Nicaraguan Sandinistas’ founder Borge dies at 81

Tomas Borge. AFP Photo

MANAGUA — Tomas Borge, the last living founder of Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista movement and the country’s feared interior minister for more than a decade, has died at the age of 81.

“With great sorrow we announce that the earthly and fruitful life of the revolutionary and commander Tomas Borge has come to an end,” said Rosario Murillo, the wife of current president and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

“Tomas is of the dead who will never die. He will always be with us in the Sandinista Front and in the revolutionary process,” Murillo, who also serves as a government spokeswoman, told local radio, her voice shaking with emotion.

The government decreed three days of national mourning in honor of the former minister, whose body was lying in state at the National Palace on Tuesday.

Supporter German Pereira was among scores queuing to pay his respects.

“We are going to wait until we get a chance to see the man … Those we love the most always leave us,” Pereira said. “Thanks to him, we got rid of dictatorship.”

Borge died in a military hospital on Monday where he was being treated for complications related to chest surgery he underwent on April 6.

He was one of the founders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1961 and helped to bring about the overthrow of the 45-year-old right-wing Somoza dynasty in 1979.

He went on to serve as interior minister from 1979-1990, when his forces were accused of many of the same rights abuses blamed on the Somoza regime as the Sandinistas battled US-backed opposition militias known as Contras.

“I admit I was arbitrary, but in favor of the accused,” he said in a recent local television interview, insisting he often freed prisoners who were ill.

But in 2005, he had said: “You cannot love the people without being feared and hated by the enemies of the people.”

“Those who die for the sake of life cannot be called dead men,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in a statement sent to the Managua government.

Born Aug. 12, 1930 in the central town of Matagalpa, Borge, diminutive and often described as on the histrionic side, turned to politics at a young age. He was jailed between 1956-1959 before temporarily fleeing to Honduras. In 1978 he was jailed again and tortured.

As a guerrilla he received training in Fidel Castro’s Cuba and later revamped the interior ministry and special forces with Cuban advice.

After their electoral defeat in 1990 the Sandinistas fractured, but Borge always stood by Ortega, who returned to power at the head of an elected government in 2007 and was reelected last year.