Tamara Dávila is a Nicaraguan psychologist, feminist activist, and human rights defender. She is the 2023-2024 Human Rights Fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, Michigan, and is part of the Monteverde movement of exiled political leaders.
Since 2004, Dávila has worked extensively with women’s organizations and other civil society groups promoting sexual and reproductive rights and advocating for survivors of violence against women and girls. She has actively participated in demonstrations and initiatives against gender-based violence in Nicaragua, including organizing a performance of “Un violador en tu camino” (A Rapist in Your Path) in downtown Managua.
Dávila has been a member of the UNAMOS political party (formerly known as MRS). During the student-led mass protests in 2018, which saw more than 500 people killed by police and paramilitary forces, she publicly denounced the Ortega-Murillo government. She collaborated with organizations such as UNAB, Articulación Feminista, and UNAMOS to push for a democratic transition in Nicaragua, advocating for justice, equality, and freedom. In response to her advocacy and leadership in the opposition movement, Dávila was violently and illegally arrested at her home by the Ortega-Murillo regime on June 12, 2021, in front of her five-year-old daughter. After the police raided her home and concealed her whereabouts for weeks, she was declared disappeared by Nicaraguan authorities. She spent twenty months in solitary confinement at “El Nuevo Chipote,” a prison for political prisoners. On February 9, 2023, she was exiled along with 221 other political prisoners and granted humanitarian parole in the US.
She holds a degree in psychology from Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, a master’s degree in gender, identity, and citizenship from Universidad de Huelva, Spain, and a second master’s degree in public policy, rights, and youth leadership from Universidad Centroamericana in Managua.
Dávila was an event speaker at the Dialogue.
