Nicaraguan Social Justice Activist Dora María Téllez Joins Princeton as a Visiting Scholar

Dora María Téllez joined the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) as a Visiting Research Scholar June through August 2023. Her visiting fellowship was made possible with the support from PLAS, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Téllez 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 a representative and 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 called 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 20 months and 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 since developed a career as a historian and is the author of various books and academic publications. Read her full bio.