Unfinished Revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua's Struggle for Liberation

Together with his brother Humberto, Daniel Ortega Saavedra masterminded the only victorious Latin American revolution since Fidel Castro’s in Cuba. Following the triumphant 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, Ortega was named coordinator of the governing junta, and then in 1984 was elected president by a landslide in the country’s first free presidential election. The future was full of promise.

Yet the United States was soon training, equipping, and financing a counterrevolutionary forc…