The Man Behind the Designer Glasses

By Amy Wilentz

President Reagan once called him the "little dictator who went to Moscow," but when Daniel Ortega strolls around Managua with his two small sons in tow, he looks anything but the strongman. No tassles and epaulets for him, no holster around the waist, no stretch Mercedes. Hatless, in a black T shirt and khakis, Ortega could be any Latin American father except for the security contingent tailing him. Whether by design or by nature, he operates in public like a man of the people. When he travels by car, he is usually behind the wheel, and the car is usually a Jeep. The lone sign of his presidential status . was his designer glasses, which he bought on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at $300 a pair. Recently, he has gone back to wearing simpler, more revolutionary frames in public.

Ortega and the Sandinista revolution came of age together. Daniel, the eldest of five children, was born in 1945 in the northern town of La Libertad. His father, a small businessman, was an avid supporter of the guerrilla forces of the legendary Augusto Cesar Sandino, who was killed by the dictatorship's National Guard. Both father and mother were imprisoned under the first Somoza regime, and Daniel was jailed for his activism at the age of 15. His younger brother Camilo was killed in 1978 during the Nicaraguan revolution, and another brother, Humberto, fought side by side with Daniel until the Sandinistas took Managua in 1979.

Ortega's rise within Sandinista ranks was rapid. In 1963, after a brief stint studying law, he joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and by 1967, at the age of 22, he was already the head of the urban-resistance campaign. He helped found the Tercerista faction, or Third Party, within the divided Sandinista movement, which forged an alliance with the widespread middle-class opposition to Somoza. Mainly on the strength of that bond, the Sandinistas came to power. After serving as the first among equals in the party command and in the nine-man National Directorate, he won the presidency in a 1984 election that was boycotted by most of the moderate opposition parties. His brother Humberto became Defense Minister.

Ortega is known as the directorate's pragmatist. Partly because he was willing to negotiate with the bourgeoisie during the tense days of the Terceristas, he is sometimes considered more moderate than other members of the directorate. His moderation, however, is reportedly challenged by the hard-line Marxism of Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez. Still, says one Sandinista official, Ortega "doesn't pull any punches."

Ortega derives some of his political popularity from having spent seven years in Somoza's prisons. In 1967, he was captured and jailed for participating in a bank robbery. During his incarceration, Ortega composed poetry. His most famous is called "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion." After years of hunger--and, he claims, torture--he was freed in 1974 when a group of Sandinistas barged into a fancy Managua Christmas party, took a number of guests hostage and successfully demanded that Somoza release ! certain guerrillas, among them Ortega. He was then hustled off to Cuba, where he trained for several months under veterans of Castro's revolution before returning covertly to Nicaragua.

While he was in prison, Ortega and Rosario Murillo, one of the leading poets in the Sandinista movement, exchanged poems. (Poetry is a national passion in Nicaragua.) Murillo, who was educated in a British convent school, helped Ortega stay in contact with other prisoners and the outside world. She later became his common-law wife.

Ortega and Murillo have a big family. Murillo, in her early 30s and a high- ranking Sandinista in her own right, has two children by her first husband, whom she married when she returned to Nicaragua at the age of 15. Ortega reportedly has one child from a previous relationship. The Ortegas have had five children together, ranging from seven months to five years.

Daniel Ortega is often called shy, soft-spoken, retiring: "the reluctant ruler." Not Murillo. The First Lady maintains the kind of profile that goes with $300 glasses. A darling of the radical chic, the articulate, outspoken Murillo counts Bianca Jagger (also a Nicaraguan) and Harry Belafonte among her friends. In New York City for January's large international writers' congress, Murillo was escorted by Little Steven Van Zandt, a rock songwriter who produced the antiapartheid anthem Sun City. She had planned to attend an antidrug seminar in Atlanta last week at which Nancy Reagan was hostess, but did not obtain a visa.

"Daniel is a simple man who doesn't like pretension," said a close Ortega adviser. When he visited New York City last fall to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the United Nations, Ortega kept to his usual running schedule and took an early-morning jog through Central Park. He generally runs from five to six miles a day. For dinner, he sought out local Chinese restaurants.

"When I was in prison, I never thought I would see the triumph of the revolution," Ortega recalls. "All I thought about was the fight against Somoza and how to get out of prison." It is common wisdom that the Sandinistas have had difficulty getting used to governing rather than opposing. Says Ortega: "I never thought about being President of Nicaragua." But now he is, and in the hard months ahead, as the U.S. vacillates on the question of contra aid and the Nicaraguan economy sputters, Ortega faces tough tests not as a revolutionary but as a politician.

With reporting by Laura Lopez/Managua