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One of the great failings of Nicaragua’s democratic forces has been to underestimate Daniel Ortega, a politician who, for more than forty years, has remained the gravitational field of the country’s politics. Today, we must avoid making the same mistake with another figure: Rosario Murillo. She has a plan and is executing it with cold precision. We are already feeling, in our flesh, the logical consequences of that plan.
But what does this strategy consist of? Some observers dismiss her moves as the erratic whims of an irrational woman driven solely by hatred and revenge—a category of “witch.” And while it is true that her temperament is deeply stamped with those traits, enough time has passed to reveal her implacable will to power.
Before discussing her strategy, we must be clear about her goal: to establish a permanent family dynasty under her own imprint. To that end, she has drawn up a strategy that is becoming ever more evident, one that revolves around a decisive variable. A decisive variable is the factor that ultimately determines how a situation plays out. In Nicaragua—and we should harbour no illusions—that variable is, and will remain, the National Army. Any settlement of the succession will be decided by the armed forces. Mao Zedong reminded us that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” a maxim that could not be truer in Nicaragua, where rifles have shaped our history since independence.
Murillo confronts a dilemma similar to that faced by two other dictators’ wives who tried to inherit authoritarian rule: Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) in China and Grace Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Both attempts ended in the aspirants’ ruin. What Murillo is trying to do—succeed her husband as dictator—is something no woman has yet achieved in modern history. The very scale of the ambition reveals her daring.
Grace Mugabe allied herself with junior officers and a few politicians, yet the Army’s top officials never trusted her. Once they realized that dictator Robert Mugabe no longer governed and that she was giving the orders, they toppled the thirty-seven-year-old regime. Madame Mao’s missteps were failing to secure her husband’s formal designation as successor and holding no institutional posts in government or party. Ultimately, moderate leaders of the Communist Party and the Chinese state secured the Army’s decisive backing and staged a bloodless palace coup that wiped her off the political map.
Murillo, it seems, has studied both cases closely, for she is not repeating their mistakes. On the contrary, her strategy has been surgically effective, to the horror of her enemies, especially those inside the regime’s entrails.
That strategy has crystallized in three recent events. First, the creation of a “co-presidency” in the Constitution itself, bestowing maximum institutional power on her and formally naming her the dictator’s successor. Second, the total capture of the party leadership and the sidelining—or even jailing—of anyone not absolutely loyal to her. This reached its apex with the arrest and subsequent death, as a political prisoner, of retired General Humberto Ortega, founder of the National Army and the dictator’s brother. Third, on May 7, 2025, she compelled the Army’s generals to swear loyalty to the co-presidency in a formal ceremony, thus “sealing” the armed forces’ endorsement of her role as heir apparent.
Yet a fissure in the plan is developing: Daniel Ortega’s mounting absences feed speculation. Rumors of his failing health—even his imminent death—leave her less well-positioned in the succession race. Her ideal scenario is an Ortega who is alive but diminished, allowing her to rule while buying time to lock down her succession. Hence, on May 24, 2025, after a flurry of rumors about Ortega’s condition, she reached for her old standby: “display the mummy,” like a totem, just as Madame Mao had done with Mao Zedong and Grace Mugabe with Robert Mugabe. We saw a visibly ravaged Ortega—rambling, gaunt—handing out buses in a supposed triumphal gesture after being absent for one of Sandinismo’s most sacred dates: the birthday of Augusto C. Sandino himself.
Her strategy, however, is not foolproof. It has a glaring weakness: the majority of the population, the party rank and file, state functionaries, and probably even the military brass despise her. They also reject her attempt to anoint her son, Laureano Ortega, as heir. Within Sandinista circles, Laureano is regarded as a crown prince who lacks the necessary mettle—an upstart without gravitas or character who, despite being groomed inside the dictatorship, has convinced no one. The Army shows scant enthusiasm for a commander-in- chief whose first dream was to become an opera singer.
Relentless purges and widespread popular hatred suggest that many are lying in wait for a chance to betray her and steer the nation toward a different exit during the inevitable turbulence of succession. Murillo, better than anyone, knows that countless people are sharpening their knives, ready to strike at the first opening Ortega’s death might provide—and so she acts accordingly.
