Nicaraguan bows out of teaching post
Ex-rebel leader has visa denied
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.
Lou Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said the agency does not comment on specific visa applications.
But he said that applications for both student visas and teaching visas could be rejected under the same section of immigration law prohibiting visas to people involved in terrorist activities.
That part of the country's immigration laws was revised under the USA Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11. The stricter restrictions have sometimes created problems for universities trying to hire foreign scholars.
Tellez, who would have been the Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor of Latin American studies, was one of the best-known leaders of the 1979 revolution to oust Somoza.
Since 1998, Tellez has been president of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, a political party allied with the Sandinistas. At Harvard Divinity School, Tellez was scheduled to teach a class on Nicaragua and the Sandinista aftermath, as well as a seminar on Caribbean identity, race, and ethnicity.
In a statement issued yesterday, William A. Graham, dean of the Harvard Divinity School, said the school was disappointed that Tellez would not be teaching this spring.
"We strongly support the free exchange of scholars and scholarship internationally, and we have communicated to Professor Tellez that we would assist her in trying to secure a visa, should she wish to teach as a visiting professor at Harvard in the future," he wrote.
Belli, who has written a memoir about her own work as a Sandinista, argued that Tellez has been unfairly branded a terrorist. Although Tellez had dropped her quest for a visa, she still wants her name cleared, Belli said.
David Abel of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com. 