Sandino

Ernesto Cardenal: With Walker in Nicaragua

 

Nicaragua 1927-1935

Nicaragua, 1929: The People

While Sandino’s guerrilla band is fighting in the mountains, the people are waging their own struggle in the cities. Children are refusing to learn English in the schools. The United States forces them to attend a U.S. military parade. The people refuse to sing the national anthem and instead shout out Sandino’s war cry, Death to the traitors! The elderly refuse gifts made in the United States.

A reporter writes, Sandino has the whole continent behind him.

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 228

 

Managua, February 21, 1933: Betrayal

President Sacasa

5 p.m.: Sandino arrives at President Sacasa’s home.

Early evening: The National Guard holds a Council of War. At dusk Somoza arrives. I come from the American Embassy, where I have been conferring with Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane. He has assured me that the Washington government supports and recommends the elimination of Augusto Caesar Sandino, considering him as it does a disturber of the country’s peace. They draw up a document implicating all of them in the assassination plot—an insurance policy against anyone betraying the others.

At the same time Sandino is having supper in the home of President Sacasa, who himself will be overthrown by Somoza in 1936. They talk of peace and gold mining and Nicaragua’s future.

10 p.m.: Sacasa accompanies Sandino; Gregorio, Sandino’s father; and Sandino’s generals, Umanzor and Estrada to the door. The guests get into the car and head toward the National Guard’s Campo de Marte where they encounter a stalled vehicle. Generals Estrada and Umanzor, sensing an ambush, pull out their revolvers. Sandino urges them not to shoot, since Salvatierra and his father are not fighting men. Major Delgadillo, disguised as a Guard corporal, approaches the car and tells them to drop their pistols because they are under arrest. Sandino, Estrada, and Umanzor are ordered into a truck marked GN No. 1 (Guardia Nacional) while Salvatierra and Gregorio stay behind. The National Guard takes them to a place called La Calavera ( The Skull). Sandino is calm. He asks for a drink of water. The request is denied. Estrada says, Don’t ask these fellows for anything, general, let them kill us. Standing with his hands in his pockets, Sandino refuses to allow them to search him. His last words: My political leaders have played jokes with me.

11 p.m.: Sandino sits on a rock on the right, Umanzor in the middle and Estrada to the left. A shot crackles in the air, the signal to begin. The machine guns open fire. A bullet enters Sandino’s brain and chest. Umanzor dies with five in the head, Estrada two in the chest. From the distance, Gregorio hears the shots and says, Now they’re killing them. It always happens; try to be a redeemer, and you get crucified.

Somoza, knowing the danger of memory, erases the struggle of Sandino’s forces from Nicaraguan history books and makes it a crime to speak the name of Sandino.

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 174-177

 

United States, 1935

A Henchman Speaks the Truth

 

Major General Smedley Butler

Moments occur when the powerful, or those who serve them, speak the truth about what they have done. In his memoirs, Major General Smedley Butler, a Marine who led many invasions into Central America sets the record straight.

I spent 33 years and four months in active service as a member of the … Marine Corps… and during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business… Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank to collect revenues in… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909 and 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903.

Joyce Hollyday, ed., Crucible of Hope, 10

 

Nicaragua, 1927

Yali, 1927: Father and Son

Don Gregorio, Sandino’s father and a friend of Moncada, comes to persuade his son to surrender. They move out to a little open area, but still in earshot of Sandino’s small band of followers. Don Gregorio tells him that in this world saviors end up on the cross and the people are not grateful and forget. Sandino remains adamant that this is the proper course. His gestures and his words tell his men that he will not turn back or surrender. Viva Sandino, they shout.

Don Gregrorio leaves. He writes a letter to his other son Socrates saying, Come, join your brother’s cause.

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 78

 

Ocotal, 1927: Ultimatum

U.S. Marines in Nicaragua

G.D. Hatfield, commanding officer of the U.S. Marines in Nicaragua, is growing impatient. He writes a final letter to Sandino:

It does not seem possible that you remain deaf to reasonable proposals, and despite your insolvent replies to my suggestions in the past, I hereby offer you one more opportunity to surrender with honor… Otherwise you will be proscribed and placed outside the law, hunted wherever you go and repudiated everywhere, awaiting an infamous death: not that of the soldier who falls in battle but that of a criminal who deserves to be shot in the back by his own followers…

In conclusion, I with to inform you that Nicaragua has had its last revolution…

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 79

 

Camp El Chipote, 1927:

The Ant Confronts the Elephant

Sandino responds:

Captain G.D. Hatfield, Ocotal

I received your communications yesterday and fully understand it. I will not surrender and await you here. I want a free country or death. I am not afraid of you; I rely on the patriotic ardor of those who accompany me.

A.C. Sandino

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 79-80

 

Ocotal, 1927: Massacre

Calvin Coolidge

President Coolidge calls it an heroic action. Diaz, the U.S.-picked man in Nicaragua, calls for medals for the airmen. The Marines call in air support in Ocotal, planes than rain bombs down upon the town. Following orders to gun the bandits down mercilessly where they are encountered, they empty their bomb racks and then swoop low and empty their machine guns on the feeling people. One U.S. soldier is killed. Three hundred Nicaraguans—men, women, and children—are killed and one hundred are wounded.

 

Edward Dunne

Illinois Governor Edward Dunne writes:

In all of U.S. history there has been no action of such indecency as we now see in Nicaragua… The slaughter of 300 Nicaraguans by the Americans is a blot on the United States…

H.H. Knowles, former minister of Nicaragua, says in a speech:

I know of no inhuman actions and crimes greater than those committed by the United States against the defenseless peoples of Latin America through its legally authorized agents and representatives…

We have imposed our force upon weak, defenseless, and completely powerless countries, murdering thousands of their subjects, and we have attached them when they expected us to defend them. We have used the Monroe Doctrine to prevent European countries sympathetic to those republics from coming to their aid. Instead of sending them teachers, instructors, and elements of civilization, we send them hunters of usurious banking concessions, avaricious capitalists, corrupters, soldiers to shoot them down, and degenerates to infest them with every disease.

Gregorio Selser, Sandino, 80-81

 

 

The First Sandinistas

Augusto Caesar Sandino

Augusto Caesar Sandino and the twenty-nine men who refused to surrender took to the hills of Segovia, mountainous jungles jungle, perfect for guerilla warfare.  Sandino’s army grew, as did the popularity of his cause.  Under the slogan “Free Country or Death,” his main goals became driving the “gringos” from Nicaraguan soil.

At first the untrained and ill-equipped army suffered defeats.  Then they began to change their tactics and develop real guerrilla war maneuvers.  The local population acted as spies and assisted with developing a communications network, allowing Sandino to learn quickly about U.S. troop movements.  As Sandino’s forces began scoring victories over the “Yanqui invaders,” the United States turned to using air power against Sandino.  However, even with their vastly superior air power, the United States could not defeat the Sandinistas.

Sandino became a folk hero throughout most of Central and Latin America, but in the U.S. press he was portrayed as a “bandit.”  Cecil B. De Mille wanted to a movie about him but the State Department did not allow it.

By 1930, the United States planned to leave Nicaragua, but not before training and equipping a Nicaraguan National Guard which would act as an agent of U.S. interests.  The clear advantage of this arrangement was protecting U.S. interests without risking the lives of U.S. citizens.  In 1932, U.S. troops left Nicaragua, leaving Anastasio Somoza as head of the National Guard.  Somoza would soon become dictator, and his family ruled Nicaragua until 1979, the longest dictatorship in Central America.  In 1933, Somoza lured Sandino to Managua under the pretext of signing a peace agreement.  With approval and direction from the United States, Somoza arranged the assassination of the great leader and folk hero.

See Gregorio Selser, Sandino and George Black, Triumph of the People