Authoritarianism Fears Her 

Honoring Dora María Téllez, Nicaraguan dissident and Fall 2024 DRCLAS Visiting Fellow, for her unyielding fight for democracy. 

On June 2, 2025, during the 70th anniversary of the Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique Latine (IHEAL) in Paris, La Sorbonne Nouvelle awarded an honorary doctorate to Dora María Téllez, the Fall 2024 Cisneros Visiting Fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS). The recognition honors her decades-long commitment to democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression in Nicaragua. 

For Téllez, the news of this distinction first arrived under extraordinary circumstances. It was June 12, 2022, and she was in solitary confinement at the El Chipote prison in Managua, held as a political prisoner without access to reading materials, writing, or meaningful social contact. During a rare and heavily monitored family visit, her brother leaned in and whispered the news: La Sorbonne Nouvelle had awarded her a Doctorado Honoris Causa. 

“Without being able to express my emotions, at the end of the visit, I returned to the gloom of the cell feeling accompanied by you all and deeply grateful for that gesture,” she recalled. “A demand for freedom and respect for my integrity and that of the rest of the political prisoners in Nicaragua.” 

Delivered yesterday in Paris, her speech—Autoritarismos: ni libertades, ni justicia social—was both deeply personal and globally resonant. She reflected on her experience of incarceration and political persecution, while also sounding the alarm on the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world. 

Téllez’s trial, she explained, was not about justice but about silencing dissent. She was allowed only a minute and a half with her lawyer. The prosecution’s case was based on two forwarded tweets and remarks she made to the European Parliament. “It was clear that I was being condemned for pretending to exercise my right to free expression, for criticizing the government, for being an opponent,” she said. “The trial, a pre-cooked act, really, put the rights and liberties of every Nicaraguan in the dock, and that is how I expressed it when they allowed me to speak.” 

She was sentenced to eight years in prison— “the second of my life,” she noted. “Forty-five years earlier I was sentenced to seven years of prison for participating in the armed struggle against the dictatorship of the Somoza family. As can be seen, the inflationary process has also affected the price of being in the opposition,” she added, with her characteristic dark humor. 

Téllez was released and exiled to the United States in early 2023, along with more than 200 other political prisoners. Hours later, she and others were stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and had their pensions, property, and legal identities erased—what she calls “civil death.” Despite this forced displacement, her voice has only grown stronger. 

Her remarks in Paris offered a broader critique of global democratic backsliding. “In Nicaragua, there is a dictatorship with two heads,” she warned, referring to the Ortega-Murillo regime. “It is a dynastic regime, as was that of the Somoza family, which bases its political and social control on repression, institutional manipulation, the nullification of rights and freedoms, and the liquidation of the Rule of Law.” 

She connected her country’s experience to troubling trends across the Americas and beyond, from El Salvador to Iran, from Venezuela to the United States. “The authoritarian wave is the vanguard of a conservative world revolt, deeply connected to the new oligarchies,” she said. “Life tells us that temporizing with authoritarianism does not stop it and that, rather, it has serious consequences. If authoritarian power finds indifference or complacency… it will soon come for me and mine. The threat to the rights of others is also a threat to my rights.” 

At DRCLAS, Téllez’s presence as the Fall 2024 Cisneros Visiting Fellow further deepened the Center’s commitment to fostering critical dialogue around democracy in Latin America. Democracy is one of DRCLAS’s thematic initiatives, and during her time on campus, she participated in numerous events that inspired students, faculty, and the broader Harvard community. Her voice—grounded in lived experience and political clarity—continues to resonate far beyond academic spaces. 

In closing her speech in Paris, Téllez reminded the audience that many political prisoners remain unjustly detained in Nicaragua and around the world. “They continue to require our solidarity and our voices demanding their unconditional release,” she said. “To them I dedicate this honor that has been granted to me.”