Marlen Auxiliadora Chow Cruz was born circa 1948 in Alamikamba, Prinzapolka, on the North Caribbean Coast, to a Nicaraguan mother and Chinese father.

[1] She was baptized as Egda Rosa, but the name proved difficult for her father to pronounce, so her parents changed it to Marlen as a version of Mayling.

[1] Chow attended National Autonomous University of Nicaragua at León where she studied economics and first became involved in activism, participating in advocacy for student aid.

[3] Following the fall of the Somoza dictatorship, in the early 1980s she was director of the fine arts section of the Ministry of Culture in the FSLN government, where she emphasized a diversity of aesthetic practices, saying: “The revolutionary process doesn’t demand a unified theme.

[5] During the Nicaraguan protests touched off in April 2018, Chow was arrested by the FSLN in October and identified herself, on impulse, as part of the “Pico Rojo”, meaning lipstick,[3] recalling the poet Claribel Alegría, who once founded the Association of Pico Rojo Nicaraguan Women.