The Most Famous

POLITICIANS from Nicaragua

This page contains a list of the greatest Nicaraguan Politicians. The pantheon dataset contains 19,576 Politicians, 15 of which were born in Nicaragua. This makes Nicaragua the birth place of the 112th most number of Politicians behind Sri Lanka, and Sudan.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Nicaraguan Politicians of all time. This list of famous Nicaraguan Politicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Nicaraguan Politicians.

1. Daniel Ortega (b. 1945)

With an HPI of 71.40, Daniel Ortega is the most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 87 different languages on wikipedia.

José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: [daˈnjel oɾˈteɣa]; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician and the 58th president of Nicaragua since 10 January 2007. Previously, he was leader of Nicaragua from 18 July 1979 to 25 April 1990, first as Coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction from 19 July 1979 to 10 January 1985, and then as the 54th president from 10 January 1985 to 25 April 1990. During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. However, in 2022, Ortega resumed repression of the Church, and has imprisoned prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos. Ortega came to prominence with the overthrow and exile of US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) Ortega became leader of the ruling Junta of National Reconstruction. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution, and literacy programs during his first period in office. Ortega's government was responsible for the forced displacement of 10,000 indigenous people. In 1984, Ortega won Nicaragua's first ever free and fair presidential election with over 60% of the vote as the FSLN's candidate. Throughout the 1980s, Ortega's government faced a rebellion by US-backed rebels, known as the Contras. The US also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinista government, imposing a full trade embargo, and planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's ports. After a presidency marred by conflict and economic collapse, Ortega was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan general election by Violeta Chamorro. Ortega was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1996 and 2001 but won the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. In office, he allied with fellow Latin American socialists. In contrast to his previous political career, his second administration abandoned (reinforcing) most of his earlier leftist principles, becoming increasingly anti-democratic, alienating many of his former revolutionary allies. In June 2018, organizations such as Amnesty International and the OAS reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against the anti-Ortega 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers. His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega's government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. After Ortega was re-elected in 2021, United States President Joe Biden banned him and his officials from entering the United States.

2. Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1925 - 1980)

With an HPI of 63.75, Anastasio Somoza Debayle is the 2nd most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 47 different languages.

Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza Debayle (Spanish: [anasˈtasjo soˈmosa ðeˈβajle]; 5 December 1925 – 17 September 1980) was the 53rd President of Nicaragua from 1967 to 1972 and again from 1974 to 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was de facto ruler of the country between 1967 and 1979, even during the period when he was not the de jure ruler. Somoza Debayle succeeded his older brother, Luis Somoza Debayle, in office. He was the last member of the Somoza family to be president, ending a dynasty that had been in power since 1937. After insurgents led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; FSLN) were closing in on Managua in July 1979, Somoza fled Nicaragua. Power was ceded to the Junta of National Reconstruction. He was assassinated in 1980 while in exile in Paraguay.

3. Anastasio Somoza García (1896 - 1956)

With an HPI of 63.46, Anastasio Somoza García is the 3rd most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Anastasio Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was the leader of Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956. He was officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 until his assassination on 29 September 1956, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military dictator. He was the patriarch of the Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua as a family dictatorship for 42 years. The son of a wealthy coffee planter, Somoza was educated in the United States. After his return to Nicaragua, he helped oust President Adolfo Díaz. He became the foreign secretary and took the title of "General". With the help of the US Marine Corps, which occupied Nicaragua at the time, Somoza became the head of the National Guard. This gave him the power base to remove his wife's uncle, Juan Bautista Sacasa, from the presidency, and make himself president in 1937. In 1947, an ally nominally succeeded him, but he retained power. A month after his successor had been inaugurated, Somoza used the military to carry out a coup. The president was declared 'incapacitated' by Congress and Somoza served in his stead. Returning to power in his own name in 1950, he maintained an iron grip on his own Liberal Party while making a deal with the Conservatives; thus, he faced no opposition. This left him free to amass a huge personal fortune. On 21 September 1956, he was shot by poet Rigoberto López Pérez. Mortally wounded, he was flown to the Panama Canal Zone where he died a week later. His eldest son Luis Somoza Debayle, who was Speaker of the House at the time of Somoza Garcia's death, took over as acting president and was elected in his own right in 1957. He served as president until 1963, and as the power behind puppet presidents until his death in 1967. Somoza García's youngest son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was elected to serve until 1972, then served as the real power behind a nominally bipartisan junta until being reelected in 1974. Somoza Debayle was forced to resign in 1979 and was assassinated in exile in Paraguay the following year.

4. Violeta Chamorro (b. 1929)

With an HPI of 62.26, Violeta Chamorro is the 4th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. Her biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro (Spanish pronunciation: [bjoˈleta tʃaˈmoro]; 18 October 1929) is a Nicaraguan former politician who served as the 55th President of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997. She was the first and, to date, only woman to hold the position of president of Nicaragua. Previously, she was a member of the Junta of National Reconstruction (Spanish: Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional, JGRN) from 1979 to 1980. Born into a landed family in southern Nicaragua, Chamorro was partially educated in the United States. After returning to her home country, she married and raised a family. Her husband, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, was a journalist working at his family's newspaper, La Prensa, which he later inherited. As a result of his anti-government stance, he was often jailed or exiled, forcing Chamorro to spend a decade following him abroad or visiting him in jail. When he was assassinated in 1978, Chamorro took over the newspaper. Pedro's murder strengthened the Nicaraguan Revolution and his image, as wielded by his widow, became a powerful symbol for the opposition forces. Initially, when the Sandinistas were victorious over Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Chamorro fully supported them. She agreed to become part of the provisional government established under the Junta of National Reconstruction. However, when the Junta began moving in a more radical direction and signed agreements with the Soviet Union, Chamorro resigned on 19 April 1980 and returned to the newspaper. Under her direction, La Prensa continued to criticize the government and its policies despite threats and government-forced shutdowns. When Daniel Ortega announced that elections would be held in 1990, Chamorro was selected as the candidate for the opposition group known as the National Opposition Union (Spanish: Unión Nacional Opositora, UNO). This 14-party alliance ranged from conservatives and liberals to communists and because of ideological differences had difficulty in devising any political platform other than a promise to end the war. Despite polls indicating a victory for the incumbent Sandinista President Ortega, Chamorro won the election on 25 February 1990. She was the first elected female head of state in the Americas. She was also the second female to be elected in her own right as a head of government in the Americas, after Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica. Chamorro was sworn into office on 25 April 1990. Chamorro's leadership covered six difficult years marked by economic strife and social unrest, but she was able to compromise with rivals, maintain a constitutional regime, re-establish international banking relationships and end the hyperinflation that had plagued the country for several years. After leaving office on 10 January 1997, Chamorro worked on several international peace initiatives until poor health forced her to retire from public life.

5. Ernesto Cardenal (1925 - 2020)

With an HPI of 58.50, Ernesto Cardenal is the 5th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (20 January 1925 – 1 March 2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987. He was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019.

6. Enrique Bolaños (1928 - 2021)

With an HPI of 56.36, Enrique Bolaños is the 6th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Enrique José Bolaños Geyer (pronounced [enˈrike βoˈlaɲos]; 13 May 1928 – 14 June 2021) was a Nicaraguan politician who served as President of Nicaragua from 10 January 2002 to 10 January 2007. From 1997 to 2002, Bolaños served as vice president under Arnoldo Alemán. On 4 November 2001 he defeated Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front party in the presidential election and was sworn in as president on 10 January 2002. He was a member of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) until he broke with it to help form the Alliance for the Republic (APRE). At the beginning of his term as president, he led an anti-corruption campaign that ultimately convicted his predecessor and head of the PLC, Arnoldo Alemán to 20 years in prison.

7. Luis Somoza Debayle (1922 - 1967)

With an HPI of 56.23, Luis Somoza Debayle is the 7th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle (18 November 1922 – 13 April 1967) was the 50th President of Nicaragua from 1957 until his resignation in 1963. He succeeded to the presidency following the death of his father, Anastasio Somoza García. The Somoza family was the most powerful family in the country at that time. Somoza Debayle was born in León on 18 November 1922. In 1936 at the age of 14, he and his younger brother Anastasio attended Saint Leo College Prep near Tampa, before transferring to La Salle Military Academy on Long Island. Luis was then educated at Louisiana State University, where he was a member of Fi Sigma Alfa Hispanic fraternity. He married Costa Rican Isabel Urcuyo on 9 June 1947, and they had seven children together. Following the assassination of his father, Anastasio Somoza García, Luis was tapped as acting president, and was elected president in his own right the following year. His rule was somewhat milder than that of his father. However, civil liberties remained restricted, and corruption remained widespread. His brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, headed the National Guard and was the second most powerful man in the country during his older brother's rule. Although Luis declined to run for reelection in 1963, he and Anastasio saw to it that the presidency was held from 1963 onward by politicians loyal to the Somozas. As a result, Luis remained the de facto leader of Nicaragua until his death in 1967, when he suffered a massive heart attack in Managua at the age of 44. Luis Somoza was the president of the lower chamber of National Congress of Nicaragua from 1950 to 1953, and 1954 to 1956, and the president of the Senate from 1965 to 1966. Under Luis Somoza's regime, Nicaragua played a key role leading to the creation of the Central American Common Market, with the Alliance for Progress backing that common market's creation. During the Bay of Pigs Invasion, he allowed the CIA-trained Cuban rebels to embark from Puerto Cabezas, on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The Sandinistas began their struggle against the government in 1961 – a struggle that would oust his brother in 1979.

8. Arnoldo Alemán (b. 1946)

With an HPI of 53.28, Arnoldo Alemán is the 8th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

José Arnoldo Alemán Lacayo (born 23 January 1946) is a Nicaraguan politician who served as the 56th president of Nicaragua from 10 January 1997 to 10 January 2002. In 2003, he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to a 20-year prison term; the conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Nicaragua in 2009.

9. Juan Bautista Sacasa (1874 - 1946)

With an HPI of 51.31, Juan Bautista Sacasa is the 9th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Juan Bautista Sacasa (21 December 1874 in León, Nicaragua – 17 April 1946 in Los Angeles, California) was the President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1933 to 9 June 1936. He was the eldest son of Roberto Sacasa and Ángela Sacasa Cuadra, the former's cousin twice removed. He was a relative of Benjamín Lacayo Sacasa. Born in the town of León, Sacasa studied in the United States from 1889 to 1901, earning an M.D. from Columbia University. He served as a professor and dean of faculty at the National University in León, and was a supporter of the Liberal regime of José Santos Zelaya. In 1924, Sacasa became a member of a political coalition headed by moderate Conservative Carlos Solórzano. Shortly afterwards, the detachment of U.S. Marines which had remained in Nicaragua for thirteen years withdrew, believing that the political situation was stable. In October 1925, Solórzano's government was overthrown by former President General Emiliano Chamorro, who failed to gain U.S. recognition and subsequently resigned in favor of Adolfo Díaz. In the meantime, Sacasa fled to Mexico. Following an uprising by Liberal soldiers in Puerto Cabezas, Sacasa returned to Nicaragua in 1926. Asserting his claim as constitutional president, he established a government in Puerto Cabezas. Supplied by Mexico with arms and munitions, the Liberal rebels, under the command of General José María Moncada, nearly succeeded in capturing Managua. However, the U.S. forced the two warring parties to enter into negotiations, resulting in the Pact of Espino Negro, which required that both sides would disarm and Díaz would be allowed to finish his term. Sacasa reluctantly agreed to accept the agreement and withdraw his claim to the presidency, but refused to sign the pact and left the country; leaving Moncada to sign the pact on Sacasa's behalf. Over the next six years, a formerly obscure Liberal general named Augusto Sandino would lead a guerrilla war against the Marines, who had remained in the country to enforce the agreement. In 1932, Sacasa was elected president. He took office on January 1, 1933, the day before the scheduled departure of the Marines. At the insistence of the U.S. Ambassador, he named Anastasio Somoza García, who was married to one of his nieces, as director of the Guardia Nacional (National Guard). The following month, Sacasa met with Sandino, during which Sandino pledged his loyalty to the new government in exchange for amnesty and land for his followers. Sandino continued to call for the disbanding of the National Guard and, in February 1934, he was assassinated under orders from Somoza. Despite Sacasa's disapproval, he proved unable to contain the growing power of Somoza and the National Guard. His popularity continued to diminish as Nicaragua's fragile economy suffered the collapse of coffee prices due to the Great Depression and allegations of widespread fraud surfaced in the 1934 congressional elections. Meanwhile, Somoza's power continued to grow, and he cultivated ties with former presidents Moncada and Chamorro. Early in 1936, Somoza used the National Guard to purge local officials loyal to the president and replace them with his associates. On June 9, he forced Sacasa to resign, appointing a puppet president before assuming the presidency himself the following year. Afterwards, Sacasa fled into exile in the U.S., living in Los Angeles until his death ten years later. He married María Argüello Manning, a cousin of Leonardo Argüello, 66th President of Nicaragua; together, they had the following children: Maruca Sacasa Argüello Carlos Sacasa Arguello Roberto Sacasa Arguello Gloria Sacasa Arguello Juan Bautista Sacaza was the first cousin of Bertha Lacayo Sacaza. Bertha Lacayo Sacasa was married to Lisimaco Lacayo Solorzano and they had only two children Chester Lacayo Lacayo and Will Lacayo Lacayo. Will Lacayo Lacayo had four children Danilo Lacayo, Bertha Lacayo, Ligia Lacayo and Tania Lacayo.

10. Edén Pastora (1936 - 2020)

With an HPI of 50.76, Edén Pastora is the 10th most famous Nicaraguan Politician. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Edén Atanacio Pastora Gómez (November 15, 1936 or January 22, 1937 – June 16, 2020) was a Nicaraguan politician and guerrilla who ran for president as the candidate of the Alternative for Change (AC) party in the 2006 general elections. In the years prior to the fall of the Somoza regime, Pastora was the leader of the Southern Front, the largest militia in southern Nicaragua, second only to the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) in the north. Pastora was nicknamed Comandante Cero ("Commander Zero"). His group was the first to call itself "Sandinistas", and was also the first to accept an alliance with the FSLN, the group that was to become more popularly identified by the name. At the end of 1982, a few years after the revolutionary victory, Pastora became disillusioned with the government of the FSLN, and formed the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) with the object of confronting the "pseudo-Sandinistas" politically and militarily. As of 2010, he was reconciled with the FSLN and held a ministerial post in the government of Daniel Ortega. His role in a border dispute with Costa Rica and allegations of environmental damage to territory claimed by that country led to legal indictment by the government of Costa Rica.

People

Pantheon has 17 people classified as Nicaraguan politicians born between 1853 and 1949. Of these 17, 3 (17.65%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Nicaraguan politicians include Daniel Ortega, Violeta Chamorro, and Arnoldo Alemán. The most famous deceased Nicaraguan politicians include Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Anastasio Somoza García, and Ernesto Cardenal. As of April 2024, 2 new Nicaraguan politicians have been added to Pantheon including René Schick, and Nora Astorga.