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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1430305,00.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1430305,00.html<br><br>
<br>
</a>Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by the Guardian/UK<br><br>
<br>
US Bars Nicaragua Heroine as 'Terrorist'<br><br>
<br>
Writers and Academics Voice Anger as State Department Refuses Visa to let
<br>
Sandinista Revolutionary Take Up Post as Harvard Professor<br><br>
<br>
by Duncan Campbell<br><br>
<br>
The woman who epitomized the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution that overthrew
the <br>
dictator Anastasio Somoza has been denied entry to the US to take up her
<br>
post as a Harvard professor on the grounds that she had been involved in
<br>
"terrorism".<br><br>
The decision to bar Dora Maria Tellez, one of the best-known figures in
<br>
recent Latin American history, who has frequently visited the US in the
<br>
past, has been attacked by academics and writers.<br><br>
<br>
It comes at a time when President George Bush has appointed as his new
<br>
intelligence chief a man associated with the "dirty war"
against the <br>
Sandinistas in Nicaragua.<br><br>
<br>
A spokeswoman for Harvard University said it was "very
disappointed" that <br>
she would not be taking up her appointment.<br><br>
<br>
Ms Tellez was a young medical student when she became a commandante with
<br>
the leftwing Sandinistas in their campaign to topple the
dictator.<br><br>
<br>
She was Commander 2' in 1978 when a group of guerrillas took over the
<br>
National Palace and held 2,000 government officials hostage in a two-day
<br>
standoff. After negotiations, she and the other guerrillas were allowed
to <br>
leave the country. The event was seen as a key moment that indicated the
<br>
Somoza regime could be overthrown.<br><br>
<br>
She later led the brigade that took Leon, the first city to fall to the
<br>
Sandinistas in the revolution, and she is celebrated as one of the
popular <br>
figures of the revolution. She became minister of health in the first
<br>
elected Sandinista administration.<br><br>
<br>
Last year Ms Tellez, now a historian, was appointed as the Robert F
Kennedy <br>
visiting professor in Latin American studies in the divinity department
at <br>
Harvard, a post which is shared with the Rockefeller Center for Latin
<br>
American Studies. She was due to start teaching students this
spring.<br><br>
<br>
The US state department has told her she is ineligible because of <br>
involvement in "terrorist acts". A spokesman for the department
confirmed <br>
yesterday that she had been denied a visa under a section making those
who <br>
had been involved in terrorist acts ineligible. He said he could not
<br>
comment further on the reasons for the ban.<br><br>
<br>
"I have no idea why they are refusing me a visa," said Ms
Tellez from her <br>
home in Managua yesterday. "I have been in the US many times before
- on <br>
holidays, at conferences, on official business."<br><br>
<br>
A number of academics and writers are protesting against the ban.
"It is <br>
absurd," said Gioconda Belli, the Nicaraguan writer who was also an
active <br>
member of the Sandinistas and is now based in Los Angeles. "Dora
Maria is <br>
an outstanding woman who fought against a dictatorship. If fighting
against <br>
tyranny is 'terrorism' how does the United States justify the invasion of
<br>
Iraq? It is an insult."<br><br>
<br>
Ms Belli, whose memoirs of her time as a Sandinista, The Country Under My
<br>
Skin, was published two years ago, said many people were puzzled and
angry <br>
about the decision.<br><br>
<br>
Professor Andres Perez Baltodano, a Nicaraguan sociologist based in
<br>
Toronto, said: "Dora Maria is as much a terrorist as George
Washington." He <br>
described the taking of the National Palace as a heroic act which had
<br>
helped to lead to the overthrow of a dictator.<br><br>
<br>
The US, under President Ronald Reagan, opposed the Sandinistas even after
<br>
they had been elected in 1984 and supported the contras, or <br>
counter-revolutionaries in their attempts to overthrow them.<br><br>
<br>
In the 1987 Irangate scandal, it was discovered that the US was secretly
<br>
supplying arms to Iran in exchange for money being channeled to the
<br>
contras. When Mr Bush took office he rehabilitated a number of people
<br>
associated with the contras and one, John Negroponte, is now his chief of
<br>
intelligence responsible for dealing with terrorism.<br><br>
<br>
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005<br><br>
<br>
-- <br><br>
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