Esoteric priestess and omnipresent shadow: who is Rosario Murillo, the wife of Daniel Ortega who co-governs Nicaragua

Special for Infobae.- Every day, Monday through Friday, Nicaraguans can hear Rosario Murillo in monologues broadcast simultaneously on radio and television stations controlled by his government. Sometimes he takes on a motherly tone. Other times furious. She talks about the weather, earthquakes, government work, and as a midwife gives direction to supporters of government on what behavior they should behave. If she calls the opponents “puchitos” or the journalists who criticize them “chachalacos”, the Sandinista militants will call them henceforth.

He will also always be seen on an equal footing with Daniel Ortega, like a shadow. For 15 years you can’t see Daniel Ortega without Rosario Murillo on an equal footing. Ortega and Murillo are one. So much so that the Nicaraguans called their administration “The OrMu Diet”. Him in a baseball cap and a sober jacket in those hellish heat of Managua, and she in dresses up to the ankles, in vaporous and vivid colors, usually with scarves, and always loaded with rings, bracelets and necklaces of different stones and colors to which its ingrained esotericism endows it with protective powers.

Murillo is the first lady, vice president, prime minister, official spokesperson and face and seal of government. Its symbols and colors mark the streets, government buildings, squares and clothing of its supporters. He is running for the second time for the vice-presidency of the Republic and is the visible figure of the succession of Daniel Ortega, analysts believe.

Nicaraguan journalist in exile Carlos Fernando Chamorro believes, however, that the succession plan has been aborted. “The April rebellion buried forever the project of a dynastic dictatorship and a presidential candidacy of Murillo in 2021, by collapsing the model of alliance with the big businessmen which gave him a political legitimacy for more than a decade. Doubly sanctioned, by the United States and now by the European Union, for serious human rights violations, Co-Governor Murillo shares with Ortega all responsibility for the dismantling of democracy and crimes against humanity, which have been singled out by international human rights organizations», He declared in an editorial in the electronic journal Confidencial.

Rosario Murillo, 70, was born on June 22, 1951 in a popular district of Managua, into a wealthy family. Her father, Teódulo Murillo, was a cotton farmer who was able to send his daughters to study in Europe. At 11, Rosario Murillo is sent to England and Switzerland to study an executive secretariat, tells the Nicaraguan journalist Fabián Medina in his book “The Prisoner 198. A Profile of Daniel Ortega”. However, her studies were cut short when she returned to Nicaragua on vacation at 15, became pregnant and married as a teenager. From this pregnancy, Zoilamérica was born in 1967, which she named in honor of her mother, Zoilamérica Zambrana.

With her qualifications as a secretary, and pregnant with her second child, Rafael, comes to work for the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa and becomes the secretary of the director, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal. It is in this period that develops his facet of poet, begins to interact with the guerrilla movement Frente Sandinista and establishes a correspondence with Daniel Ortega, who was in prison after the assault on a bank branch in Managua.

The early marriage fails and in La Prensa Murillo meets a journalist with whom he remarries and has his third child. This child died as a baby when the house where he lived with his grandmother collapsed in the earthquake that hit Managua in December 1972.

She will personally meet Daniel Ortega in 1977, in Venezuela, when Ortega was already released from prison thanks to an armed rescue, and she was in exile, pregnant with her fourth child and a new partner. According to Medina’s account in her book, Ortega and Murillo met while they were both separately visiting the house-museum where Simón Bolívar was born, in Caracas. Months later Ortega and Murillo will settle as a couple in Costa Rica.

With the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in July 1979, Ortega became coordinator of the board of directors and one of the nine commanders who made up the national leadership, the real power of the revolutionary government. Murillo remained in a low-key environment, mainly dedicated to culture and away from government decisions.

“We had clashes with Rosario because it was not uncommon for us to feel authoritarianism in his style. I never finished understanding what his conception of culture was ”, The late poet Vida Luz Meneses spoke a few years ago in an interview with Nicaraguan television channel 2.

The somewhat distant relationship between the couple changed when Ortega was defeated in the 1990 election by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Murillo accepted Ortega, and then three more events happened that would transform her into what Medina calls “the figure of power that she is now”.

These events are: a heart attack suffered by Ortega in 1994, after which he gave Murillo control of his diet and his health; the sexual abuse and rape complaint that Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo brought against Daniel Ortega in 1998, in which Rosario Murillo sided with Ortega and turned her back on her daughter; and finally, the 2018 rebellion which took away his government’s hangar and which both controlled with a purple crackdown.

“I tell you quite frankly, I was terribly ashamed that a person with an unblemished curriculum vitae was destined to be destroyed; and (that) it was my own daughter who, because of this obsession and this sick infatuation with power, wanted to destroy her when her ambition was not satisfied “Murillo said in 1998 after Zoilamérica’s accusations.

Rosario Murillo has 10 children, including Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo (1967) and the deceased baby, Anuar Joaquín Hassan Murillo (1971). The other children are: Rafael Ortega Murillo (1968) Carlos Enrique Ortega Murillo (1977) Daniel Edmundo Ortega Murillo (1980) Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo (1981) Laureano Facundo Ortega Murillo (1982) Maurice Facundo Ortega Murillo (1985) Camila Ortega Murillo ( 1987) and Luciana Ortega Murillo (1989).

Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007 at the hands of Murillo. We would never see him separated from her again. “She became a todologist, she’s a kind of priestess for Ortega more than a wifeSays a Nicaraguan woman who does not want to be mentioned. “He assumed the functions of the State as if he were Minister of the Presidency and tried to leave his mark on the entire administration of the government. His goal was the presidency”.

Since taking the oath of office as vice president in 2017, there has been every indication that she would be the Sandinista presidential candidate in the November 2021 election. Immediate succession plans, although I don’t think they have been abandoned, ”explains the Nicaraguan source. “Murillo does not generate consensus, not even among Ortega members themselves. She depends on Daniel Ortega to order ”.

However, the same political analyst acknowledges that Murillo’s figure grows as Ortega’s fades, and so far in Nicaragua no one has been seen preparing to replace Daniel Ortega. From the vice-presidency, Murillo would be the legal successor in the event of Ortega’s death or resignation.

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