Nora Josefina Astorga Gadea de Jenkins (10 December 1948 – 14 February 1988) was a Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter in the Nicaraguan Revolution, a lawyer, politician, judge and the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations from 1986 to 1988. Early life and education Astorga was born to a religious, upper-middle-class family in Managua. She was the first child of Segundo Astorga, a lumber exporter and rancher with connections to the powerful ruling Somoza family, and his wife Mierrel Gadea. In her youth she was a devout Roman Catholic, often doing charitable work in the poor neighborhoods of Managua. In 1967, Astorga announced to her family's dismay that she supported Fernando Agüero, not his opponent Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in the presidential election. For her personal safety and to "straighten her out," her family sent her to study medicine in the United States, where she remained from 1967 to 1969. However, the animal dissections disturbed her and she had to abandon her studies. She said of the years she spent in Washington, D.C., "What impressed me most about the United States were the social contrasts and above all the racism. I had never seen racism like that in Nicaragua ... [m]y political consciousness was born then." Astorga married Jorge Jenkins when she was 22. Astorga had four children, two with her husband, two with Jose Maria Alvarado, a member of the Sandinistas. A revolutionary Astorga later returned to Nicaragua and studied law at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua. Her association with Nicaragua's Sandinista revolutionaries began during her years as a university student. From 1969 to 1973, she was responsible for finding safe houses and transportation for the revolutionary leader Oscar Turcios. At age 22, she married Jorge Jenkins, a student activist. The young couple spent the following year in Italy, where he studied anthropology, and she studied banking law and computer programming. They had two children and separated after five years of marriage. During this time, Astorga led a double life as a mother of two and a corporate lawyer for one of Nicaragua's largest construction companies, while clandestinely aiding the Sandinistas. After the assassination of newspaper editor Pedro Chamorro in 1978, Astorga decided to take up arms against the Somoza regime. "I finally understood that armed struggle was the only solution, that a rifle cannot be met with a flower, that we were in the streets, but if that force didn't get