Rosario Murillo

Rosario María Murillo Zambrana (Latin American Spanish: [roˈsaɾjo muˈɾiʝo]; born 22 June 1951) is a Nicaraguan politician and poet, who has been Co-president of Nicaragua alongside her husband, Daniel Ortega, since February 2025.

Before this, she served as Vice-President of Nicaragua, the country's second-highest office; from 2017 to 2025; as First Lady of Nicaragua from 2007 to 2025; from 1985 to 1990, she had been the wife of President Ortega. Murillo has variously served as the Nicaraguan government's lead spokesperson, government minister, head of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers, and Communications Coordinator of the Council on Communication and Citizenry. She was sworn in as Vice-President of Nicaragua on 10 January 2017.

She and her husband govern an authoritarian regime. The couple has eliminated political freedoms, repressed political opponents, and cemented powers in the hands of the executive. Since becoming Vice President in 2017, the ruling couple have increasingly purged and arrested long-standing loyalists of the regime to prevent a challenge to the ruling couple. In August 2021, she was personally sanctioned by the European Union over human rights violations.

Murillo was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her father was Teódulo Murillo Molina (1915–1996), a cotton grower and livestock owner. Her mother was Zoilamérica Zambrana Sandino (1926–1973; the daughter of Orlando José Zambrana Báez and Zoilamérica Sandino Tiffer), a niece of General Augusto César Sandino (1895–1934), who fought against the US occupation in Nicaragua. Murillo's maternal grandmother, Zoilamérica Sandino Tiffer, was a paternal half-sister of Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino, also known as Augusto César Sandino.

Murillo was schooled at Colegio Teresiano in Managua, a K–12 Catholic, all-girls school, also known as Saint Teresa's Academy. She attended high school at the Greenway Convent Collegiate School in Tiverton, Great Britain, and studied art at the Institut Anglo-Suisse Le Manoir at La Neuveville in Switzerland. Murillo possesses certificates in the English and French languages, granted respectively by the University of Cambridge in Great Britain. She also attended the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in her hometown.

Murillo joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1969, and provided shelter in her house, which was located in the Barrio San José Oriental in Managua, to Sandinista guerrillas, among them Tomás Borge, one of the founders of the FSLN.

During the early 1970s, Murillo worked for La Prensa as a secretary to two of Nicaragua's leading political and literary figures, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro and Pablo Antonio Cuadra. Murillo was arrested in Estelí in 1976 for her activities in politics. Soon after, she fled and lived for several months in Panama and Venezuela. She later moved to Costa Rica, where she dedicated herself completely to her political work with the FSLN, helped start Radio Sandino, and met her future husband Daniel Ortega. The pair married in a secret ceremony in 1979. When the Sandinistas overthrew the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, she returned to Nicaragua. Murillo and Ortega remarried in 2005 in order to have the marriage recognized by the Catholic Church, as part of Ortega's effort to reconcile with the church.

Murillo started to gain power politically in 1998 after her daughter, Zoilamérica Ortega Murrillo, accused her stepfather Ortega of sexually abusing her for many years. Murillo defended Ortega and said that the accusations were "a total falsehood" while also publicly shunning her daughter, who has still maintained that her accusations were true. Although Zoilamérica tried to pursue legal action, Ortega had immunity as a member of the National Assembly. The case was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 2001 because the statute of limitations had expired.