ABSTRACT
At first glance, this soft-spoken, bespectacled intellectual seems an unlikely revolutionary. However, the courtly and refined Reinaldo Téfel’s revolutionary credentials are as impeccable as his manners. It is appropriate to begin the volume with his story because Mr. Téfel’s history is, in fact, also that of the political opposition to the Somoza dynasty beginning in the 1940s. The remarkable events of Mr. Téfel’s life not only provide us with a coherent chronology of the period, but also contribute a fascinating living history of the time.
From his early adolescence, Mr. Téfel, along with friends and coconspirators Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and Ernesto Cardenal, was a leading and intractable foe of the dictatorship. Though imprisoned, tortured, and exiled under the Somozas, this gentle man of indomitable spirit has remained an ardent champion of social justice and has been motivated and sustained in his lifelong political struggle by his deep commitment to Christian principles.
One of the original “group of twelve,” eminent Nicaraguan leaders who from their exile in San José, Costa Rica sought to gain international support for the revolution against Somoza, Mr. Téfel is currently a Cabinet minister in the Sandinista government. As president of the Nicaraguan 22 Institute of Social Security and Social Welfare (INSSBI), Mr. Téfel is responsible for all aspects of social security and welfare in a country that until a few years ago had virtually nothing to offer in these areas.
