A few months before dying while being kidnapped by his own brother and sister-in-law, the retired Army general and founding chief of the Nicaraguan Army, Humberto Ortega Saavedra (HOS) was harsh and direct when defining the current commander in chief of the military forces. General Julio César Avilés: “He is a coward who does not stop Daniel (Ortega).”
The guerrilla commander, Mónica Baltodano, who, together with Dora María Téllez, were the only two women leaders of troops during the war against the Somoza dictatorship, assured, in the program In Contact, from Article 66 that the late army general defined Avilés as a coward shortly before his own brother, now converted into dictator, Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, ordered him confined to their residence, under the condition of a house in prison.
HOS expressed this opinion in a conversation with Commander Baltodano and her husband, Julio López, with whom he routinely held analysis talks about the situation in Nicaragua and possible solutions to the crisis. When addressing the issue of the death under political prison of also a former military officer, General Hugo Torres. The founding chief of the Army maintained that General Avilés “does not stop” the dictator Ortega or the vice-dictator Murillo, who prohibited funeral honors as a general for Torres.
Hugo Torres Jiménez was the only Sandinista guerrilla who had the merit of having participated in the two most emblematic and reckless guerrilla actions of Sandinism during the war against Somoza; the assault on the house of José María Castillo, in 1974, with which Daniel Ortega was released from prison and Operation Chanchera, or Assault on the National Palace in 1978, an action in which he was second in command.
He reached the rank of Brigadier General and was one of the most decorated soldiers for his merits within the military ranks. However, the Army did not pay him any honor by order of the dictators, who had imprisoned him for being part of the opposition Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), now the Renewal Democratic Union (UNAMOS), a dissident of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). ) since 1994.
Baltodano pointed out that HOS criticized Avilés’s position of blind submission to the dictator Ortega. Submission that even turned the armed forces into accomplices of the dictatorship in the murders of protesters during the social protests of 2018.
The guerrilla commander, who became a fierce critic of the regime, which earned her exile and the loss of her nationality, when analyzing the last audio sent by the deceased army general, in which he declared himself a political prisoner and warned about his imminent death due to the prison regime to which he was being subjected, he said that HOS knew that he could be imprisoned for expressing his opinion against the dictatorship of his brother and sister-in-law but “he decided to take all the risks.”
Murillo’s succession and installation of a dynasty with his children is “a Chayo madness”
The guerrilla commander said that General Ortega constantly warned that his brother Daniel could not continue doing what he did and that the idea of Murillo being the successor in power and the imposition of a dynasty with children is nothing more than ” “madness” of his sister-in-law.
Against these pretensions, HOS believed that the exit should be a negotiation and trusted in the experience that together with his brother he had in the 80s when Humberto as military chief and Daniel as president, led the process of signing the peace and ending the war between Sandinismo and the army of the counterrevolution.
According to Baltodano, Humberto hoped, until the last moment, that he could get Ortega back on the path of dialogue to get out of the crisis and dismantle the dictatorship, but he lost his life in the attempt.
«He (HOS) believed that Daniel Ortega could still have a margin and a space to choose the same path that he had chosen at the end of the 80s and that is why he emphasizes “if we were able to talk with the counterrevolution, to sign the agreements of Esquipulas and then the Sapoá agreements for demobilization and the peace process as we are not going to do now,” recalled the guerrilla commander.
“He harbored the feeling that he gave us, that there was a space for Daniel Ortega to take that course, but he was clear or considered that Rosario Murillo was the complete opposite.”
“Ortega and Murillo murdered Humberto”
For Baltodano, the retired army general was murdered by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, knowing that he was suffering from serious health problems, they subjected him to house arrest first and then confined him to a room in the military hospital, alone, where he finally lost his life as a result of cardiac arrest, according to the official report from the military hospital, on September 30.
