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O.,GNAT,EV, G.BORovix

The Agony of a Dictatorship

__QUESTION__ If subtitle on cover of paperback is only instance of subtitle, put a __TAG__ around it? Is paperback cover represented in these files? [1] ~ [2] __AUTHOR__ O. IGNATIEV, G. BOROVIK __TITLE__ The Agony of a Dictatorship __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-02-27T06:15:41-0800 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"

Progress Publishers

Moscow

[3]

Translated from the Russian by Arthur Shkarovsky

Designed by Vadim Kuleshov

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__COPYRIGHT__ © «riporpecc>, 1979
English translation © Progress Publishers 1980

11104---236 H---------------6e3

0302030103

014(01)---80

__PRINTED_IN__ Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [4] CONTENTS Page Memo to the Reader.............. 7 OLEG IGNATIEV The Storm of Tiscapa............. 9 CHAPTER ONE. Operation Carlos Fonseca Amador: Death to Somozaism! ... 11 CHAPTER TWO. Sandino Vs. US Intervention............ 20 CHAPTER THREE. The Somoza Dynasty, the USA and the National Guard ... 28 CHAPTER FOUR. Sandinjsta Revival................ 38 CHAPTER FIVE. Two Interviews.................50 CHAPTER SIX. The September 1978 Uprising............60 CHAPTER SEVEN. Who Wants To Keep Somoza Going and How......76 CHAPTER EIGHT. Till Victory!..................88 CHAPTER NINE. Girding for the Second Offensive (A Chronicle).....94 CHAPTER TEN. The Second Uprising (A Chronicle)..........108 GENRIKH BOROVIK Sandinista Camp Glimpses • • • ........123 ``They're Killing People There!"........... 125 A Small Land's Great Dreams............ 131 ``We're Only Beginning".............. 142 ``We're Stronger!"................ 149 [5] ~ [6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ MEMO TO THE READER

On 24 August 1978, Pravda carried the following new item about Nicaragua: "On Tuesday some twenty Sandinista National Liberation Front guerrillas carried out a daring raid to draw world public attention to the crimes of the murderous Somoza dictatorship. They disarmed the guards and occupied, in downtown Managua, the Nicaragua capital, the building of the National Palace which houses the offices of the National Congress and several ministries. . ..''

As you may remember the raid was a smashing success. Shortly afterwards a popular uprising erupted, in which the patriotic forces came to grips with Somoza's punitive National Guard; however they were outnumbered and the dictator managed to stay in the saddle.

The two of us visited Central America in late 1978 and early 1979, that is some six months before the downfall of the Somoza regime. We interviewed many Nicaraguans there and assembled a wealth of background material. One of us was even able to visit a Sandinista hideout.

The book in your hands will tell you what was happening in Nicaragua as 1978 drew to a close, about Somoza, his regime and its backers, and also about the Sandinistas and opposition aims and purposes. Actually you have here two books for the price of one, the first, The Storm of Tiscapa by Oleg Ignatiev, presents a panoramic picture of events plus an analysis of the situation, the second Sandinista Camp Glimpses, is Genrykh Borovik's account of his visit to a Sandinista hideout.

The Authors

[7] ~ [8]

Oleg IGNATIEV

__ALPHA_LVL1__ The Storm of Tiscapa __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER ONE __ALPHA_LVL2__ OPERATION CARLOS FONSECA AMADOR:
DEATH TO SOMOZAISM! __NOTE__ LVL2's moved here from page 10.

Oleg IGNATIEV

__NOTE__ Author is *OVER* LVL1 "Storm of Tiscapa" in original. [9] ~ [10]

``Somoza is a sonofabitch, but he's ours "

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

``Foreign News.
``General Sandmo, for several years head of the anti-governmental rebel movement, has been killed in Nicaragua.''

Pravda, 24 February 1934

The Sandinista raid of 22 August 1978 has no likely precedent in guerilla warfare. A tiny force of 25 men captured in downtown Managua a building where at the time were more than 2,000 civil servants, parliamentarians, armed guards, and visitors, and held them hostage for more than two days before the dictator complied with their demands and they left the country in triumph.

Particulars of the raid and information about the brave men who undertook it have been reported in periodicals around the world. After interviewing some of the people directly involved, and excerpting from notes they jotted downright on the heels of the event, I was able to log the entire affair. Here, now, is the record.

11

Tuesday, 22 August 1978,

Republic Square in Managua, capital of Nicaragua. Fronting on it is a two-storey massive building occupying a whole block, with ten pompous columns---five on each side of the main entrance. This is the National Palace; it houses the National Congress, with Senate downstairs and the Chamber of Deputies upstairs. On the ground floor is also the Central National Tax Office, while the upstairs eastern wing is occupied by the Ministry of the Interior and the western wing by the Ministry of Finance.

The lower house is to discuss this day the national budget. The session, in the upstairs Blue Hall, began at 11:50 a.m.

12:20. Two light-green trucks outwardly very much like the vehicles Somoza's "National Guardsmen" used roar up simultaneously to eastern and western side entrances. Outside the eastern entrance a dozen people jump out, among them a woman, clad in National Guard uniforms. Their leader, Comandante Cero, raps out to the two policemen posted at the door, "Appartense! Vena e jefe!" (Make way! Here comes the chief!).

Comandante Uno comments: "We worried whether we would reach the Palace, as Managua was then constantly patrolled by roving 'special anti-terrorist squads', which we call by the acronym of BEGAT for Brigadas Especiales Contra Actividades Terroristas. These squads often stopped cars, buses, and trucks to check freights and papers. However, our two vehicles managed to get through.''

12:25. The building is fully in the hands of the guerillas. In five minutes, all guards and police are disarmed. Three officers and one National Guardsman are killed. Of the attacking force, only one person is slightly wounded.

Comandante Uno comments: "The guards thought Somoza had arrived, as in such cases his bodyguards usually shouted, 'Make way! Here comes the chief!'. We caught them napping. Once inside we immediately blocked all three entrances with the massive chains we had prudently taken along. Comandante Cero shouldered the main mission of capturing the Blue Hall where the deputies were in session. With four 12 comrades, I was to occupy the Ministry of the Interior. In the Minister's private office, in the furthermost corridor of the eastern wing, we seized Jose Antonio Mora, the Minister of the Interior himself. Comandante Dos took hostage five Deputies who happened to be in the bar.''

12:35. Several minutes later, somebody in town knowing the number of the telephone on the chairperson's desk, phones having heard about the gunfire. Comandante Cero picks up the telephone and says, "National Congress, free territory of Nicaragua".

Comandante Uno comments: "In the Blue Hall there is a direct telephone link with Somoza's private residence. It is also on the chairperson's desk, behind which was Somoza's cousin Luis Pallais Debayle, when our comrades burst into the Blue Hall.''

12:37. A National Guard patrol, commanded by a captain, fires at guerillas at the entrance to the Blue Hall. Comandante Cero tosses a hand grenade at the patrol. The captain is killed, the soldiers throw down their guns, and gunfire ceases.

12:40. Radio Managua reports mysterious events in the National Palace, near which heavy gunfire is heard.

13.10. One of the 18 newsmen in the building, a Radio Managua reporter, telephones his office that the National Palace has been seized by Sandinistas, that they have taken deputies hostage and are demanding the release of political prisoners and a $10,000,000 ransom.

13:20. Dictator Anastasio Somoza orders the National Guard to fire on the Palace. They surround the Palace and shatter semi-basement and ground-floor windows. The guerillas reply with sporadic submachine-gun fire.

Comandante Uno comments: "When we broke into the Palace, we had only five submachine guns, 20 rifles, and some 50 hand grenades. We procured more by disarming the police and National Guardsmen. Then, though many of the deputies were armed, they did not fire a shot, but at once surrendered their pistols.''

13:30. Several Nicaraguan radio stations confirm the Palace's capture by a group of 20 or more members of the 13 Sandinista National Liberation Front, wearing the olive-green uniforms. They also report National Guard units sniping at the Palace windows.

14:20. Comandante Cero orders Luis Pallais Debayle to telephone Somoza's Montelimar Hospital-Bunker and tell him that the guerillas want him to order the firing stopped. Otherwise, the Sandinistas will execute hostages, one by one, at twohour intervals, until Somoza decides to negotiate.

14:25. Pallais Debayle is again told to telephone Somoza in his bunker and transmit the guerilla proposal that Managua Archbishop Miguel Obando Bravo, Leon Bishop Manuel Salazar Espinosa and Granada Bishop Leovigildo Lopez Fitoria, in Managua for a church conference, come to the Palace to mediate. Somoza agrees.

14:35. All three mediators arrive. Sporadic shots are still heard near the Palace.

14:45. The guerillas appoint Gomandante Dos their chief negotiator. She hands the clergymen the list of Sandinista demands to the dictator. They are:

1. That all radio stations report the latest Sandinista communiques and the 50-page text of the Sandinista National Liberation Front Manifesto, setting out Sandinista aims and tasks and nailing the Somoza dictatorship's criminal anti-popular policies.

2. That all political prisoners on the list, transmitted to the mediators, be released. Though it is known that 20 on the list are no longer alive, murdered in Nicaraguan torture chambers, the dictator repeatedly assured relatives that they had been misinformed. Now the dictator could once again be exposed as a liar.

3. That all 25 guerillas, all released prisoners, and also the chief hostages seized be allowed to leave Nicaragua unhindered.

4. That a $10,000,000 ransom be paid as a contribution to the anti-dictatorship fund.

The clergymen telephone these demands to Somoza. 21:00. In his first reply, Somoza asks a 24-hour truce. 23:30. Archbishop Miguel Obando and Bishop Lopez Fitoria leave the Palace to transmit to Somoza personally the 14 text of the Manifesto and list of prisoners. Bishop Manuel Salazar stays behind as guarantee that the army will not fire at the Palace.

23:45. With four of his men, Gomandante Gero locks Deputies Luis Pallais, Ralph Moody, and Juan Pallasios in a distant room. If the National Guard attacks the Palace at daybreak, these three hostages will be executed first about which Somoza is notified by telephone.

Wednesday, 23 August

00:50. Obeying guerilla order, several deputies run up the red-and-black FSLN flag in the midst of the meeting chamber.

01:45. The guerillas discover a National Guard intercom and now hear the commands issued to National Guard units surrounding the Palace.

02:25. Archbishop Obando and Bishop Fitoria return. They are accompanied by two more mediators, the Ambassadors of Costa Rica and Panama.

04:00. The mediators leave after negotiations with the guerillas to see Somoza. The guerillas hand over National Guard casualties to Red Gross representatives and also release several pregnant women and children, inside the building since its capture. In the Blue Hall, where most of the deputies and other important hostages are confined, the situation is calm.

06.50. Comandante Cero tells the hostages that according to an intercepted radio message, National Guard units are redeploying. He warns that his men will execute the parliamentarians unless Somoza answers by the guerilla-set deadline of 9 a.m.

08:30. The mediators return and notify the guerillas that negotiations with Somoza are making little headway. They bring another note from him, threatening reprisals, though it clearly shows that Somoza has conceded to some demands. Thus, he writes, "I agree to furnish guarantees that I will not obstruct departure of the guerillas to the country of their choice, provided I first receive its consent to accept them. I also agree to release the prisoners listed, should they be among the prisoners within the jurisdiction of the Nicaraguan 15 authorities. The guerillas and the afore-mentioned prisoners must depart this night, after the release of the hostages held".

10:25. Gomandante Gero announces a last deadline for Somoza, and says that if within three hours there is no reply to the Sandinista demands, they will break off all negotiations. The mediators leave.

13:20. The mediators return. Archbishop Obando says, "We think the main obstacle has been overcome.'' They bring a third note from Somoza, agreeing to the toughest demand to have all radio stations transmit the Manifesto of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

16:00. Somoza demands that the guerillas and released prisoners leave the country three hours after the FSLN Manifesto is broadcast. The guerillas refuse and say they will leave Nicaragua in the afternoon of 24 August. Somoza offers a $500,000 ransom. The guerillas agree, but call for the scrupulous implementation of all other demands.

Comandante Una comments: "Well aware of the dictator's perfidy, that he might stoop to any vile deceit, we refused to leave the captured Palace on the night of 23 August. To drive out in the dark to the airport would offer Somoza the opportunity of trying to make away with us on the way, or while enplaning. We also wanted Managuans to see Somoza's ignominy with their own eyes, and to realise that it was not only essential, but also possible to wage a successful fight against the dictatorship.''

16:30. Radio stations begin broadcasting the FSLN statement exposing Somoza's crimes, and exhorting Nicaraguans to join in the struggle against the dictatorship. Also broadcast is the list of political prisoners whose release FSLN is demanding.

18:00. Nicaraguan radio stations end the broadcast of Sandinista documents. Political prisoners held in Managua are told to prepare to depart. Prisoners held in inland jails and concentration camps are brought into the capital.

18:30. A Nicaraguan representative contacts General Omar Torrijos, President of Panama, to enquire whether the Panamanian government will send a special plane to bring out the guerillas and the released political prisoners. Torrijos 16 answers in the affirmative. Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez decides to send a Hercules G-130 transport to Panama to subsequently take off with the Panamanian plane for Managua.

23:00. Wardeis of Managua's Modelo de Tipitapa Prison tell prisoners to prepare for departure.

Thursday, 24 August

06:30. Sandinista prisoners are brought from the Modelo jail to Los-Mercedes Airport. A little later, another bus arrives, bringing prisoners from other jails and from the Central Police Office.

09:30. The twenty-five Sandinistas, five mediators, and four hostages, namely Luis Pallais Debayle, Jose Somoza Abrego, the dictator's nephew, Jose Antonio Mora, and Deputy Eduardo Ghamorro, leave the National Palace and ride out to the airport through cheering crowds.

10:30. With 58 released prisoners, the 25 Sandinistas, and their hostages on board the Venezuelan Air Force Hercules G-130 transport and Panamanian COPA Airlines Electra plane take off for Panama.

13:00. The two aircraft touch down at Tocuman Airport in Panama, where thousands of Panamanians cheer the intrepid Sandinistas who ask Panama for political asylum.

Operation Carlos Fonseca Amador is a brilliant success.

__b_b_b__

``Zero hour'', hour of retribution, is the title of a poem which Ernesto Cardenal Ghamorro, a leading Nicaraguan poet, has dedicated to the great national hero Augusto Cesar Sandino. In Nicaragua today the leader of the Sandinista guerillas is often called simply Comandante Cero. Other commandeis go by the names of One, Two, Three, and so forth, depending on how many are involved in one or another operation. Whatever the case, only the head of the entire Sandinista force may be named Comandante Cero. His real name is Eden Pastora Gomez. Currently 42, he has devoted half his life to fight the Somoza dictatorship. National guardsmen slew his father when he was only seven. He has had three __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---1779 17 years of higher education at the Department of Medicine of Guadalajara University in Mexico. A strong-willed, brave commander, he has the knack of quickly sizing up people and situations, and his men follow him wherever he may lead them.

Who are the other two commanders mentioned, Gomandante Uno and Comandante Dos ?

On the evening of 27 December 1974, in a mansion in Managua's aristocratic quarter, a reception is in process for US Ambassador Turner Blair Shelton. Among the dignitaries present were Foreign Minister Alejandro Montiel Arguello, Finance Minister General Gustavo Montiel, Minister of Public Works Armel Gonzales, Nicaragua's Ambassadors to the USA and the UN, and Managua's Mayor. Their host, Jose Mari& Castillo Quant, is highly pleased with the way the reception is going. After His Excellency Ambassador Shelton leaves, the other guests [stay for a chat. However, a few minutes later, the doors bang open and the muzzles of submachine guns are thrust through the open ground-floor windows. "All lie down with face to the floor and hands behind your backs!" comes the cry. Bodyguards unholster their guns and dash to the door. There is a burst of submachine-gun fire, two of them are killed and several other people are wounded. Realising that resistance is useless, all present hasten to obey the unknown attackers. Several men wearing red-and-black bandanas---the colours of the Sandinista Naiional Liberation Front---drawn up over jaw and nose enter. This is the Sandinista Juan Jose Quezada Unit commanded by Eduardo Contreras Escobar. Taking hostages away the Sandinistas demand that eighteen brother Sandinista political prisoners be released, and that they all be allowed to leave the country unhindered.

After more than two days of negotiation Somoza yields. One of the 13 Sandinistas involved in this daring raid is 26-- year-old Hugo Torres Jimenez, incidentally, the Comandante Uno in the National Palace raid who is sentenced in absentia to 30 years of imprisonment.

As you may have gathered from previous pages, Comandante Dos was a girl, Dora Maria Tellez. Born in 1956, she 18 spent nearly all her life in the small town of Matagalpa---which, incidentally, is not that small by Nicaraguan standards, as with a population of 45,000 it is one of the country's five largest cities. Though it has textile mills and several small footwear enterprises, most of its townfolk have one or another connection with farming, as many work sorting, drying, and packaging coffee on plantations in the vicinity.

Dora Maria finished school in Matagalpa and then entered the Department of Medicine at the University in Leon. She dreamed of returning home a doctor, to work at one of its hospitals, for instance the Monies Gonzales Clinic. However, at the University she made friends with people who had links with Sandinista underground fighters. She began to take an interest in politics, read political literature and took part in several Sandinista missions. After her third year she decided to drop out of college and join the guerillas. From 1976 she has been with guerillas active in the Cordillera de Pilto Mountains, a two-hour drive from the tiny northern town of Ocotal. Her unit is part of the Northern Front, named after Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the founding fathers of the Sandinista movement, and in fact is termed the Carlos Fonseca Amador Northern Front in all documents. Comandante Cero recruited Dora Maria for her courage, resourcefulness, and readiness to carry out the toughest assignment.

The highly successful raid not only attracted world attention to the situation in Nicaragua, but also served as an additional impetus triggering off an armed uprising, and causing popular indignation to overflow. It was now plain that the inevitable end of the dictatorship was nigh.

[19] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER TWO __ALPHA_LVL2__ SANDINO VS. US INTERVENTION

The predatory character of US policies was sadly and forcefully brought home to Nicaraguans when in 1856 US filibuster William Walker's band of adventurers seized power in the country. With the US Administration's outright backing, on 12 July 1856 he proclaimed himself ``President'' and was at once recognised by the USA. He restored slavery and declared English the official language. A little later, a united force of Central American States ousted him from Nicaragua. The American adventurer tried several times to get back until finally in 1860 he was captured in neighbouring Honduras and executed by a firing squad.

Jose Santos Zelaya's Liberal Administration that took over in 1893 ruled sixteen years, but the moment it planned several reforms, some bearing upon US interests, the USA decided to replace him with its own man. Commenting on the main reason for the US overthrow of Zelaya, the Cuban periodical Bohemia noted in May 1978, "Having seized the Panama Canal Zone, Washington sought to monopolise every possibility of constructing any waterway across the isthmus, aware of its military, political, and commercial significance. Hence, the decision to depose Zelaya, who at the time was negotiating with Japanese firms to dig an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua.''

The plot was devised and carried out by Mr. Moffat, the US Consul in Managua. On 7 October 1909, he informed US Secretary of State Philander Knox that on the next day Juan Estrada, a pro-US Nicaraguan general, would stage a mutiny. 20 On 13 October he wired the White House that the assignment had been carried out. In a dispatch, commenting on an interview with General Estrado, the New York Times correspondent said the General was crude and blunt when noting that US firms on Nicaragua's Atlantic seaboard had subsidised his revolution, giving him a million dollars of which the merchant firm of Joseph Beers had contributed $ 200,000 and that of Samuel Weil about $ 150,000.

However, the Nicaraguans beat the rebels back. At this juncture, the US cruiser Paducah dropped anchor off Nicaragua and landed a force of marines, installing as President Adolfo Diaz, a former employee of the US La Luz and Los Angeles Mining Co., whose lawyer Philander Chase Knox had been before becoming US Secretary of State. Testifying before the US Senate in Washington, Republican Senator Ladd said that in 1910 US marines had invaded Nicaragua, had gunned down some 200 Nicaraguan citizens, and had installed the employee of a US firm as the nominal President, as without marine support he would have been ousted in under 24 hours.

Some 18 months later, a popular uprising forced the US stooge Adolfo Diaz to ask his masters for help. As Lev Zubok writes in his book US Imperialist Policy vis-a-vis the Caribbean States, "On 4 August 1912, the first American marines arrived in Managua. New reinforcements kept pouring in, and by September 1912 there were more than 2,700 US marines in the country.'' By 4 October, US marines had surrounded the last insurgent bulwark, capturing and executing the rebels.

In 1916 Jefferson, the US 'Minister in Managua, undertook to guarantee the election of a new stooge to the Presidency. S. Gonyonsky, a Soviet student of Latin American history, describes Jefferson's manipulations in his book Sandino: "By way of 'preparation' for the elections of 17 September 1916, Mr. Jefferson invited to the legation the Liberal candidate Iiias, and on behalf of the US State Department and in the presence of Admiral Caperton, the commanding officer of the US naval force in Nicaragua, warned that anyone refusing to support the treaty with Washington would never become Nicaragua's President, and that any presidential claimant 21 would have to coordinate his home and foreign policies with the USA, and sanction a US armed presence in Nicaragua.'' There thus one more Washington stooge became President, this time Emiliano Chamorro, former Nicaraguan Minister to the USA, who signed with it the treaty it so greatly sought, the document known as the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty.

Under this treaty, firstly, the Nicaraguan Government granted the USA "in perpetuity" the exclusive right to build and use tax-free a canal along the San Juan River and the Great Lake, or any other route; secondly, Nicaragua extended to the USA a 99-year lease, up to the year 2015, on the Greater and Lesser Corn Islands, as well as the right to build a naval base anywhere in Nicaragua bordering on the Fonseca Valley that the US would find convenient, to protect its interests in the country, and that it would guarantee the USA the right later to jprolong these terms for a similar period; and, thirdly, the USA pledged to pay Nicaragua $3,000,000 in gold.

In the ten years after, the USA behaved in Nicaragua as in a trust territory. Then, in May 1926, another uprising broke out against the latest US puppet. On 7 May, five days after the uprising began, the US cruiser Cleveland entered the Escondido River at the Nicaraguan port of Bluefields on the Caribbean coast, again to land marines. Washington did not even bother to invent a new pretext for intervention, which was undertaken to "protect the lives and properties of US citizens in Bluefields''. On 23 December more US marines landed in Puerto Cabezas and Rio Grande, naturally again to "protect the lives and properties of US citizens".

In a confidential memo setting out the aims and purposes of the USA's Nicaraguan policy, Robert Olds, Assistant US Secretary of State, wrote on 2 January 1927 that the Central American Zone, including the Isthmus of Panama, was the USA's legitimate sphere of influence, providing the USA sought to ensure its security and protect its interests. US Ambassadors to the five small republics between Mexico and Panama, he said, were advisors whose recommendations should be taken as the law. Central Americans knew that USrecognised and US-backed governments stayed in power, while 22 those denied that support did not. Nicaragua, he went on, had become the touchstone of US policy, and to think the USA would permit a setback there was out of the question. This information is provided in Prof. Richard Millet's book The Guardians of a Dynasty, excerpts from which were published in the periodical Lucha Sandinista in December 1978.

On 6 January 1927, US (soldiers landed at the port of Corrientes on Nicaragua's Pacific coast. All in all, throughout the month of January 1927, the USA dispatched to Nicaragua sixteen warships, and a force of 3,900 soldiers and 865 marines, commanded by 215 officers. On 9 February 1927, the US-installed Nicaraguan President Adolfo Diaz told an AP correspondent that while he was President and under all successive governments, US marines should always be present in Nicaragua.

The leaders of the uprising agreed to negotiate with Col. Henry L. Stimson, the personal envoy of US President Calvin Coolidge and former War Secretary in the Taft Administration, who had been entrusted with similar delicate assignments before. Thus, he had been stationed as observer during the Chilean-Peruvian War over Tacna and Arica, and had also visited the Philippines for an on-the-spot inspection. The insurgent generals gave him a letter noting that they had " resolved to lay down arms''. Only one general refused---Augusto Cesar Sandino.

On 1 July 1927, General Sandino issued his first political manifesto from San Albino, a village in Northern Nicaragua. A few excerpts from this remarkable document follow:

``I pledge to my country and to history that my sword will redeem national honour and bring freedom to the oppressed! I shall pick up the gauntlet thrown down by the vile occupationists and traitors to my country. My men and I will build that wall against which Nicaragua's legion of enemies will fall. But should my men all fall, in championing liberty they will leave the bones of more than one interventionist battalion to whiten on the slopes of my native mountains. So come, kill us in our land, however many there are of you! I shall be waiting for you, at the head of my patriotic soldiers. Know that should this happen, our blood will rain down on the 23 white stones of your White House, that lair where criminal designs are nurtured.''

Admiral David S. Sellers commanded the US occupation force. His subordinate Marine Captain Hatfield circulated among the civilian population of the region, where Sandino was active, a handbill declaring, "Augusto C. Sandino, a former general of the Liberal Army, is outlawed. . . . The US Government cannot be held responsible for any loss of life and property that may occur in military operations conducted by ... the armed forces of the USA in the territory that Sandino has occupied.'' What unveiled cynicism! An occupationist committing outrages in somebody else's country dares to outlaw a patriot battling to free his country from interventionists! An interventionist calls Sandino an occupationist!

On 16 July Sandino at the head of 100 men attacked Gap. Hatfield's garrison of 400 men in the town of Ocotal. The US command sent five bombers to Ocotal, which at treelevel height sprayed rebels and the local population with lead. More than 300 people, mostly civilians, including women and children, were killed.

In his book Sandino, General de hombres libres, the Argentine historian Gregorio Selser comments: "We are in a position to note the little known fact that one of the first times military aircraft were used against peaceful inhabitants after the First World War was in Nicaragua, eight years before Mussolini's Italians exercised in gunning down defenceless Abyssinians from the air, and ten years before the airmen of Hitler's Condor Squadron reduced Guernica to rubble.''

Sandino and his men continued to fight back. According to US Navy communiques, in the twelve months ending 30 June 1928, US marines were involved in 85 engagements against Sandino.

Cuban national hero Julio Antonio Mella wrote, "There is but one man in Nicaragua who represents its people and upholds its sovereignty. He is the universally acknowledged Augusto C. Sandino. . . . All denying him support and entering into contact with his enemies . . . are in effect his enemies too, and traitors to the interests of the oppressed classes of the Continent,"

24

In a letter to Sandino in July 1928, Henri Barbusse wrote, "General, I salute you on my own behalf and on behalf of the proletariat and revolutionary intelligentsia of France and Europe. ... In your person we salute the liberator, a fine soldier and fighter for the cause of the oppressed. . . . You, Sandino, General of the Free Men, head the gathering struggle and the entire Continent. Yours is a historically immemorable role!''

Remain Rolland wrote of US intervention in Nicaragua: "The attack on this country is part of a massive offensive by North American imperialism to gain possession of the entire American continent. It is my belief that political encroachment on Nicaragua must be exposed at once.''

The occupationists sustained one defeat after another. It was plain that the US interventionists would not be able to exterminate Sandino's army, which had the support of most Nicaraguans. Washington devised another scheme, to have Sandino killed by its stooges in Nicaragua. On 23 November 1932 Sandino received from Managua an offer to open peace negotiations. He replied that he was amenable, provided all US forces were pulled out first.

Washington had already realised that Sandino was bound to put forward this demand. It was now in a position to accept this, as it had finalised a plan initiated in late 1922 to create Nicaragua's National Guard, and no longer stood in such great need of a military presence.

At their conference in Washington in December 1922, the Central American states had decided, upon a US motion, to create National Guands for each of these countries. These punitive units were to be under the thumb of the Pentagon and to be officered and trained by US instructors. By 1932 these instructors believed the several thousand Nicaraguan National Guardsmen ready to replace the occupation force and discharge their punitive mission. A mere eight days before the peace-talk offer to Sandino, Anastasio Somoza was appointed chief of the so-called National Guard, and on 2 January 1933 the US occupation force pulled out, of course, without the instructors and officers in command of the National Guard.

25

A "peace convention" was signed at midnight on 3 February. Accordingly, the guerillas surrendered nearly all their weapons and set up a farming colony under Sandino in the Coco River delta area in Northern Nicaragua, near the border with Honduras. However, Somoza's National Guard at once set about harassing the Sandinistas, jailing and killing off the unarmed guerillas. With the blessing of Mr. Arthur Bliss Lane, the new US Ambassador, Somoza schemed to seize power. As he and his patron viewed General Sandino as the only man capable of taking decisive action against the conspiracy, Somoza decided Sandino must be killed.

On the night of 21 February 1934 Sandino and two companions, Generals Estrado and Umanzor, were treacherously captured upon Anastasio Somoza's orders, and shot dead by national guardsmen, in compliance with directives from the US Ambassador. Further, I shall quote what National Guard Lt. Abelardo Cuadra, who was involved in the execution, testified later. He was ordered to report to Anastasio Somoza at 7 p.m. Similar orders were given to Gen. Gustavo Abouns, Deputy Chief of the National Guard, Gen. Gamilo Gonzalez, Col. Samuel Santos, and several lieutenants and majors, including Lieutenant Federico Davidson Blanco, sixteen persons in all. Abelardo Cuadra testifies: "Tacho Somoza (Tacho is the nickname appended to all Somozas, and is the Spanish for ``dunghill''---Auth.} arrived at half past eight. After exchanging greetings, he said, 'I'm just from the US Embassy, where I had a conference with Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane, who assured me that the Washington Administration seconds and advises the liquidation of Augusto Cesar Sandino as a disturber of the national peace.' These words were received in deep silence. I myself was petrified. I knew Sandino was shadowed whenever he came to Managua, but could not even conceive of such >a crime being hatched. Tacho drew up a protocol, to make all of us shoulder responsibility. No one objected. I also signed the document. I could not act otherwise in the circumstances.''

Though Anastasio Somoza now ruled Nicaragua in all but name, Washington wanted to have him as ``lawful'' President. In May 1936 he led a revolt against Presidential candidate 26 Carlos Brenez Arkin and six months later, on 8 December 1936, had himself ``elected'' President. Ever since, the Somoza clan has ruled Nicaragua, backed by the National Guard and liberally bankrolled by the USA.

About the Somoza clan and Somoza's henchmen and patrons, in the next chapter.

[27] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER THREE __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE SOMOZA DYNASTY, THE USA,
AND THE NATIONAL GUARD

Henrique Mora, the TASS correspondent in Costa Rica, and I were making for La Cruz, on the very border with Nicaragua, to cover a ceremony, about which further.

As a row of cottages sprung into view on the horizon, the shadow of an airplane flitted by overhead. "Henrique, probably a big shot from San Jose,'' I ventured. "No, that rather be Somoza,'' he unsmilingly remarked. "Of course,'' I said, thinking he was joking, "He's come to Costa Rica for a cup of coffee, and will at once go back to his Managua bunker.''

Henrique shook his head "I'm not joking,'' he said. "It's a Nicaraguan airplane. Here is one of the three estates the Somoza family owns in Costa Rica They are the 14,000-- hectare Murcielago hacienda, the Santa Rosa estate, and the Las Tablillas ranch, half of the latter in Costa Rica, and the other half in Nicaragua. Which means that if Somoza wants to take a stroll on his land, he can cross from country into country without any bother or formality. He never walks though; each estate has its own Airfield, and Somoza flies in and out of Costa Rica at Ins discretion, as our authorities are in no position to supervise these flights You sop how convenient it is for him The Sorno/a family smuggle acioss plentiful contraband, machinery, and equipment, even bring in farm labourers, who work in Costa Rica in violation of all local laws. Besides, until recently, without the permission of Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly, members of the Somoza family visited 28 the Costa Rican c ity of Liberia, flying across the border on Nicaraguan Air Force planes. That's how the cookie crumbles, and you fancy he's come in for a cup of coffee. If he wants to, he can fly in without any of your fancies, as this is sheer reality, borne 14 years back our Legislative Assembly decided to exproprrate part of the Santa Rosa hacienda, but as you know, it's easy enough to take a decision, and at times far hardei to carry it out.''

So did I see foi myself one of the Somoza family's countless possessions.

When Anastasio Somoza the First, patriarch of the dictatorial dynasty, seized power, all he owned was a small coffee plantation inherited from his father, or rather, even only half of it. But by 1950 he was worth already $60,000,000 and that is the far from complete tally.

This murderer of Gen. Sandino and founder of a criminal dynasty was exterminated by the Nicaraguan patriot Rigoberto Perez Lopez in September 1956. After his death, his son Luis took over, but from 1 May 1967 his younger son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, has been President. For thirteen years he has usurped the office of Nicaragua's Chief of State, in fact, occupied the country.

To provide a notion of the loot plundered over the years by the Somoza clan, let me take you on an armchair excursion around Nicaragua.

To fly into Nicaragua we shall go to the capital of Costa Rica and board a plane of the Nicaraguan Somoza-owned Lanica Airlines. After touching down in Managua, we shall need no doubt to exchange currency at the local branch of the National Bank, which is, in effect, a Somoza-owned insurance firm. Driving into Managua, we pass several cattle ranches and coffee plantations. The Somoza family own some 50 plantations, more than 50 ranches, numerous sugar cane plantations and refineries, and tobacco and cotton plantations. Some sources say the family owns 20 percent of the entire cultivated crop area, others put it higher, at 30 percent.

Making for downtown Managua, one will yet, on its approaches, note a steep hill overlooking the surrounding streets. Don't dare draw near, let alone climb it. For this is Tiscapa 29 Hill, the command height of the Somoza dynasty. One simply won't be let in, as there are guard towers all around, and national guardsmen at every step. On the top lie the sprawling, sumptuous residences of the Somoza family. The one fronting West was formerly home of Anastasio's brother, but now living there is the dictator's son Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero. In the second, a real fort, is the dictator himself, whose den is contained in a special underground bunker. On the southern face a steep bluff descends to the Tiscapa Valley inside the crater of a volcano.

On the northern side the descent is not as steep, and an excellently paved road runs up the slope. However, about halfway it is blocked by a tall wall of masonry, topped by machine-gun nests manned by National Guardsmen round the clock.

The other two buildings are an army casino serving as a club for ranking National Guard officers and US instructors and a structure known as the Tribuna Monumental, from which the dictator reviews National Guard march pasts and military parades on the broad square below. The entire territory and every building at the foot and on top of the hill are under special security guards.

Back to our excursion. One arrives at the Hotel Intercontinental and books a room. The hotel is owned by Somoza. Then one decides to do some shopping at the Sovine, one of the city's largest stores. It is also owned by Somoza. On the fringe one spots the buildings of the Somoza-owned El Porvenir Textile Mills. Walking through the streets, one glimpses "To let" notices in house window's and learns that Anastasio Somoza is landlord of nearly 500 buildings. Feeling hungry, one steps into a restaurant, and asks for a beer and a chop, or some fried fish. Somoza owns the brewery, and controls food sales, including meat and fish. Returning to one's hotel, one switches on a lamp and TV-set. The electricity comes from the Somoza-owned Empresa Nacional de Luz y Fuerza Power Station. Tired of watching a television programme expelling Dictator Somoza (the television and radio stations are also owned by Somoza), one goes out down into the lounge to buy a copy of the newspaper Novedades, to find out what's on in 30 the country. The newspaper is also owned by the Somoza family.

Listed is only a small portion of the Somoza clan's wealth. This is not restricted to plunder only at home. It has invested its filthy lucre in diverse enterprises outside the country as well. Its finances are run by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. It owns television and radio assembly plants, garment factories, and hotels in various Latin American countries. In Costa Rica alone it owned as of April 1965 real estate to the tune of 100 million colons.

On 20 May 1977 the Cuban periodical Bohemia observed, "The Somoza family is part of the Sucesion Somoza group, Latin America's most powerful economic cartel. One shareholder was the well-known North American millionaire Howard Hughes. Relying on connections with Hughes, the cartel planned to engage in oil processing, aviation, tourism, and hotel and casino operations.'' Howard Hughes was a close friend of Anastasio Somoza, and after the former's death in April 1976, the latter acquired part of his cartel shares.

How the Somoza clan plunders Nicaragua is well illustrated by the following worldwide report.

On 23 December 1972 a disastrous earthquake struck at Nicaragua, destroying more than 60,000 homes and causing more than 10,000 deaths. Anastasio Somoza had himself appointed head of the Emergency National Committee and Managua Relief Committee. Concentrated in the hands of the first body was full civilian and military authority. Enacted was a law creating the post of a Minister for National Reconstruction, to which Anastasio Somoza had himself appointed. This body received all relief for earthquake victims furnished by various international organisations, and estimated at about $190,000,000. In a manifesto issued in April 1973, Nicaragua's opposition Social Democratic Party declared that Somoza controlled all resources collected at home and from abroad.

Recalling the earthquake in an article published on 15 September 1978 under the heading of "The Somoza and Sons Gang'', the Italian magazine L'Europeo noted: "The earthquake only enriched the Somoza family still more. It 31 pocketed all the money coming in from different countries, investing it in its own building firms.''

The Somoza clan makes up quite a crowd. Its eight chief members include besides Anastasio Somoza Debayle himself, his uncle Luis Manuel Debayle, his half-brother Jose Somoza Rodriguez, his cousin Luis Pallais Debayle, his son Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, his two nephews Jose Somoza Abrego and Jose Debayle Bonilla, and his brother-m-law Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa. The uncle edits the newspaper Novedades, the half-brother commands an armoured battalion in the National Guard, the cousin and half-brother's son are in the Chamber of Deputies, and on it goes.

In its New Year issue for 1979, the American magazine Newsweek noted: "The US Marine Corps put the Somoza family in power 42 years ago, and the current dictator has profited handsomely from that act; he has accumulated a personal fortune estimated at $500 millions.'' If anyone, certainly Newsweek knows what it is talking about. Indeed, the Somoza clan owns half the shares in the many US enterprises in Nicaragua.

Somoza not only has a most intimate link with the Pentagon and a legion of US firms, but also has his own agents in the US Congress. Most active among these are Representatives Charles Wilson and John Michael Murphy. According to General Bermudos, Somoza's press officer, when the dictator was at West Point, his room-mate was none other than John Michael Murphy, the selfsame Murphy whom the US judiciary investigated in 1979 in connection with bribes received from the Iranian Shah's now deposed regime.

In an article on the Somoza regime, the Washington Post noted on 17 October 1978, that Murphy, who has visited Nicaragua at least a hundred times and has always stayed with Somoza, so adroitly manipulated the June 1977 House debate that Nicaragua continued to receive American military aid. Further the newspaper noted that recent Congressional attempts to suspend US military aid to Nicaragua in view of reported violations of human rights there, had been unproductive, firstly, because of the Administration's resistance, and secondly, because of Somoza's close personal contacts with 32 certain US officials, who always saved him whenever the USA was particularly disgruntled with his rule.

According to the New York Times, Edward Koch, a staunch opponent of Somoza's, had communicated that James Theberge, the former US Ambassador to Nicaragua, seeing him shortly before the House was to decide on military aid to Nicaragua, had assured Koch, that there were no systematic violations of human rights, in Nicaragua. Incidentally, the New York Times added, Theberge's predecessor had been none other than Col. Blair Shelton, whose friendship with Somoza is reflected on a Nicaraguan treasury denomination.

We might note in passing that the current dictator's greatgrandfather once removed---his name was also Anastasio, or Anastasio Bernabe Somo/a in full---was an oidinary killer and thief. In 1849, after many crimes, he was finally apprehended and executed and his dead body was hung from a lamp post. In comparison with Anastasio Somoza, the present thug and thief, his crimes were mere child's play.

Anastasio Somoza's ``efforts'' to fortify Western-style " democracy" have been acknowledged by many ranking personalities of the "free world''. The list of foreign decorations awarded the dictator fills much space in the American Who's Who. Among them are the Grand Chain of the Order of Propicias Nubes from Taiwan, the Inter-American Defence Medal from Brazil, the Order of Merit from Haitian dictator Duvalier, and the Federal Cross of Merit from West Germany.

__b_b_b__

. . .We were in La Cruz to attend the funeral of 14-year -old Yolanda Guido Obando, whom Somoza's national guardsmen had shot dead in the Costa Rican border area. The President with his entire cabinet led a procession stretching several blocks and mourning the victim of the latest provocation of the Nicaraguan dictator's henchmen.

Indeed, in recent months La Cruz has become a real frontline town, where thousands of Nicaraguans, fleeing from atrocity and harassment, have found a haven. Shortly before our arrival, four Nicaraguan air force planes strafed a neighbourhood near the Santa Cecilia ranch, three kilometres from La __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---1779 33 Cruz. In this half-hour incursion of Costa Rican airspace, the aircraft machine-gunned peasants working in the fields.

Several days earlier Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo granted political asylum to two defecting Nicaraguan national guardsmen, 24-year-old Placido Vallejo Rodriguez and 23-- yearold Edmundo Rosa Vega Loaciga. The first had served with the National Guard a year after call-up, the second had been at an infantry school for seven months. When asking for political asylum in Costa Rica, they said conscience could no longer tolerate service in the National Guard.

What is this soldiery, whom all Nicaraguans so strongly detest and hate? The National Guard, the USA's brainchild and backbone of the Somoza dictatorship, is synonymous with pillage, rapine, and club law. When creating it in the 1920s, the USA sought to have a docile instrument with which to implement its policies vis-a-vis the Central American states. Then it was officered by Americans and was not subordinate to Nicaragua's President.

On 15 November 1932, the US General Calvin B. Matthews, up till then commanding officer of the National Guard, handed over his powers to Anastasio Somoza the First. In March 1939 Somoza had himself re-elected President. Shortly afterwards he was summoned to Washington to receive fresh instructions. Back home, he announced that a military academy would be founded in Managua to train an officer corps for the National Guard, and that an American would head it. Incidentally, during the American occupation of Nicaragua, Managua has a military academy under a US Army captain by the name of Trumble.

On 8 April 1942, Somoza signed an agreement with the USA entitling it to build a military base in Corinto and extending additional rights to the exploitation of Nicaragua's matural resources.

On 18 November 1953 the US Ambassador Wheelan and the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister signed an agreement under which a US military mission was to arrive to train the National Guard.

In February 1954 another 54 US officers and some 700 servicemen arrived in Nicaragua for this purpose. The related 34 agreement said that the US army would cooperate with the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and with the officer corps of the Nicaraguan National Guard to raise the National Guard's combat preparedness, organisation, and administration.

On 19 April of the same year, negotiations were initiated in Managua to conclude a new military-aid agreement, which was signed six days later, on 25 April.

When the USA began in 1961 to plan an armed intervention of Cuba, Nicaragua served as a mercenary training centre. Between 17 March and 20 March 1961, three US steamers put in at the port of Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua to unload equipment for a secret US Air Force base in that country. Shortly afterwards, heavily loaded four-engined aircraft bearing no identification marks, but belonging to the US government, touched down at the base. The invasion of Cuba started on 17 April.

After a briefing by Pesident Johnson in Washington on 6 April, three weeks later, on 1 May 1967, Anastasio Somoza, the commanding officer of the National Guard, was installed as President.

Several months afterwards, at a special press conference in Managua he announced plans to dispatch Nicaraguan troops to Vietnam. "We will be pigs if we don't thank the USA for the more than $20,000,000 we have received,'' he said.

On 22 September 1978, under the heading "Nicaraguan Developments Expose Carter Hypocrisy,'' the French weekly Temoignage Chretien quoted from the US Army Record showing that between 1970 and 1976 4,252 Nicaraguan servicemen had been trained in the USA at the Inter-American Military Academy at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, in the psychological and special warfare academy at Fort Bragg, and at the Inter-American Defence College in Washington.

In that same year, the London Evening Standard commented that the USA really controlled the Nicaraguan National Guard, which on pretext of fighting communism was perpetrating untold crimes inside the country. The paper said that __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 the National Guard was completely under the thumb of the US military mission and embassy.

When Somoza Junior, Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, was at the American school for psychological and special warfare at Fort Bragg in 1977, he chummed up there with Mike Echannis and Charles (``Chuck'') Sanders, both Vietnam veterans and experts in "anti-guerilla warfare''. He hiied both cutthroats, importing them in July that year as special instructors of anti-guerilla commandos. Enrique Mora Valverde describes their operations under the heading "A School of Killers,'' in the newspaper Libertad on 26 January 1979.

``Echannis was, in practice, chief of the Nicaraguan Infantry School training the National Guard elite which Nicaraguans have nicknamed the 'School of Killers'. He was also head instructor of dictator Anastasio Somoza's bodyguard and his special guard. His second-in-command, 'Chuck', was in charge of two concentration camps, in Waslala and in Rio Blanco, where he directed operations by mercenaries of Vietnamese origin, former soldiers under the Thieu regime, which the people of Vietnam had overthrown.

``The dictator's son asked Echannis to compile a special curriculum to incorporate mastery of sophisticated weaponry, war games, and a study of the so-called catechism which Echannis had compiled. Classes in this manual were conducted as follows:

``An officer would stand in front of a line of cadets and put them questions, which they were to answer in chorus.

`` 'What must the soldier do?' the question would come.

`` 'Kill, kill, and again, kill,' the cadets would chorus the reply.

``'Who are you?'

`` 'Soldiers.'

`` 'Who are you really?'

`` 'Tigers.'

`` 'What do tigers feed on?'

`` 'Red blood.'

`` 'Whose blood?'

`` 'The blood of the people.' "

In 1977 alone, 6,000 M-76 rifles were shipped from the 36 USA to Nicaragua for the dictatorship's repressive machinery. In the six years ending 1977, American weapons deliveries to Somoza put US taxpayers out to a total $ 32,000,000.

Earlier, I mentioned Somoza's agents in the US Congress. As for the favour in which he is viewed by top US statesmen, this is well illustrated by the personal message which US President Carter sent Somoza in 1978.

The contents of the letter, transmitted in mid-July, became known to the US public several days afterwards. On 1 August 1978, the Washington Post reported that in a personal message to Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza, President Carter had congratulated him "for promises to improve the human rights situation" in that country. The paper added that this "could have repercussions in Congress when the House votes on the Administration's approximately $8 billion fiscal 1979 foreign-aid package'', which includes a $ 150,000 military-training grant for the Nicaraguan National Guard. Incidentally, the said grant was approved.

As one will see, for more than 40 years now, since the installation of killer Anastasio Somoza the First as President, the USA has propped this dictatorship and subsidised and trained the punitive, repressive National Guard.

[37] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER FOUR __ALPHA_LVL2__ SANDINISTA REVIVAL

Occupying an area of 148,000 square kilometres, Nicaragua, the largest of the Central American states, is bigger than many European states, such as Greece, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland or Denmark. However, it has a population of but slightly over 2,000,000.

``The Military and Political Platform of the Sandinista National Liberation Front'', published on 4 May 1977, provides the following numerical breakdown of the country's work force:

``Of our population of 2,000,000-odd, employed in the economy according to official statistics are 650,000; they are engaged in farming, hunting, fishing, mining, at factories, in construction, in the power industry, in commerce, transport, services, petty private enterprise, etc.

``Of this number, more than 300,000 are engaged in farming and fishing, 4,000 in mining, upwards of 60,000 at factories, 50,000 in construction, 4,000 in power industry and utilities, 60,000 in commerce, 23,000 in transport and communication, 100,000 in banks, insurance firms, etc.

``Factory hands, building workers, and miners comprise together with farm labourers a permanently employed work force of 150,000, and represent the country's urban and rural proletariat.

``Factory proletariat and building workers are concentrated in Managua, Granada, and Chinandega, and to a lesser extent in Esteli and Rivas. Most farm labourers are found in the 38 Chinandega and Leon neighbourhoods, where cotton and sugar cane are grown, in Jinotepe and Matagalpa coffee regions, and also in the neighbourhoods of Managua, Carazo, and the Pacific Coast. Steadily employed farm laborers engaged on banana and tobacco plantations and on cattle and poultry farms are mostly in Chinandega, Esteli, Leon, Rivas, Boaco, and Managua.''

To furnish a notion of the plight of Nicaragua's toiling masses, a few mid-1976 statistics will be adequate. At that time, some 40,000 breadwinners were fully unemployed; this number includes only the officially registered. Of every 100 of the population, an average of 65 can neither read nor write; in the countryside the proportion is still higher, as many as 9 of every ten. To every 10,000 of the population, there are but six doctors; however, the situation is still worse when one realises that most medical personnel are concentrated in the bigger cities and towns. Several districts have not a single hospital. According to official data from the 1976 report of the National Building Chamber, a third of the country's building workers were without work. Some 300,000 people dwelt in absolutely substandard housing.

A 24 August 1978 Prensa Latina News Agency report from San Jose put the country's external debt at 1,000 million dollars, or a per capita $434, a sum almost equal to the gross per capita income for all of 1977. One will easily surmise that the monthly per capita income stood at only $38. However, that is an average, deduced by lumping together the incomes of high-ranking representatives of the dictatorship raking in an annual profit of $1,000,000 and the pay of an agricultural labourer whose monthly earnings are never more than $10--15. Note how low are the living standards of the Nicaraguan workingman at a time when the dictator himself is ``worth'' $500,000,000!

The country's economy is gripped by crisis across the board. The British Financial Times remarked on 28 November^^1^^ 1978 that its foreign debt stood at $983,000,000.

Aware of the plight of the ordinary Nicaraguan, one will realise that sooner or later the people had to rebel against the much-hated dictatorship. On 9 September, this year, the 39 Sandinista National Liberation Front exhorted the people to support the spontaneous armed uprising.

The beginnings of the Sandinista revival date back to 1958, when Ramon Raudales, a comrade of Augusto Cesar Sandino's, launched a guerilla movement in Northern Nicaragua. He was past 60, when with a small band he took to the mountains and exhorted the people to take up arms against the Somoza dictatorship. Though a National Guard punitive squad wiped out this tiny guerilla force with its "whitebearded Patriarch'', as friends had nick-named Ramon Raudales, others caught up the Sandino banner. The very appearance of a group pitting itself against the dictatorship with arms in hand spelled a Sandinista revival.

The Nicaraguans whom Ramon Raudales inspired were far younger, only 18--20, young enough to be his grandsons, and their leaders were as young. In 1961, several young people formed an underground revolutionary organisation which in the following year assumed the name of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Its seven members were its leader, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Jorge Navarro, Silvio Mayorga, Santos Lopez, Francisco Buitrago, German Pomares, and Tomas Borge.

Carlos Fonseca Amador, who was born on 23 June 1936 in Matagalpa, enrolled in the Law Department at the University of Leon in 1956, in which year with fellow student Tomas Borge, Francisco Buitrago, and the Guatemalan Manuel Angel Carillo Luna, he organised the first communist cell. In 1957 he left for Europe to attend the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow and the Fourth World Youth Congress in Kiev, and on 7 November took part in celebrations in Moscow of the 40th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Back home, he wrote a book called A Nicaraguan hi Moscow, and had 2,000 copies of it printed. At the time he was often seen in Managua, offering to sell his book to a passerby.

Time and again he was arrested for vending the newspaper of the Nicaraguan Socialist (Communist) Party, and for taking part in protest demonstrations against the visit of Milton Eisenhower, the US President's brother. Once he was 40 arrested at night, when painting "Long live Sandino!" on a wall. The National Guard tossed him into solitary, where he went on hunger strike. He was released seven days later. He usually topped the monthly list of vendors of the communist weekly Orientacion Popular with most copies sold.

In 1959 he was re-arrested in Managua and deported to Guatemala, where with several comrades he began to gear himself for guerilla warfare against the dictatorship. In that same year a few score Nicaraguans formed a small guerilla force, and infiltrated Nicaragua. They called themselves the Rigoberto Lopez Column, after the patriot who assassinated Anastasio Somoza the First. However, nine of their members were killed in their first engagement, while Carlos Fonseca, grievously wounded, escaped by a fluke.

Upon recovery, Carlos moved to Costa Rica, where with Tomas Borge and Silvio Mayorga he started the newspaper Juventud Revolucionario. Shortly afterwards, he went back to Nicaragua where he was again arrested and deported to Guatemala.

The last time he was arrested was in Costa Rica in 1969. His comrades, to secure their leader's release, hijacked in Costa Rica in 1970 a United Fruit Company plane with representatives of its management on board. They demanded in exchange the release of Carlos and several other political prisoners in Costa Rican prisons. The authorities had to give in.

Before he was killed on 8 November 1976 in the fighting against Somoza punitive forces, Carlos commanded Sandinista guerilla detachments in Northern Nicaragua.

When in the late 1950s Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, Tomas Borge, and their comrades decided to form guerilla detachments, they still had no clear action programme, nor any firm link with the masses, which inevitably set the scene for their defeat in the field.

In December 1959 the Central Committee of the Nicaraguan Socialist (Communist) Party, at the time deep underground, held a plenary session which resolved that a revolution of liberation would be impossible without an armed popular uprising directed and led by an independent working class party. This document went on to say that thorough 41 preparation had to be made before an armed revolutionary movement could be initiated, and that at the time the Party did not have enough manpower and resources to do so.

The Nicaraguan Socialist Party was founded in 1944 on the crest of an unprecedented worldwide democratic upsurge inspired by the brilliant victories which the anti-Hitler coalition had scored over fascism on the fighting fronts in the Second World War It announced its foundation at a mass rally in Managua in early July that year, and since then Nicaragua's Communists have marked the day as the anniversary of their Party.

However, it was able to operate legally only for fourteen months In this short period, it made great headway Its influence was felt in the trade unions and it started party schools and centres, a publishing house, and its own newspaper Then, in the face of a massive reactionary offensive, it had to go underground In 1948 it was cruelly hit when the dictatorship arrested most of its leadership, broke up the Party centres, and jailed scores of Party activists.

By the late 1950s, it had overcome its crisis and had considerably extended and strengthened its influence among the masses However, it was of the view that it was still too weak to turn to preparations for an armed uprising, and believed military operations against the dictatorship prematuie True, some of its younger members, especially from among college students and factory hands, called for decisive vigorous action guerilla warfare, and armed struggle against the dictatorship Some of these young people revived the Sandimsta movement.

The young Sandimsta leaders, who believed armed action against the dictatorship all-important, manifestly overlooked the need for political campaigning among the broad masses They thought a mood of revolutionary awareness would infect the freedom fighters in the process of armed action Several refuted the Party's vanguard lole in the revolutionary movement, objecting to all who said that before attempting a revolution there must be a Party to direct it, moreover a Party with a clearcut programme defining the aims of the struggle for the sake of which the people would follow this Party.

In short, the Nicaraguan Socialist Party believed it 42 premature to initiate an armed struggle against Somoza and mostly dedicated itself to building up an opposition, calling upon the working masses to struggle for the satisfaction of economic demands On the other hand, the Sandinistas ignored explanatory work among the masses, and believed that only armed action would bring success.

From my point of view, in the early 1960s both Sandinistas and Socialists were maximalists when deciding what sort of tactics to follow in the anti-dictatorship movement It would be appropriate at this point to quote two of Lenin's pronouncements made in 1905, the time of the beginning of Russia's first bourgeois-democratic revolution.

In a letter of 16 October 1905, addressed "To the Combat Committee of the St Petersburg Committee,'' Lenin wrote "Squads must at once begin military training by launching operations immediately, at once Some may at once undertake to kill a spy or blow up a police station, others to raid a bank to confiscate funds for the insurrection, others again may drill or prepare plans of localities, etc But the essential thing is to begin at once to learn from actual practice have no fear of these trial attacks They may, of course, degenerate into extremes, but that is an evil of the morrow, whereas the evil today is our inertness, our doctrinaire spirit, our learned immobility, and our senile fear of initiative Let every group learn, if it is only by beating up policemen a score or so victims will be more than compensated for by the fact that this will train hundreds of experienced fighters, who tomorrow will be leading hundreds of thousands " (Collected Works, Vol 9, p 346 ) Somewhat earlier, in June 1905, under the heading "On Confounding Politics with Pedagogics,'' Lenin wrote, "It is our duty always to intensify and broaden our work and influence among the masses.... Without this work, political activity would inevitably degenerate into a game.... This work, as we have said, is always necessary After every reverse we should bung this to mind again, and emphasise it for weakness in this work is always one of the causes of the proletariat's defeat " (Ibid , Vol 8, p 453 )

Guerilla tactics, armed action should not be scourned even if guerilla strength is small and it is clearly impossible to win 43 through such action; at the same time the need for political action, the need to deepen and extend influence among the masses, should not be lost sight of for a moment. Only this combination will yield the results desired. Further we shall see that, eventually, Nicaraguan progressives arrived at this conclusion. However, in the 1960s by virtue of their differences, Nicaragua's patriots operated in isolation, without coordination, without a common platform, let alone a common programme. As a result, the dictator was able to stay in the saddle and smash his opponents piecemeal.

With their comrades, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomas Borge, and Silvio Mayorga organised several guerilla groups that operated in the areas of Nueva Segovia and Rio Jorjo near the border with Honduras, and also in the Matagalpa and Jinotega Highlands. Originally calling themselves the Juventud Patriotica, the guerillas then changed their name to Frente de Liberacion Nacional, and in 1962 renamed themselves the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, which name they have retained to this day.

When in 1962--64 many guerillas were killed in action against the National Guard, the survivors began to gird themselves for a new phase, which they opened up in 1967.

They began to combine armed action in the highlands with urban and village operations, mostly bank raids, and started to carry on political educational work among the population. "By that time,'' Plutarco Hernandez, a Sandinista leader, recollects, "the people already knew who we were, acknowledged us, and watched our struggle with sympathetic interest.'' Upon entering one or another inhabited locality, the Sandinistas would call a meeting of peasants to describe their aims and purposes, and to exhort them to actively participate in the struggle to overthrow the dictatorship. As Plutarco Hernandez recalls, "In some places, as for instance Yaosca and Uluse, we were able to call to a meeting as many as 300 peasants at once.

Only eight years after the start of armed struggle, in 1970, the Sandinista National Liberation Front issued its Programme, in which it called itself a "military and political organisation whose aim is to overthrow the bureaucratic and military 44 machine of the dictatorship, seize political power in the country, and form a Revolutionary Government based on a workerpeasant alliance in which all the country's patriotic and antiimperialist forces would be involved.''

Over the next five years, the Sandinistas extensively popularised their ideas, concentrated on training cadres, and acquainted the world with the aims and purposes of their movement. By 1978 they comprised a major opposition force with which the dictatorship had to reckon.

Yet as the Sandinista movement grew, it divided into three trends, differing on the tactics to employ to accomplish the common goal of overthrowing the dictatorship. The GPP, the Guerra Popular Prolongada (Prolonged Popular War), believed victory would be won in a protracted war by mountain-based guerillas. The Proletaries on the contrary contended that political work among the urban working class was vital to overthrow the regime. The third trend, who called themselves the Terceristas or ``Third-Roaders'', tried to have the GPP and Proletaries come to an understanding. Plutarco Hernandez, a Terceristas leader, noted, "The political platform of the GPP is right and so is the political platform of the Proletaries. However, we must coordinate our operations in the highlands with operations in rural and urban localities, not concentrate only on one or the other form of struggle.''

In an interview in the Latin American periodical Resumen in late 1978, he time and again noted that "of late, the presence of three trends in the Sandinista National Liberation Front is less and less evident'', and that "to all practical purposes, we have already passed the phase during which different trends in the Sandinista movement were manifest''. As we shall see subsequent developments demonstrated that precisely the lack of effective joint action was chiefly to blame for the adverse results during the September 1978 events.

Towards the close of 1978, the FSLN had a seven-men leadership, the headquarters organising and directing the activities of regional branches. Such was the political setup.

The military setup was somewhat different. There were four fighting fronts: the Southern Front, known as the Benjamin Zeledon Front, which took in the Departments of 45 Managua, Granada, Masaya, Carazo, and Rivas; the Northwestern Rigoberto Lopez Perez Front, which was active in the Chinandega and Leon neighbourhoods; the First Northern Front, named after Carlos Fonseca Amador, that operated in the regions of Nueva Segovia and Esteli; and finally, the Second Northern Front named after Pablo Ubeda, the undercover name of the guerilla Rigoberto Cruz, that was active in the neighbourhoods of Matagalpa and Jinotega.

Concluding the history of the Sandinista revival, one must note the following important point---the publication on 4 May 1977 of the FSLN Military and Political Platform for the Abolition of the Dictatorship, as the second enlarged and deepened programme of the Sandinista Front.

To form a notion of how much better Sandinista political awareness had become and to what extent they had been able to jettison certain abortive conceptions obstructing development of FSLN into a truly vanguard organisation capable of leading the broad masses, it will be appropriate to note the basic points made in the afore-mentioned programme.

Its historical section says that "by now ... the Sandinista Popular Revolution has entered the supreme concluding phase of revolutionary upsurge. . . . Evident is a worker-peasant alliance prepared ... to initiate a struggle to overthrow the Somoza gang. We then plan to form a revolutionary popular democratic government, to allow us, proceeding from a proletarian ideology and Sandino's historic behests, to make socialism triumphant and create that society of free people of which Augusto Sandino dreamed".

As for the aims and purposes of the revolution, the document singles out two basic goals, which are to deliver the country from foreign imperialism and from exploitation. It is pointed out that "both historical goals will be secured, given a Marxist-Leninist approach and a firmly knit vanguard to direct the revolutionary process". (My emphasis---Auth.)

Explaining its concept of a future national leadership, this document says that the "overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and establishment of a revolutionary democratic government represent the immediate aim of the Sandinista Popular Revolution. This government. .. will strive for national sovereignty 46 against imperialist economic and political influence. ... It will create a Sandinista worker-peasant army that will replace the National Guard and be capable of protecting the revolution's interests. ... It will place the land in the hands of those who till it. These are some of the tasks that will face the revolutionary people's democratic government. The workers, the peasants, the students, and the revolutionary intelligentsia will comprise its social basis". (My emphasis---Auth.} And further: ''. . .We shall go towards socialism inscribed on whose banner is the slogan, 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work'.''

The section considering a civil war as a means to overthrow the dictatorship notes: ''. . .We speak of a civil war insofar as it is hatched by the local reactionary forces resisting the revolutionary process. This will be a revolutionary war, insofar as, relying on a worker-peasant alliance and led by a Marxist-Leninist vanguard, it ... creates the conditions for carrying forwards . . . the process through the democratic phase towards socialism." (My emphasis---Auth.)

Noted are the criteria for Sandinista organisation: ''. . .The principal agencies of the Sandinista vanguard must fully adhere to the revolutionary, partisan and disciplinary requirements deriving from the proletarian ideology and Party affiliation to the Sandinistas. In the bodies of administration, ideology, and propaganda ... it is essential to constantly ensure adherence to . . . the norms of Party life." (My emphasis---Auth.).

The 1977 Programme already clearly defined the motive forces of the revolutionary process: "The urban industrial workers and rural agricultural workers comprise the basic class capable of effecting profound revolutionary changes in the capitalist system of exploitation. The strength, development, and organisation of this class are the guarantee that the socialist society desired will be attained. . . . Although the working class is the basic force of the revolutionary process of both today and tomorrow, it will not achieve its revolutionary aims without the broad backing of other segments of the people, especially the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie (students and intellectuals).... In our conclusions we emphasise that the working class is the basic force of the revolutionary process, 47 the force upon which we must always and primarily rely. The peasantry is the prime force of our revolution, by virtue both of its numerical strength and its traditional militancy and antiSomoza and anti-American spirit.. . . The students and intellectuals, as part of the petty bourgeoisie, also play an instrumental role in the revolutionary process, are an integral element in the struggle, in which the workers and peasants comprise the vanguard. The motive force of the revolution is represented by the alliance of the three classes of the proletariat, peasantry, and petty bourgeoisie.''

Such was the platform that the Sandinistas published slightly more than a year before the September 1978 events. One must necessarily note that very little time had passed from this Programme's adoption and the flare-up of the armed uprising, manifestly inadequate for the broad masses to accept this Programme as a guide to action. Yet the very fact of Sandinista recognition of the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process, of the need for a worker-peasant alliance, of the point that the aims set could be secured only given a Marxist-Leninist approach and a firmly knit vanguard to guide the revolutionary process, already indicates the markedly heightened level of political awareness among the Sandinista leadership.

Whereas at the beginning of the Sandinista revival, the leadership staked almost exclusively on immediate armed action against the dictatorship, and shelved political and ideological explanatory work even among its own ranks, let alone among the masses, in recent years exceptional heed had been paid to fostering a revolutionary ideology. The Sandinistas have started such underground periodicals as Rojo y Negro, Trinchera, and El Sandinista, have built a network of underground political study groups, and have organised the printing and distribution of leaflets, communiques, and other literature about Sandinista activities, which have helped to spread the revolutionary ideology.

Several months after the Sandinistas published their military and political programme, twelve leading intellectuals, businessmen, and clergymen issued a Manifesto supporting the basic ideas of the Sandinista Programme. The Group of 12, 48 as they came to be known, was part of the newly emerging Broad Opposition Front, in which bourgeois parties were represented. The Group of 12 firmly stated that without Sandinista participation, it would be impossible to extricate the country from the crisis into which the Somoza dictatorship had plunged it.

Published on 17 July 1978 was the Manifesto of a new political alliance, the MPU, the United Popular Movement, which knit together a large group of opposition forces, 23 different political and public organisations. The MPU Manifesto set out the three basic goals for which the alliance had been formed. These were: "Firstly, to mobilise the people to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship; secondly, to work towards the organisation and unification of the broad masses; and thirdly, to facilitate the developing process of the unification of revolutionary forces.''

On 31 July 1978 the MPU published a 14-point Programme noting its aims and tasks, and which for the most part was similar to the Sandinista military and political programme.

Hence, towards the second half of 1978 there were in Nicaragua in opposition to the dictatorship the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the United Popular Movement, and the Broad Opposition Front.

Although steps had been taken to consolidate anti-- dictatorship forces, the opposition had still to achieve full unity. Meanwhile, Somoza was frantically and feverishly striving to fortify and broaden his repressive machinery, again relying on US help and backing.

[49] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER FIVE __ALPHA_LVL2__ TWO INTERVIEWS

Near the Presidential Palace and National Library in SanJose, capital of Costa Rica, is a small garden known locally as the Park of Spain. On one Sunday in January 1979 there was a greater crowd here than usual. It appeared that on the pathways several artists had put up easels in the shade of spreading trees, and several master carvers were making wooden sculptures, all reflecting contemporary life in Nicaragua. Its tragedy was well illustrated by pieces depicting a guerilla holding a submachine gun, a peasant woman sobbing in hopeless grief over the dead body of her little girl, Sandinista fighters on the offensive, village razed by National Guard soldiery, and American aircraft strafing residential neighbourhoods in Leon. The money raised by this charity drive was contributed to an aid fund for the people of Nicaragua.

I struck up an acquaintance with two young artists, who before coming to Costa Rica only a few days prior to this art sale, had been with a Sandinista guerilla force in Northern Nicaragua. Still earlier, till September 1977, the two young men had been living with a commune on an islet in the Solentiname Islands in Lake Nicaragua, in the southern part of the country. The commune had been organised by local-born Ernesto Cardenal Chamorro, one of Latin America's best known poets.

The Soviet reading public are familiar with Ernesto Cardenal from translations featured in the magazine Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature) in its June 1969 and March 1970 issues. In a foreword to these translations, Yuri 50 Dashkevich, a Soviet student of Latin American literature, wrote, "Lake Nicaragua is claimed by scientists to be the world's one and only lake infested by sharks. However far a recluse may bury himself, he will never be able to overlook that. However, these blood-thirsty sharks are not the only danger. Whatever motives a person may have for withdrawing from the world, he cannot escape or cut himself off from the problems bedevilling mankind. .. .There is no question that Ernesto Cardenal's literary produce is part of the mainstream of popular protest sweeping Latin America.''

Yuri Dashkevich is right. Ernesto Cardenal had not the slightest intention of withdrawing from the problems with which his country is beset. It was in his character to actively fight for national liberation, to join the ranks of the fighters against the dictator riding roughshod over Nicaragua. He has dedicated all his poetic fire and talent to the cause of revolution.

About a week after meeting the two Nicaraguan artists, I saw Ernesto Cardenal who happened to be in Costa Rica at the time, and he told me about himself, about how he had joined the Sandinistas, about his plans, and generally about the situation in Nicaragua at the time.

Ernesto Cardenal's Story

``I am now 54. At first I was a professional poet, but subsequently, in 1955, I decided to enter the priesthood. Though previously a professional writer, I did not at all think that writing, the more so, of poetry, could proceed in isolation from what happens around a person, events that are part and parcel of the life of one's people and country. For this reason I believed it my duty as poet and citizen to fight the Somoza regime and with my poetry dedicate all my energies to the battle against the dictatorship that held my country in thrall, against the old dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia.

``I was 31 when I withdrew into a monastery. Subsequently, in 1965, I organised with a group of young friends a kind of commune on an island of the Solentename Islands in Lake Nicaragua. Our commune existed for twelve years. We set ourselves the task of carrying on educational work among the __PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 peasants, to prepare them for revolution and explain that revolution does not conflict with the Catholic faith. We interpreted the Scriptures in a revolutionary manner, as we understood them. We said that Christianity's prime purpose was to shape a fair society, and that the goals recorded in the Gospels coincided with the goals of revolution.

``It was only natural for us to count our commune part of the revolutionary movement in Nicaragua, of those at the outset small groupings that waged guerilla warfare in the mountains and subsequently developed into a powerful national movement. There came a time when our commune joined the Sandinistas, becoming one of the cells of this movement.

``Our commune consisted of but twelve persons, primarily young local peasants. Though some wanted to leave the commune to join the guerillas in the mountains and fight the dictatorship, the Sandinista leadership told us to keep our commune going, as it was doing extensive explanatory work and was politically of good use. Accordingly, we were to stay put till further orders.

``In October 1977 the Sandinista leadership recruited the younger members of the commune for its first major action. The boys and girls were only too willing to volunteer, and they began to take military training right there, on the islands. When they finished their training, they took part in a raid on the garrison of San Carlos, a small town near the islands. Both boys and girls from the commune showed courage and mettle. A few days earlier, I left for abroad on a mission for the Sandinista leadership, leaving behind only those who were to take part in the raid.

``After the raid the boys and girls involved stayed with the guerillas and are now Sandinista fighters. Meanwhile, our community, with all its buildings, was completely destroyed by Somoza's soldiers. The church was turned into a National Guard barrack and the library and arts and crafts shops were ruined. In short, nothing is left of our twelve years of work.

``In Nicaragua I was tried in absentia and sentenced, as far as J know, to 15 years of prison. Ever since, I have been in exile, working for the Sandinista International Liaison Committee. I have been appointed to represent the 52 Sandinistas abroad, and in the years since have visited quite a number of countries. That's all I think I can tell you about myself. Recently I was in Moscow at a session of the World Peace Council, and a little before that, in Prague where I attended a Christian Peace Conference.

``This year an International Congress of Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua in their struggle against the Somoza dictatorship is to be held. For our struggle international solidarity is of major importance. Of course, there is no question that the armed struggle is decisive. The armed struggle cannot be carried on successfully without the support of the people and the guerillas have that support. But international backing is also vital, as without it our struggle would be far less effective. It is essential for the world to know about the popular movement in Nicaragua, because if it doesn't it will leave a free field for US imperialism to intervene in Nicaragua in the belief that this will not arouse world protest. Hence, to bar imperialism's dirty designs, to thwart the outright intervention that US imperialism may undertake at any moment, mounting international solidarity is vital for us.

``A few words now about the repressive actions of the Somoza regime. To this day in Nicaragua young people all over the country are killed daily. They're killed only because they're young. Killed are even boys and girls taking no part in the struggle, who don't know why they're being killed. Nor do their killers know whether or not their victims are involved in the movement against the dictatorship. They're killed simply because they're young. Whenever the killers come across a young person in the street, they kill him or her only because of youth. To be young in Nicaragua today is a crime, as the killers think a young Nicaraguan is bound to be a revolutionary and a Sandinista. Of course, that's not far from the truth. The terrible thing is that Nicaragua is losing its young generation. The ruination of the national economy, the demolition of cities and towns by Somoza's forces of repression are nothing compared to the liquidation of our main asset and treasure, our young people.

``A young man may go out to pass the time of day with friends, or for a date with his girl, or may set out in the 53 morning to his job, and find himself arrested right then and there, in the street, taken away, and disappear forever. Sometimes the dead bodies are found in the mortuary, sometimes on refuse heaps, in backyards, on vacant lots, or by the roadside. With fractured legs and arms, with broken heads, and gouged eyes. And sometimes with tongues cut out, or genitals cut off. But in most cases, the arrested simply disappear and nobody hears about them, the more so, sees them, again.

``Note that the butchers have let loose wholesale repression against peasants living in places where guerillas are active, that is, in most of the country. Punitive squads burn down peasant homes, rape peasant women, brutally torture peasants, burn them alive, or take them up in helicopters and throw them out from high up. They kill off peasant women, the aged, and the children, even nursing babies. With every day, the terror assumes ever broader proportions. We think mankind should not look on indifferently, not twiddle its thumbs, not fencesit while such appalling club law is rampant in Nicaragua, while its people so inordinately suffer. However, thus far the world knows very little as to what is going on in our country, or about the monstrous terror there.

``We very much want all countries, especially the Soviet Union, to work tirelessly to expose the crimes of the butchers. We want the Soviet Union daily to publish exposures of the atrocities perpetrated by Somoza and his agents in Nicaragua. He is committing genocide plain and simple; he is destroying the people of his country. For us, what the Soviet Union says is most important.

``As for the other side, as for those who back Somoza, it should be emphasised that his main advocate is the USA, as it was the USA that created the Somoza dictatorship. Somoza the First was puppet chief of the National Guard, the occupation force that the USA knocked together. In effect, the National Guard is a North American army, a US occupation force in Nicaragua, created by the USA, armed by the USA, and trained by the USA. Then, Somoza gets most of his economic assistance from the USA. Though of late he has not been getting any weapons from the USA, he gets US-made arms from Israel; the USA is arming Somoza through Israel. Apart 54 from that, Somoza has other sources wherewith to buy arms. China is purchasing large amounts of cotton from Nicaragua, and Somoza is using this money to buy weapons. Such are the quarters propping up the dictatorship.

``Ever since I was forced to emigrate, I haven't had a chance to write poetry, as I have considered myself obliged to devote all my energies to the movement against the Somoza dictatorship. But when we win, I shall again write poetry, to describe my people's gallant exploits. It is my belief that poetry is an effective weapon, and for that reason when the revolution wins, I shall write poetry again.''

__b_b_b__

It took me quite a few days to catch ``Rojer'', one of the chiefs of the Sandinista Foreign Policy Committee. Although known to be somewhere in San Jose, he would often change his address, now spending the night with friends on the northern outskirts, only to move to a new address the next day. Although quite legally in San Jose, he had to take precautions, as nobody could guarantee his safety, nobody could be sure that Somoza's agents were not snooping around in San Jose, ready at any moment to kill him as one more Sandinista. Finally we met in early February, and below is part of the interview I recorded.

Commandante Rojer's Story

``My real name is Miguel Castaneda. I'm a member of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, in which I am responsible for liaison with European states. My guerilla alias is Rojer.

``I have been with the Sandinistas since 1965, at first in a University cell. Since 1968 I have been a full member of the Sandinista Front, and for the last ten years have been carrying out various assignments, such as establishing contacts with the student movement, or doing work in the Chinandega and Leon area in Western Nicaragua. Till 1976 I represented Central American student associations, and in 1970 and 1971 organised the student movement and set up student associations. 55 The Foreign Policy Committee is currently establishing contacts with progressives and public organisations in many countries. We establish relationships with all forces against the dictatorship, who are behind our people in their struggle, and who can aid this struggle. We know that the socialist countries are wholeheartedly with the patriotic forces of Nicaragua.

``The Sandinista Front arose when several anti-dictatorial groups merged. At the outset these groups undertook small military operations against the National Guard. Thus, between 1954 and 1962, they carried out 32 such armed actions. Who were their members? Some came from the bourgeoisie, others were of popular stock, while some are Sandinista veterans, people who fought against the dictatorship when General Sandino was still alive.

``However, all these armed operations were unsuccessful. Now we know why. This was because the groups were weak and poorly organised, and because their operations were badly planned. Finally these groups began to merge. After much hard work, the Sandinista Front was created in 1962 and started to operate. Of course, at the outset it still displayed the same mistakes that had hitherto beset each group; they were inevitable, and are bound to happen in practically any revolutionary movement. We were greatly influenced at the time by the victorious Cuban Revolution of 1959. It has a great impact, especially on our young people, who sought an outlet in armed struggle, and who believed that only through armed struggle they would be able, with all the people of Nicaragua, to bring down the dictatorship. Carlos Fonseca Armador, our General Secretary, said that the Sandinista Front originated from groups who had plunged into war, had started a shooting war simply because conscience had prodded them to do so. This awakened conscience gave them the initial impetus. They did not draft any definite strategy in their struggle, did not set themselves any goals, did not have any clear-cut political programme. They were simply ashamed to see the world regard Nicaragua as Somoza's personal fief, as a testing field for US imperialism. Which is why they decided to fight the dictatorship, to show that this perennial regime had not crushed the people, had not brought the people to their knees.

56

``Despite the defeats, these first few years did not pass without trace, without results. With every year we gained experience, a greater awareness, rid ourselves of old mistakes and worked out truly revolutionary tactics and strategies. True, this cost us dear; very many comrades perished. These sacrifices might not have occurred had we worked out a clear-cut programme and trained cadres before starting out. That is cadres for both political and military operations. However, in recent years, we have turned from guerilla tactics plain and simple to military operations that are now linked with the broad masses. We already had contacts with the working-class movement. In fact, these were not just contacts, but ideological and political links, as we were already combining an armed struggle with political work, explaining our programme to the broad masses.

``In 1970 the Sandinista National Liberation Front drafted its first political programme, an action programme calling for the overthrow of the dictatorship and for economic and social reform. By 1974 we had also discussed ideological matters with other opposition forces in the country.

``When we were elaborating our military and political programme, the one we published on 4 May 1977, that set out our ideological principles and our strategy, it was only natural for Sandinistas to differ, which is logical for any organisation in the process of making. Let me repeat that these differences arose at a time when we were defining the tactics of our struggle against the dictatorship, the tactics and the strategy, when we were deciding which strategy to adopt in the movement against the dictatorship in order to depose it. There thus arose various trends in our movement, which are now a matter of common knowledge. What we are trying to do is to select all that is beneficial from each of these trends, and brush aside all that is wrong in them, to thus create an amalgam of opinions upon which to base our strategy of struggle. However, the main thing, and all trends concur in that, is to capture the minds of the masses, to get the masses follow the movement.

``We realise that we shall be able to terminate the Somoza dictatorship only through joint action, only by a united front. Our organisation has survived a serious crisis because of the 57 various trends that emerged, but by now we have almost completely overcome the consequences. We know that we shall be successful and win only if all Sandinistas unite, only if we are united with the Nicaraguan Socialist Party, and are allied with all not only anti-Somoza, but also anti-imperialist patriotic forces.

``To end the dictatorship and effect the necessary social reforms, we must first cope with a range of problems.

``The MPU, the United Popular Movement, came into being in Nicaragua in 1978. Represented in it are not only Sandinistas, but also Left-wing political parties, the trade unions, and student associations---in short, most of the country's democratic and progressive forces. Why was the MPU newly organised? We are aware that success will not be won by armed struggle alone. Our struggle must be accompanied by a popular movement involving all organisations and using every accessible means.

``The bourgeois information media are trying to cajole the public in their respective countries into believing that Nicaragua's problem revolves exclusively around Somoza, that it has already been solved in practice, as Somoza's days are numbered, and that when he goes there will be no problem; hence, there will be no need to expand a campaign of international solidarity with Nicaragua, as once the problem is solved, there should be no logical need for international solidarity in support of its masses. The imperialist propaganda machine suggests that if Somoza is ousted there will then be no need for an armed struggle, for military operations, as there will supposedly be no cause. We believe it vital to emphasise that information media representing truly democratic forces in the world, especially in the socialist countries, should work hard to explain the true aims and tasks of the popular movement in Nicaragua, pointing out that this is a struggle not merely against one single despot, but against an imperialist-backed dictatorship. As military, let alone political, pressure is being brought to bear on the people of Nicaragua, we too must respond with military action. Tactics may vary, but one thing is unquestionable, and that is: while the imperialist-backed dictatorship continues, the armed struggle against it will 58 continue. The whole world must be shown the need to destroy the dictatorship's machinery of repression, the American-created National Guard, for without that it will be impossible to institute democratic reforms in Nicaragua; meanwhile an army of repression can be done away with only by armed force.

``It is our view that the democratic press of the world should focus on this aspect of the Nicaraguan problem, in order to debunk the arguments trotted out by the bourgeois information media.''

[59] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ CHAPTER SIX __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE SEPTEMBER 1978 UPRISING

Now that you have an idea of the history of the Sandinista movement and of the Somoza dictatorship and its backers, and also of what the opposition in Nicaragua seeks to achieve, let us return to August 1978.

The successful Carlos Fonseca Armador raid stirred up the entire country. A nationwide strike followed on 25 August, paralysing industry, transport, and trade. The only demand made was that Somoza go at once.

On 27 August barricades were erected in Nicaragua's third largest city of Matagalpa. When the punitive National Guard force that the dictator dispatched to this city fired on the demonstration, Sandinistas repulsed the attack, and the insurgent populace seized control of virtually the entire city.

On 29 August Somoza ordered Matagalpa bombed. For several days the insurgents held the city, but on 3 September, after another massive bombing raid, Somoza forces captured the ruined city and took massive reprisals against the unarmed population. Somoza thought thereby to frighten the people, but the reverse occurred, the wholesale massacres in Matagalpa serving as the last straw. A spontaneous uprising erupted.

There follows an excerpt from a Sandinista communique: "The spontaneous uprising swept every department in the country. At this juncture we had to decide whether to lead the people into an open battle against Somozaism, or pending a more auspicious situation, more arms and better organisation to ensure overall victory, leave the people in the lurch in their struggle against the tyranny. On 9 September, we 60 called upon the people and the FSLN armed detachments to rise up and rally around the slogan of 'Death to Somozaism!'. Thus 9 September ushered in a new phase in the armed uprising.''

Panorama, 9--16 September

9 September

The nationwide general strike continues. Armed uprisings flare up in Leon, 90 kilometres west of the capital, in Esteli, north of Managua, in Chinandega, which has a population of 30,000, and in Diriamba, 40 kilometres from Managua.

At 6 a.m. in line with a unified plan, Sandinistas attack National Guard posts in Managua, Leon, Chinandega, and Esteli. Scores of soldiers are killed, and large quantities of arms and munitions are captured.

10 September

At 8 a.m. Sandinistas launch armed operations against the National Guard in the Managua, Masaya, and Carazo Departments. Sandinistas control many districts in Masaya, Esteli, Chinandega, and Chichigalpa.

Somoza aircraft bomb urban neighbourhoods and at tree level strafe houses and streets, inflicting numerous civilian casualties.

Carlos Tunnerman, one of the Group of Twelve and former Rector of Nicaragua's National University, agrees to a Sandinista proposal to form a provisional government. The National Guard seal off Leon and Chinandega. There is general confusion in Managua. In a broadcast, Somoza declares he is in full control.

11 September

The National Guard intensify repressions in Masaya, and Esteli, where a 30-day martial law and curfew go into force from 11 September. Fires rage in the bombed cities. In Diriamba the uprising gathers momentum. Sandinistas occupy the Los Manos National Guard outpost in Northern Nicaragua, near the border with Honduras.

61

Life in Managua is at a complete standstill. National Guard patrols the streets, gunning down all young persons caught out of doors.

The testimony of Managua refugee Jose Santo Cordero--- as related to me in Costa Rica on 3 February 1979:

``About crimes committed in Nicaragua that have victimised friends, acquaintances, and relatives: one young man, a distant relative of my wife's nicknamed Pulga, who lived in Managua's Rigiero neighbourhood, was detained on a baseball diamond on 11 September last, and tossed into a National Guard jeep, that we call the BEGAT. He was beaten up, tortured, and died of wounds. His dead body, the face beaten to a pulp, was tossed out into the yard. The three other young men, whose names I do not know, who were detained with him, were also tortured to death.

``In San Isidro, another district in Managua, a girl and her brother, both children of a National Guard sergeant, and their uncle were tortured by the National Guardsmen. These three neighbours of ours were going to Vera Cruz. The girl's brother was in his first year at high school. At four o'clock in the afternoon, a BEGAT jeep passed by, National Guardsmen seized him, tossed him into the vehicle, and drove him off to a place called Concepcion. Another two young men were also seized with the boy and his sister. In Concepcion the three boys were pushed out of the jeep and submachine guns were fired at them. Two were killed, but as it was dark when they reached the place---it was about 6 p.m. and dusk had fallen---they missed the third. As for the girl, they drove further on, gang-raped, and killed her.

``On the next day the lad who had escaped death by a fluke called on the relatives of the dead girl and boy and their uncle, and told them that the three had been killed. The parents hunted high ^and low for the bodies of their children. They found their boy's body, but the girl's body was found only two days later at the mortuary. When the mother came and asked the lid of the coffin to be lifted, she saw that the girl's arms had been lopped off and her breasts cut 62 off. The dead girl lay there in the coffin horror imprinted in her glazed open eyes.

``It is really impossible to give all the names, there are so very many of them. How many times National Guardsmen would break into a house and order everyone inside to come out. Those who didn't obey were dragged out, stood up against a wall, and shot dead. It made no matter, men, women, or children. At best they might tell those over 15 to stand to one side and those younger to the other. However, should a 12- or 13-year-old appear older, he would also be ranked with the adults and shot, with no explanation afforded.

``So you can well imagine our plight. Our people, every man jack of us, are prepared to fight and will fight to the bitter end, until the Somoza dictatorship is completely destroyed, until the gang of criminals they call National Guard is exterminated. But we don't have enough arms or help.''

12 September

More than 300 mercenaries arrive from El Salvador and Guatemala. Rumours are afoot in Managua that Somoza's cousin, Luis Pallais Debayle will soon take over.

Comandante Cero (Eden Pastora Gomez) tells a France Presse News Agency correspondent that 1,100 guerillas in twelve FSLN regional organisations are fighting in the anti-Somoza revolution.

Bitter fighting between Sandinistas and National Guardsmen continues in Leon, Chinandego, Esteli, and Masaya, in which last town more than 200 civilians are killed.

From his Tiscapa Bunker Somoza declares that in a contingency he will ask GONDECA, the Central American Defence Council, to send troops to Nicaragua. In Washington, a US government spokesman warns that if necessary, aircraft will be sent to Managua to evacuate US citizens there.

The OAS, the Organisation of American States, issues a news letter reporting that it has initiated an analysis of the Nicaraguan situation to solve the crisis into which the country has been plunged.

63

13 September

Armed clashes between Sandinistas and National Guardsmen occur near the Costa Rican border. Reports from Managua say a two-hour battle was fought in Cardenas, a town at the southern tip of Lake Nicaragua, some three kilometres from the Costa Rican border.

Banks in several Central American countries refuse to accept Nicaraguan currency.

Several US newspapers advertise for mercenaries to fight for Somoza in Nicaragua.

From today on, the state of seige is extended to the entire country.

In a nationally televised broadcast, Somoza publicly admits that between 9 and 13 September some 700 officers and men "deserted from the National Guard over these five days".

14 September

The Prensa Latina News Agency reports that Somoza is getting arms from Israel.

Panama and Venezuela send airplanes and helicopters to Costa Rica to ward against possible Nicaraguan aggression against that country.

Somoza announces a call-up of National Guard reservists.

The situation in the various cities and towns as of 10 a.m. is as follows:

Managua---sporadic rifle and submachine-gun fire.

Diriamba---some 100 Sandinista guerillas attack the local National Guard garrison.

Rivas---fires break out all over the city. Sandinistas exchange fire with National Guardsmen before retreating to the downtown section.

Masaya---no armed clashes.

Esteli---insurgents still hold the downtown section and most public buildings.

Chinandega---the situation is vague, with Sandinistas and other opposition civilian forces still controlling most of the city.

Leon---the entire downtown section is ablaze. Somoza 64 099-1.jpg
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This ``opponent'' of Somoza is only five
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Somoza's National Guard was an army of occupation in its own country
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On Somoza's orders bodies were not buried They were left lying in the streets, and then petrol was poured over them and they were burned
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The officers of Somoza's National Guard were well-fed executioners trained at American military academies
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``Life in Nicaragua has returned to normal,'' Somoza announced after putting down the uprising in September 1978 People walk along the streets carrying white flags
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A town after a raid by Somoza's bombers
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National Guardsmen were a bulwark of American imperialism and of Somoza's regime in Nicaragua
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Training in a Sandinista camp
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In a Sandinista camp. Comandante Felix conducts a political class
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Instruction in marksmanship
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Women go into battle side by side with men
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A lunch break
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``Why did I join the Sandinistas' Because as a schoolteacher, I am deeply concerned about the future of our country's children"
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Teachers, factory workers, peasants, college students and others, in short, the whole people, are represented in the Sandinistas
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Nora Astoria is one of Nicaragua's heroines
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Their uniforms were captured from Somoza, which means they are American-made
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airforce planes bomb and machine-gun the San Felipe, Subtiava, Zaragoza, and San Juan residential neighbourhoods.

The testimony of a Leon refugee, Eddi Torez, as related to me on 3 February 1979 in Costa Rica:

``On 14 September last, Sornoza's National Guard criminally bombed Leon residential neighbourhoods. I was living at the time in the San Juan neighbourhood, between 9th Street and 8th Avenue, in my sister's house, where also staying were her son and a friend of mine whose own house, or rather shanty of old corrugated tin and plywood offered no protection from the strafing and bombing.

``The bombing continued the next day, with aircraft pounding residential neighbourhoods from 6 o'clock in the morning without letup until darkness at 7 o'clock in the evening. We were also shelled by North American Sherman tanks and strafed by helicopters. Three friends of mine were killed. One, his name was Adrian, took no part in the uprising, but as he was young, and as the dictator's butchers were killing all young people, they seized him and shot him dead too. Another friend of mine, Oralio, was killed by a patrol. They threw his dead body out into the yard of his parents' house and as they did not allow them to bury him at the cemetery, his grave had to be dug in the yard. A third friend, his name was Manuel, was also seized by Somoza soldiers. One of them pulled out a pistol, put the muzzle to Manuel's nose and shot it off. Then they kicked him to death. This all happened on 14 September.

``Nearly the entire population of Leon, some 95,000, were for the Sandinistas. They helped to dig trenches and put up barricades. By 15 September---the city had been in the hands of the insurgents for several days---Leon had neither water, gas, nor electricity. Somoza's National Guard killed and slew undiscriminatingly---even Red Gross nurses. I saw all this with my own eyes.

``On the 16th, CONDEGA units, units of a US-created army made up of detachments from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras entered the city. With them were some others in uniform, only not Latin Americans, but Chinese and __PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---1779 65 Vietnamese, who several years earlier had fled from Vietnam with the North Americans. Our comrades overheard conversations between CONDECA officers and the pilots who had bombed Leon. They spoke English, which makes it absolutely certain that the aircraft were piloted by Yankees.

``I don't know whether any of my family are alive. I have been here in Costa Rica since 28 September. Myself, I'm a worker from a slaughter house.''

15 September

Plutarco Hernandez, a Sandinista leader, says 500 mercenaries from among Cuban counter-revolutionaries trained in Miami have come in from Guatemala and El Salvador. Although Pedro Diego Landa, War Minister of Honduras, has stated that the sending of Central American troops to Nicaragua is out of the question, the very fact of a CONDECA troop presence in Nicaragua, which is confirmed by numerous eyewitness accounts, exposes the Honduras Minister's statement as a lie.

Channel 7 of Costa Rican television presents documentary sequences from Nicaragua, clearly showing that National Guardsmen are armed with Belgian rifles and Israeli submachine guns.

With air, armour, and artillery support, more than 2,000 National Guardsmen launch an offensive against Sandinistaheld neighbourhoods in Leon. There are many civilian casualties.

The testimony of Leon refugee Benessa Torres, as related to me on 3 February 1979 in Costa Rica:

``I lived in Leon's San Luis neighbourhood, my family in the Benita Dolores neighbourhood. A trained nurse by profession, during the uprising I looked after the wounded and rendered first aid. In the daytime I had my hospital job to do, after that I would rush home to tend the wounded in the Sandinista field hospital near my home. The hospital where I worked was in a neighbourhood controlled by Somoza's National Guard, and each day I had to sneak back into Sandinista liberated areas. That was a nightmare. My best girl friend 66 was killed before my very eyes. Somoza's guardsmen grabbed her---her name was Maricsa---gang-raped her, killed her and left her dead body to lie on the road. At the hospital where I was working, I filched medicines and antibiotics for the wounded Sandinistas.

``Many fled from the neighbourhood held by the National Guard, where they lived in casuchas shaiitytowns, in houses, if you can call them that, made of crates, plywood, and scraps of tar paper and took cover in brick houses from the bullets and bombs. Whenever National Guard bandits captured a neighbourhood, they burst into homes, dragged out everyone, and killed them.

``On 15 September, when I was making my way home to later visit the wounded Sandinistas, I saw my 16-year-old brother Antonio killed with another boy whose name was Emilio Roberto. This happened in our neighbour's house, where we all lodged because our home was also a casucha. An hour after I came home, the National Guard occupied our street; Guardsmen burst into the neighbour's house where we had found refuge, and ordered everybody out, men and women. There weren't any grown-up men there, only boys of 15 and 16 years of age. The women and children cried, wept, and begged the soldiers not to kill them.

``The National Guardsmen dragged my brother and the other boy, Emilio Roberto, out into the yard, told them to make the sign of the cross, and then shot both of them in the head. Mother didn't know that Antonio had been killed. She heard the shots, but that was a time when shots were fired very often, and she didn't know that it was these shots that had killed our Antonio, and the other boy, Emilio Roberto. But when our neighbour cried, 'Rosa, they've killed your boy!', mother rushed out into the yard and found Antonio still breathing, A National Guardsmen yelled, 'We're gonna finnish off your bastards! Scram, you old hag, or you'll get a bullet too!' They dragged mother away and before her eyes fired another shot into Antonio. Then they went away, and we buried brother in our neighbour's little courtyard. "Somoza has many butchers like that. I want to give the names of some of them. For instance, Pablo Aguiler, one of __PRINTERS_P_67_COMMENT__ 5* 67 the ringleaders tormenting and torturing people, and also Antonio Espinales, Clicho Donas and Augostin Obando, all from Somoza's National Guard.

``We are now in Costa Rica, a land that has given us shelter, but we have every faith that we will return home to Nicaragua. Only to a free Nicaragua, without the hangman Somoza and his running dogs of the National Guard, which the USA has trained and armed.''

16 September

Leon's National University is fully destroyed in a Somoza air raid. Leon is bombed incessantly ten hours running.

In Masaya, the National Guard capture the Monimbo neighbourhood and massacre civilians. Women are gang-raped and National Guard bandits gun down everyone encountered.

Guatemala's guerilla leaders publish an appeal to the nation stating that on that day guerillas had attempted to carry out the verdict against Brigadier Edmundo Meneses Cantarero, Nicaragua's Ambassador in Guatemala. More specifically, they say, "Meneses Gantarero enjoyed special privileges amongst Guatemala's authorities and army commanders. Exploiting his ambassadorial position in Guatemala as smokescreen, he actually discharged the duties of coordinator between the Guatemalan Army and the Nicaraguan National Guard, and also between Somoza and Guatemala's reactionary government. He coordinated political repression for all of Central America, and the operations undertaken by the governments of this area against popular revolutionary movements. He drafted plans for a United Central American Army (CONDEGA)''. (General Cantarero died of wounds several days after the assassination attempt.---Auth.)

17 September

There is bitter fighting in Penas Blancas. The National Guard declares it is in control of Chinandega and Esteli. Central American news media report a letter, dated 10 August 1978, in which representatives of American religious communities visiting Nicaragua ask President Carter to suspend all 68 aid to Somoza. There follows an excerpt from the US Senate Record for 22 September 1978:

``.. .We spoke firsthand with poor people who testified that their homes and means of livelihood had been confiscated by Guardia (National Guard---Auth.) officials for personal gain. We saw arbitrary taxes imposed on the highways (the so-called 'Colonel's tax') and observed tax legislation passed by the Congress in the absence of a true quorum, establishing massive sales and business taxes that our Jesuit analysts in Nicaragua assured us are intended only to liquidate the national debt and not serve the poor in any form or fashion. . ..

''. . .The people believe that the Guardia had not only a license to kill, but orders to kill, in order to physically smash any public opposition to the regime. We believe there is truth in that view.. . .''

18 September

The Organisation of American States resolves to convene on 21 September a consultative conference to discuss Nicaragua. Paraguay casts its vote against, Trinidad and Tobago abstains. The OAS institutes an inquiry in Costa Rica to elucidate circumstances attending overflights of Costa Rica by Nicaragua aircraft.

Somoza dispatches 1,200 National Guardsmen to Penas Blancas.

19 September

Insurgents continue to hold Esteli. National Guardsmen pillage captured cities and towns.

20 September

Somoza declares he has "no intentions of designating a successor''. Venezuelan Air Force planes leave Costa Rica for home.

Esteli's fall and its rapture by the National Guard is reported this morning.

The USA announces plans to study "reports of brutalities" in Nicaragua.

69

On 21 September the National Guard crushed the last pockets of popular resistance, thus completing Operation Omega. The list of casualties, overwhelmingly civilian, includes some 5,000 killed and more than 7,000 wounded. In this punitive operation, Somoza employed a force of 6,200 National Guardsmen, supplemented by North American mercenaries, Cuban and Vietnamese counter-revolutionaries, and several hundred more mercenaries from Central America.

In Leon, Nicaragua's second largest, 231-year-old city, more than 2,400 people were killed and it lies in ruins. The textile town of Masaya has also been almost completely destroyed by National Guardsmen. The punitive squads that have occupied the meat and dairy centre of Chinandega are looting and shooting indiscriminately.

In a France Presse interview, Leon Archbishop Manuel Salazar Espinoza stated, "I shall stay here in this, my city, until I die. Words fail to describe what government troops have been doing with respect to the peaceful population here.''

In Leon's San Juan district, one sees everywhere the newly dug graves of the victims of National Guard brutality. A France Presse dispatch says National Guardsmen burst into homes to drag out and shoot all male inhabitants of 14 and over.

On 15 September the Washington Post featured a story headed "He Was Crying: 'Don't Kill Me, Don't Kill Me!' ''. It says in part, "At least 14 young men were killed last Friday afternoon on a two-block stretch of Santiago Arguello Avenue here (in Leon---Auth.}. All of them, according to family members and neighbours, were executed by submachine guns at point-blank range by the Nicaraguan National Guard and all of them begged for mercy.. ..

``The eyewitnesses' story of the executions is supported by physical evidence on the scene and by countless similar reports, primarily here in Leon, of National Guard atrocities duiing nearly four weeks of civil