Early Life and Education
Astorga was born to a religious, upper-middle-class family in Managua. She was the first child of a lumber exporter and rancher with connections to the powerful ruling Somoza family. In her youth she was a devout Roman Catholic, often doing charitable work in the poor neighborhoods of Managua.
In 1967, she 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 ... 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.
Read more about this topic: Nora Astorga
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