Nicaragua’s Vice-President Rosario Murillo has always had a facility with words. In the 1970s, as Sandinista guerrillas fought to bring down the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, she penned dozens of poems celebrating their struggle. They caught the attention of a guerrilla leader, Daniel Ortega, then languishing in a Nicaraguan jail.
Now, Mrs Murillo is married to Ortega and the two govern Nicaragua. But in recent years, she’s put her linguistic flare to darker purposes.
When anti-government protests broke out in April, she spat venom at demonstrators, calling them bloodsuckers, vampires, terrorists, vandals, criminals and fascists. Simultaneously, she coordinated the first stages of a brutal…