The journalist Carlos Salinas Maldonado considers Rosario Murillo the most important figure in Nicaraguan politics, as reflected in his book “I am the commander’s wife!”, a novel biography about the co-president of the Central American country.
After two years of writing about Daniel Ortega’s mother, poet, spokeswoman, first lady, vice president and shadow, the book will be published next March. Salinas explained that the idea arose from the report “The Commander’s Woman”, a text that she published before the social uprising of 2018, when she lived in Nicaragua.
This report was published in various magazines in Central America, Colombia, Chile and was translated into Italian for publication in the European country. A director of the Penguin Random House publishing house in Mexico read his journalistic report and says that it seemed to him “a great story”, the journalist María Lourdes Pallais put them in touch and Salinas was asked to write a book about Murillo.
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«The idea he had was, rather than making a more extensive report than what had already been published, something more literary. So that’s how the idea of this novelized profile arose, that is, a story that is based on real, verifiable facts, things that happened firsthand, people who knew Rosario Murillo,” Salinas Maldonado told Article 66.
“I have been following this character for many years, even before Ortega came to power, because I have always found it fascinating for good and for bad, more for the bad than the good, obviously,” he added.
A character “fascinating”
Murillo’s unauthorized biography is based on testimonials from people who knew her, many hours of interviews that the journalist conducted in Managua and reading what Rosario Murillo has been. In addition, he devoured the poetic work, consulted other sources, searched for information about it in libraries, and listened to many hours of its daily address in the dictatorship’s propaganda media.
«Rosario Murillo is a character, even before this madness of power, quite interesting, full of light and dark, but fascinating. Politically, it seemed to me that it was worth digging into who Rosario Murillo is and telling, above all, people outside of Nicaragua who have not fully followed the political deterioration of the country, who is one of the people who has influenced this political deterioration “, he claimed.
The book revisits her youth, who she was, where she came from, her “quite weird” relationship with Daniel Ortega, and what she has become now. Much of the book is dedicated to her daughter, Zoila América Narváez, “because she was an important figure in the political history of Sandinismo and Nicaragua, when in (year) 1998 she denounced Daniel Ortega.”
“That part of the mother-daughter relationship is based mainly on the testimony of Zoila América Narváez, that famous testimony in which she accused Daniel Ortega of rape,” he said.
The metamorphosis of a revolutionary woman
“I am the commander’s wife!” recounts the metamorphosis of a left-wing, revolutionary, poet woman who used her talent to fight against the Somoza dictatorship and who has become a grotesque, violent, absurd, ambitious caricature , with an incredible desire for power and that he has converted, explained Salinas.
“She is also the cause of one of the worst political crises that Nicaragua has had and one of the worst massacres that has occurred in the country, which was that of 2018. Those famous emails that revealed that she was the first to He gave the order to “let’s go with everything” “, he said.
The journalist considered it important to tell what has happened in Nicaragua in the last 40 years, which has been the “tragic story that continues to be driven by the ambitions and desire for power of the commander’s wife.”
The book will be distributed in bookstores in Miami, United States; Mexico City and the Central American capitals, except Managua. A digital version will also be available through the Random House publishing platform.
