State department refuses visa to let Sandinista revolutionary take up post

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1430305,00.html?gusrc=rss

US bars Nicaragua heroine as 'terrorist'

Writers and academics voice anger as state department refuses visa to let Sandinista revolutionary take up post as Harvard professor

Duncan Campbell
Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian

The woman who epitomised the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution that overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza has been denied entry to the US to take up her post as a Harvard professor on the grounds that she had been involved in "terrorism". The decision to bar Dora Maria Tellez, one of the best-known figures in recent Latin American history, who has frequently visited the US in the past, has been attacked by academics and writers. It comes at a time when President George Bush has appointed as his new intelligence chief a man associated with the "dirty war" against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

A spokeswoman for Harvard University said it was "very disappointed" that she would not be taking up her appointment. Ms Tellez was a young medical student when she became a commandante with the leftwing Sandinistas in their campaign to topple the dictator. She was Commander 2' in 1978 when a group of guerrillas took over the National Palace and held 2,000 government officials hostage in a two-day standoff. After negotiations, she and the other guerrillas were allowed to leave the country. The event was seen as a key moment that indicated the Somoza regime could be overthrown.

She later led the brigade that took Leon, the first city to fall to the Sandinistas in the revolution, and she is celebrated as one of the popular figures of the revolution. She became minister of health in the first elected Sandinista administration. Last year Ms Tellez, now a historian, was appointed as the Robert F Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American studies in the divinity department at Harvard, a post which is shared with the Rockefeller Centre for Latin American Studies. She was due to start teaching students this spring.

The US state department has told her she is ineligible because of involvement in "terrorist acts". A spokesman for the department confirmed yesterday that she had been denied a visa under a section making those who had been involved in terrorist acts ineligible. He said he could not comment further on the reasons for the ban. "I have no idea why they are refusing me a visa," said Ms Tellez from her home in Managua yesterday. "I have been in the US many times before - on holidays, at conferences, on official business."

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/08/nicaraguan_bows_out_of_teaching_post/

Nicaraguan bows out of teaching post
Ex-rebel leader has visa denied
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff | March 8, 2005

A historian and former Sandinista leader who helped overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is no longer scheduled to teach classes at Harvard Divinity School this spring after she said she was denied a visa because of her role in alleged "terrorist activity."
Dora Maria Tellez applied for a student visa to study English last year at the University of San Diego.

She then planned to teach in Cambridge this spring as a visiting professor, although she had not yet applied for the required teaching visa. But once the student visa was denied, Tellez told Harvard of- ficials that she would not be teaching classes on religion and society because she expected her teaching visa would also be rejected. "I'm not angry," Tellez, 49, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Managua. "I feel threatened if the United States considers me a terrorist. I want an explanation."

Tellez, who is asking the Nicaraguan government to investigate, said she is also considering her legal options. Her supporters in the United States blame tightened immigration rules after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I think with the new Homeland Security rules, George Washington would have been denied a visa," said John Coatsworth, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, which had approved Tellez's appointment. "If we are denying visas for people who are struggling against tyranny equally with people who are carrying out terrorist attacks against innocent civilians for no good reason, I think we're making a terrible mistake."

According to Gioconda Belli, a Nicaraguan writer who now lives in Los Angeles and has taken up Tellez's cause, the former Sandinista leader was denied the student visa under a section of immigration law that bars people who have taken part in terrorist activities. The letter to Tellez from the US Department of State quoted a section of the law that bans visas for anybody who "has, under circumstances indicating an intention to cause death or serious bodily injury, incited terrorist activity," Belli said.

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David Abel of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com .