ABSTRACT
I was not prepared for the contrast between the elaborate and always unsettling security measures that awaited me and the retiring figure who softly bade me enter her office. Other contrasts were to follow as Doris María Tijerino, hands quietly folded in her lap, recounted with self-effacing modesty a singular life of outstanding valor and deep suffering. Her gentle manner and shy smile mask a remarkable resilience and a constitution of steel.
This disarming heroine of the revolution and current chief of the national police force has distinguished herself nationally through her leadership roles within the Frente Sandinista, her acclaimed military prowess as guerrilla leader and as comandante, and her stoicism in the face of sadistic torture by the guardia. Comandante Tijerino’s powerful story, told with unusual warmth and candor, provides a vivid portrait of the life of a revolutionary.
Comandante Tijerino’s life story broadens our understanding of the Somoza decades and of the work of the opposition during the period. It also illustrates with blinding clarity the total commitment of the small bands of Sandinista revolutionaries who early in the 1960’s accepted armed violence as the only way to rid the country of Somoza. Finally, Doris María Tijerino’s narrative sharply focuses the precarious drama of the post-revolutionary period, in which individuals like herself struggle daily to keep from losing a revolution paid for so dearly.
