“I am 73 years old. I never thought that at this stage of my life I would be fighting civically and peacefully against a new dictatorship. These are desperate blows by a regime that feels dying, that has no legal basis, that has no justification to remain in power”
― Hugo Torres
Hugo Torres Jiménez (born April 25, 1948-dies February 13, 2022) is a Nicaraguan former guerrilla and military leader. He is a retired Brigadier General. Chief of the Political Directorate of the Sandinista Army (EPS). Member of the FSLN Defense and Security Commission. Member of the FSLN Assembly. Guerrilla commander.
Hugo Torres Jiménez was born on April 25, 1948, the son of a Somoza National Guard lieutenant from León. Torres joined the FSLN in 1971 and worked in barrio mobilization in the early 1970s. In the December 27, 1974 Christmas party raid and hostage-taking at the Casa de Chema Castillo, attended by senior Somoza government officials and diplomats, Torres was second in command ("Comandante Uno", also called “ Juan José Quezada") to Eduardo Contreras. Subsequent negotiations freed Sandinista political prisoners including future Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who had been imprisoned for seven years. Torres was also second-in-command to Eden Pastora during the August 1978 assault on the National Palace. Worked in logistics in Honduras for the FSLN's Northern Front. After the Somoza dictatorship fell in 1979, Torres served as Vice Minister of Interior and Chief of State Security under Tomas Borge, before being moved to the Defense Ministry, where he was the EPS delegate to the Council of State. Traveled to the Soviet Union to visit Nicaraguan students attending the Frunze Military Academy.
In 1980 he was decorated with the Carlos Fonseca Amador Order, given to outstanding members of the party or the government who have demonstrated moral and ethical merits and unrestricted adherence to constitutional principles. He attained the rank of Colonel in the EPS, and was in charge of its political training during the war against the US-backed Contras in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he was part of the effort to professionalize the EPS as the Nicaraguan Army, where he was a Brigadier General until retiring in 1998.
Torres (left) with Sergio Ramírez (center) and Daniel Ortega
He, like Sergio Ramírez and Dora María Tellez, broke with the FSLN dominated by Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo in 1995 to found the Sandinista Renewal Movement, which became the Democratic Renewal Union (UNAMOS).
On November 18, 2017, the VIII National Convention of the MRS was held. In it, Suyen Barahona Cuan was elected president and Hugo Torres Jiménez vice president. He has been a determined critic of the regime of his former comrade-in-arms Daniel Ortega, especially for the bloody repression against the popular protests that began in 2018. He has compared Ortega to the dictator Somoza whom they overthrew together. Both he and his party have opted for a form of non-violent resistance making constant claims on his behalf regarding human rights and social peace.
As of 2021, he was vice-president of the Democratic Renewal Union (Unamos) party, formerly Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). On June 13, 2021, he was part of a wave of arrests of opposition leaders and civic figures by the government of Daniel Ortega that began with the arrests of four opposition candidates for president in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election and later expanded. Arrested with Torres were the president of Unamos, Suyén Barahona; former MRS president Ana Margarita Vijil; and Unamos members and leaders Dora María Tellez and Victor Hugo Tinoco, the latter two both former Sandinista guerrillas like Torres. They are being investigated under controversial Law 1055, passed in December 2020, which allows the government to charge anyone it considers a “traitor to the homeland” without publicly producing evidence.
Hugo Torres before arrest
Torres is the first political prisoner to die at the hands of the Nicaraguan regime, which initially accused him of "treason against the country" and "conspiracy to undermine national integrity." His health had deteriorated since the end of last year, as reported by his organization. He was taken to a hospital on December 17, after collapsing in prison.
Humberto Ortega, former head of the Nicaraguan Army, pointed out that the death of political prisoner Hugo Torres was due to the "cruel confinement" to which he was exposed in the cells of El Chipote.