Daniel Ortega
Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedrais a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007; previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as Coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstructionand then as President. A leader in the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front, his policies in government have seen the implementation of leftist reforms across Nicaragua...
NationalityNicaraguan
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth11 November 1945
CityLa Libertad, Nicaragua
CountryNicaragua
To be selected as one of the top 25 players in your age group in the nation says a lot.
Rambo only exists in the movies.
Legalisation doesn't make sense.
Before consulting the hotheads who present various military options such as a military invasion: remember, President Reagan, Rambo only exists in the movies.
One has to bear in mind that during my childhood and adolescence, I suffered the repression of the Somoza dictatorship in every way: economically, socially, as well as at the hands of the police -- because if we went out on the street to play baseball, for example, the police would come and beat us up and put us in prison.
Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country.
My idol was Sandino, and also Christ. I was brought up a Christian, but I regarded Christ as a rebel, a revolutionary.
We are close to God when we are close to people. If we think of God as something in favor of the betterment of human beings, and if we act in a way that brings about that betterment-if we do not cling to riches, selfishness, or greed-then I believe we are getting closer to God.
If we do not cling to riches, selfishness or greed-then I believe we are getting closer to God.
Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.
The fact is that the United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans.
The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism.
What we asked for were weapons so that we could defend ourselves -- that's what we asked of the Soviet Union, of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, of the Algerians, of the Vietnamese; and that's what we received so that we could arm the Nicaraguan people and defend ourselves in that war imposed on us by Ronald Reagan's Administration over a number of years.
We grew up in a situation where we didn't know what freedom or justice were, and therefore we didn't know what democracy was.