organized we wouldn't achieve much", she said. "For me, it was the moment of conviction: either I took up arms and made a total commitment or I wasn't going to change anything." She gained national attention for her participation in the botched kidnapping and murder of General Reynaldo Pérez Vega (nicknamed "El Perro," or "the dog"). Pérez Vega was deputy commander of Anastasio Somoza's National Guard. On March 8, 1978, Astorga invited the general to her apartment in Managua, hinting to him that the sexual favors he had long sought would be granted. When he arrived, however, three members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) — Hilario Sánchez, Raúl Venerio and Walter Ferreti — burst out of her bedroom closet and seized the general. The plan was to ransom him for jailed Sandinista revolutionaries, but Pérez Vega put up a struggle and was murdered. Later, with his throat slit, he was found wrapped in a Sandinista flag. Astorga said of his murder, "It was not murder. He was too much of a monster." In an interview shortly before her death, she described her feelings about her role in the Pérez Vega murder this way: She became the subject of a national manhunt and next appeared to the Nicaraguan public on the pages of La Prensa, the nation's opposition newspaper. She was wearing jungle fatigues and carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. Astorga had escaped to the jungle and joined the Sandinista revolutionaries. There, she became pregnant with her third child by José María Alvarado, a leading Sandinista. Justice Minister and UN Representative After the Sandinistas took power in July 1979, Astorga was appointed Vice Minister of Justice. In that position she oversaw the trials of some 7,500 members of Somoza's National Guard. In 1984, her appointment as ambassador to the United States was refused by the Reagan administration because of her involvement in the killing of General Reynaldo Pérez Vega. Vega had been a CIA operative. Astorga became a deputy representative to the United Nations in 1984, and in March 1986, became the Nicaraguan ambassador to that body, a position she held until her death in 1988. She was instrumental in getting the United Nations to recognize a ruling by the International Court of Justice, Nicaragua v. United States, that declared the United States' support for the Contras illegal. Death On February 14, 1988, "La Norita" died of cervical cancer