In this short 176 page book,
author Margaret Randall pre-
sents a detailed account of the
life of Doris Tijerino, a seasoned
guerrilla of the Sandinist National
Liberation Front (FSLN) of
Nicaragua and one of the 59 pri-
soners released recently after
the takeover of the National
Palace by FSLN commandos last
August. The author, a U.S. writer
living in Cuba, sensitively and
skillfully uses a first person auto-
biographical narrative to relate
Doris’ story.
Doris tells of the deep per-
sonal transformation she experi-
enced in her life. She moves
from being a critical and sensi-
tive but passive witness to her
people’s oppression to being a
committed and highly politicized
guerrilla fighter. Born in Matagal-
pa in 1943 into an upper-middle
class environment, Doris was
the daughter of a conservative
Nicaraguan landowner. Even in
this elite circle, Doris was not
immune from discrimination, “I
felt really different; I wasn’t tall
or blond nor did I have blue eyes;
I was Nicaraguan.” Doris’
mother, a leftist daughter of
English immigrant parents, had a
deep influence on her, putting
into perspective the oppressive
conditions that Doris saw in
Nicaraguan society. “My mother
always, constantly, made me see
the relationship between North
American imperialism and the
dictatorship of the Somozas and
the situation of the Nicaraguan
people. . ”
Doris tells of growing up in the
late forties and early fifties in
Nicaragua: the brutal poverty of
the peasantry, the role of the
National Guard in the long
history of repression against the
people’s movements and her
growing understanding of the
class differences in Nicaraguan
society. In the late fifties Doris
entered a public institute to study
-her first break from the private
schools customarily attended by
people of her class. Here, her life
began to take the turn that even-
tually led to her close associa-
tion with Nicaraguan revolution-
aries. At age 15, Doris made her
own entry into the guerrilla sup-
port efforts when, at her mother’s
request, she transported a pack-
age of guns past the National
Guard. The assassination of
Anastasio Somoza Garcia (the
current dictator’s father) by Rigo-
berto Lopez Perez in 1956 also
made a lasting impression on
her,
“I can recall that in my house
there was a photo of Rigoberto
that they used to show us so we’d
recognize him. At the bottom of
the photo was a stanza of one of
Rigoberto’s poems that read: The
flowers of my days will be withered/
while the tyrant has blood in his
veins.”
During her school years, Doris
questioned her religious beliefs,
took an active part in anti-gov-
ernment demonstrations, wit-
nessed the developing guerrilla
movement in the countryside
and began her own formal poli-
tical involvement. In 1963, she
attended the Patrice Lumumba
University in the Soviet Union.
Here she developed her political
theory and met a number of Latin
American revolutionary fighters,
including Nora Paiz, a Guate-
malan, who was later killed in her
homeland along with guerrilla
poet Otto Rene Castillo. In 1966,
after the birth of her first child
54
she returned to Nicaragua and
decided to join the FSLN.
The FSLN gave her the name
of Conchita Alday, a Nicaraguan
revolutionary woman who in
1926 was brutally murdered by
U.S. soldiers for her political con-
nections. Doris writes, “I was
made to see that the name of
Conchita Alday must be borne
with dignity, that I had to respect
her, had to deserve the honor of
bearing the name of this
comrade.”
From then on, Doris Tijerino
describes a life of constant
struggle and dedication to the
work of the FSLN. She tells of the
many workers’ strikes supported
by the FSLN, including the gaso-
line, milk and hospital strikes of
the mid-seventies. A large part of
her work at this time came in re-
sponse to the devastating 1972
earthquake. With tenderness,
she tells of her many co-workers
who died in battles with the Na-
tional Guard or at the hands of
military torturers. Especially
touching are her remembrances
of such leaders as Ricardo
Morales, Oscar Turcios and Julio
Buitrago.
Throughout the book, Tijerino
takes special care to describe
the contributions made by
women fighters such as Gladys
Baez, Yolanda Nuriez and Elba
Campos. She also explains the
unique oppression suffered by
women in Nicaragua. She de-
scribes, for example, the life of
prostitution forced on many pea-
sant women through the col-
laboration of pimps, National
Guardsmen and those in charge
of the jails and prisons.
Doris Tijerino was arrested
several times. One of her longer
imprisonments was after her
arrest in July 1968. She was
taken to a prison located inside
the Somoza residence. Here she
was tortured with beatings, elec-
tric shocks and repeated sexual
assaults. She remained in prison
for two years and describes
many of her experiences there,
“All the prisoners joined in the
hunger strikes we carried out in
prison so we would be set free.
The mothers too: our mothers, the
mothers of condemned comrades,
mothers of dead comrades, sis-
ters the struggle for the free-
ing of the prisoners and the soli-
darity and support for the prisoners
was a struggle headed by women
Eventually acquitted and freed,
Doris resumed her work with the
FSLN and was arrested again in
April 1978.
This book offers a rare
glimpse behind the personal
anonimities necessary in guerrilla
movements, and provides an
understanding of the FSLN
through the personal story of one
of its own fighters. An informa-
tive introduction and chronology
of Nicaraguan history from 1926
to the present help put her story
in perspective. The sequel to
Doris’ and her peoples’ long
struggle can be found in the
news headlines of today
Menu
