Tamara Dávila Rivas
Born in 1981, Tamara Dávila is a Nicaraguan feminist political activist and human rights defender. She graduated with a psychology degree from Universidad Centroamericana in Managua and holds two master’s degrees in Gender, Identity, and Citizenship from the Universidad de Huelva, Spain, and another in Public Policy, Rights and Youth Leadership from Universidad Centroamericana in Managua. Since 2004, Tamara has worked extensively with women’s organizations and other civil society groups that promote sexual and reproductive rights and advocate on behalf of survivors of violence against women and girls. Dávila has been an active participant in demonstrations and initiatives regarding gender-based violence in Nicaragua, such as the staging of the performance “Un violador en tu camino” (A Rapist in Your Path) in downtown Managua.
Since 2014, Dávila has been a member of the political party Unamos (previously known as Sandinista Renovation Movement, MRS). During the student-led mass protests in 2018, which included more than 500 assassinations at the hands of the police and paramilitary groups, she denounced, and continues to denounce, the Ortega-Murillo government and works with UNAB, Articulación Feminista, and UNAMOS, among other political and civil movements, to achieve a democratic transition in her country that allows justice, equality, equity, and freedom. Because of that, government-sponsored intimidation and persecution increased, as she was being followed and her house was placed under surveillance. Due to her advocacy in defense of human rights and her leadership in the widespread opposition movement, Tamara was illegally and violently arrested at her house by the Ortega Murillo regime on June 12, 2021, in the presence of her five-year-old daughter. After the police raided her house and denied knowing her whereabouts for several weeks, Tamara officially disappeared into the hands of the Nicaraguan authorities. She was placed in solitary confinement for twenty months at the new prison built by the regime for political prisoners known as “El Nuevo Chipote.” There, and in clear violation of international law on the prevention of torture and treatment of prisoners, she faced several forms of torture that included dietary restrictions, interrogations in the middle of the night, irregular family visits, denial of access to reading and writing materials, and solitary confinement. Her case was emblematic because the regime prevented Tamara from establishing any form of contact with her daughter for over a year. On February 9, 2023, she was sent into exile alongside 221 other Nicaraguan political prisoners and granted humanitarian parole status in the United States. Currently, she is the 2023-2024 Human Rights Fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in Kalamazoo College, Michigan. She continues to advocate for Nicaragua’s freedom and works to build a united and diverse movement in exile in coordination with people inside Nicaragua and around the world. She was recently elected spokesperson of the new political movement of leaders in exile, Monteverde.
Keywords: military work in Nicaragua, imprisonment, reproductive rights
Media: Transcripts (English, Spanish), Audio
Dora María Téllez (2024 Interview)
Dora María Téllez Argüello is a Nicaraguan historian, politician, and social rights activist. She was a prominent Sandinista guerrilla commander in the popular struggle against the Somoza military dictatorship in Nicaragua in the 1970s. She served as representative, vice president of the Council of State, and as Minister of Health during Nicaragua’s revolutionary government (1979-1990). In 1995, she parted ways with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) due to its authoritarian drift and co-founded the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), now UNAMOS.
Téllez has since been a vocal opponent to the consolidation of a new dictatorship in Nicaragua led by President Daniel Ortega. She was imprisoned for twenty months, held in isolation, and total deprivation of rights for denouncing the authoritarian nature of the government and its human rights violations. In February 2023, she was banished and expatriated from Nicaragua to the United States as part of a group of 222 political prisoners who were also illegally stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality.
Her struggle for democracy, social justice, and defense of human rights has been internationally recognized. She has been awarded numerous accolades, including the 2022 René Cassin Prize in Human Rights awarded by the Government of the Basque Country, Spain.
Téllez has also developed an academic career as a historian. She is the author of books and academic publications, including ¡Muera La Gobierna! (1999), which documents the internal colonization of indigenous lands by the Nicaraguan state in Matagalpa and Jinotega between 1820 and 1890. She was co-author of the monograph El Café de Nicaragua (2014) on the impact of the development of coffee production in Nicaragua in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has also published various essays on the challenges of democracy and democratic governance, citizen security and the criminal justice system, the role and evolution of social movements, the social and political exclusion of indigenous and other minoritized communities, and the evolution of Sandinismo.
Téllez was incorporated into Nicaragua’s and Guatemala’s Academies of Geography and History. She has also received two honorary doctorates from the University of Helsinki (2011) and from the Sorbonne-Nouvelle (2022). In the summer of 2023, she was a Visiting Research Scholar in the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton University. Currently, she is a visiting professor and holds the Richard E. Greenleaf Distinguished Chair in Latin American Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, imprisonment, military work in Nicaragua
