After watching ¡Las Sandinistas!, I am forced to hold myself accountable. With pen and paper, in my most humble efforts, I scream their names.

So you think you are brave, bleeding pen through paper, expressing sexual pleasures, anger, sadness, moved by the moon, soothed by the rain.

But what is so brave? Writing, reading, creating without hunger’s pain? No gun at your side, no blood to contain, no sacrifice, no real pain.

Have you heard of Las Comandantes, Nicaragüenses leading the revolution, without recognition, no names?

Dora María Téllez, at 22, leading the occupation of León. At that age you were lost without a cause, twenty years later, has much changed?

As much as you’d like to champion real change, you don’t sleep in the jungles or put your life on the line for your country, your sex. You’d sooner say uncle.

But as María once said, social processes aren’t linear. Like a river, they move, they sway.

In your privilege, may you raise your arm, use your voice and pen to keep the fight alive, to remember their names.

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Countless women fought, but history often left them without names. 

Here are some of the women whose names we do know. This list is incomplete, but their courage is not forgotten.

Featured in ¡Las Sandinistas!

Dora María Téllez — “Comandante Dos”; medical student turned general, led the León occupation and 1978 National Palace operation.

Daisy Zamora — poet, revolutionary, and clandestine Radio Sandino’s programming director; later vice minister of culture.

Gioconda Belli — novelist and underground propagandist for the FSLN; later acclaimed international writer.

Sofía Montenegro — journalist and fighter, later editor of Barricada and outspoken feminist voice.

Lea Guido — health activist, first woman minister in post-revolution Nicaragua.

Mónica Baltodano — guerrilla comandante, imprisoned and tortured before 1979; later minister and legislator.

Claudia Gordillo — photographer and documentarian of the revolution.

Margarita Montealegre — journalist, among the first women photojournalists covering the revolution.

Olga — participant interviewed in the film (last name not publicly listed).

Claudia — participant interviewed in the film (last name not publicly listed).

Other Documented Sandinista Women

Leticia Herrera Sánchez — among the first female comandantes of the FSLN.

Doris Tijerino — early Sandinista militant; her life story became a core testimony of women in the struggle.

Nora Astorga — guerrillera, later Nicaragua’s ambassador to the UN.

Arlen Siu — singer-songwriter turned guerrilla, killed in combat at age 20; an enduring icon.

Idania Fernández — student organizer and revolutionary, killed in 1979.

Luisa Amanda Espinoza — the first FSLN woman killed in the war against Somoza; AMNLAE (the Sandinista women’s association) bears her name.

Gladys Báez — veteran guerrillera, associated with the Pancasán campaign; later legislator.

Vidaluz Meneses — poet and FSLN member, part of the revolutionary cultural front.

Michèle Najlis — poet and activist; her writing and organizing intertwined with the insurrection.

May we remember not only these names, but the countless others history has tried to erase.