children, of Laureano,” she says.
After the interview, the Government issued a statement in which it assured that they had installed a health post outside the retired general’s house. In other words, it is de facto house for prison, a measure similar to what thousands of opponents suffer in Nicaragua.
The historian and former Sandinista guerrilla Mónica Baltodano described this response as “relentless.” “They are trying to isolate him and silence him. At the same time, it explains the increase in Murillista controls in the repressive bodies (…) Without a doubt, Humberto is advancing his critical position towards his brother’s regime. This time he affirms that he now has a more natural, more fluid communication with Daniel. ‘We are talking,’ he said. We must think that his brother is aware of what Humberto is doing. This was not the case some time ago. He has managed to evade the Rosario siege. This one will not be happy,” added the denationalized former guerrilla. After these statements, a property in Laguna de Apoyo, south of Managua, was confiscated.
The Sandinista leader visited his brother Humberto in his home in December 2022, as he was in a delicate state of health. “Rosario is afraid that Humberto will continue to have influence on Daniel. Despite all the differences that they might have as brothers, he went to visit him because he was sick. The Government recognized Daniel’s hearing weeks later and shortly after, 222 political prisoners were released. To a certain extent, I think the release of the political prisoners was linked to that meeting between the two, because Humberto has always been very pragmatic in his suggestions,” concluded the source consulted by EL PAÍS.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América in Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Humberto #Ortega #brother #Nicaraguan #dictator #provokes #wrath #Rosario #Murillo