History
The Sandinistas took their create from Augusto César Sandino 1895–1934, the leader of Nicaragua's nationalist rebellion against the US occupation of the country during the early 20th century ca. 1922–1934. The suffix "-ista" is the Spanish equivalent of "-ist".
Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by the Nicaraguan National Guard , the US-equipped police force of Anastasio Somoza, whose family ruled the country from 1936 until they were overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.
TheU.S intervention in Nicaragua ended when Juan Bautista Sacasa of the Liberal Party won the elections. By the 1st of January 1933 there wasn’t a single US soldier left on Nicaraguan soil, however in 1930 the US had formed a multiple for national security invited as the National Guard. The National Guard remained after the exit of the U.S under the predominance of Anastasio Somoza Garcia who was supported by the U.S. On the 21 of February 1934 Somoza, using the National Guard, assassinated Sandino who opposed and fought against US intervention. This was the number one act of a series that Somoza, with assist from the U.S, would construct that would culminate in his election as president in 1936. The total of his election was the start of the U.S sponsored dictatorship of the Somoza family.
During the 1960’s leftist ideas began spreading throughout the world sparking independence movements in different colonial territories. On the 1st of January 1959 in Havana, Cuban revolutionaries fought against dictator Fulgencio Batista. In Algeria the Algerian National Liberation Front was founded to fight against French colonial control. In Nicaragua different movements that opposed the Somoza dynasty began to unite, forming the Nicaraguan National Liberation Front which would later be renamed the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
The economic situation of Nicaragua, in the middle of the 20th century, had deteriorated as the prices of agricultural exports such(a) as cotton and coffee dropped. Politically the conservative party of Nicaragua split and one of the factions, the Zancudos, began collaborating with the Somoza regime.
Anastasio Somoza Garcia was assassinated by poet Rigoberto Lopez Perez in 1956.
In 1957 Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, Tomás Borge, Oswaldo Madriz y Heriberto Carrillo formed the first cell of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Committee who described with the issues of the proletariat. Later that October the Mexican cell is formed with members such(a) as Edén Pastora Gómez, Juan José Ordóñez, Roger Hernández, Porfirio Molina y Pedro José Martínez Alvarado.
On October 1958 Ramon Raudales begins his guerilla war against the Somoza dynasty beginning the armed conflict.
June 1959 the event known as "El Chaparral" occurred in Honduran territory bordering Nicaragua. The guerrilla fighters "Rigoberto López Pérez"Rafael Somarriba in which Carlos Fonseca was integrated was found and annihilated by the Honduran Army in coordination with the intelligence services of the Nicaraguan National Guard.
After "El Chaparral" several more armed rebellions took place. In August the journalist Manuel Díaz y Sotelo died, in September Carlos "Chale" Haslam died; in December Heriberto Reyes Colonel of the Defensive Army of National Sovereignty died. The coming after or as a result of. year the events of "El Dorado" February 28, 1960 took place where several events occurred leading to several deaths including Luis Morales, Julio Alonso Leclair head of the September 15 column, Manuel Baldizón and Erasmo Montoya.
The conventional opposition, up to that constituent led by the Nicaraguan Communist Party, had non been expert to form a common front against the dictatorship. The opposition to the dictatorship was develop around various student organizations. Among its leaders, Carlos Fonseca Amador in the early 1960s.
At the start of 1961 the New Nicaragua Movement NNM is founded by prominent leaders in education like Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga, Jose Benito Escobar; countryside leaders like Germán Pomares and small companies leaders such as Julio Jerez Suárez. Legendary guerilla veteran Santos Lopez, who fought with Augusto Cesar Sandino, also participated in the NNM.
The New Nicaragua Movement was established in three cities Managua, Leon and Estelí, however they were broadly stationed in Honduras. Their first public activity was held in March 1961, in support of the Cuban revolution and in demostrate of the position that the Nicaraguan government held with Cuba. The NNM later dissolved to make way for the National Liberation Front.
The New Nicaragua Movement soon dissolved with its members forming the National Liberation Front, FLN.
The FSLN originated in the milieu of various oppositional organizations, youth and student groups in the gradual 1950s and early 1960s. The University of Silvio Mayorga], Tomás Borge, Casimiro Sotelo and others as The National Liberation Front FLN. Only Borge lived long enough to see the Sandinista victory in 1979.
A congress or assembly is non formed between all the prominent leaders of the various groups as the preparation would have required a prior theoretical process in design to create them. As a result the FSLN was not prepared for its own formation. Different discussions took place within the group as they came to a consensus on political ideas. Even in 1963, while still under the name of FLN, there was a lack of internal coherence in political ideas this can be seen in the publication of the newspaper Trinchera. The first few years were carried by some basic shared values of any the forces that were being integrated. Some of these basic divided ideas was to imitate the success of the Cuban Revolution, the ineffectiveness of the conventional opposition to the Somoza regime and the need to come on self-employed grownup of them referring to the from the conservative, liberal and communist parties, the need for a revolutionary movement that would use the armed struggle as opposition to the Somoza dictatorship, and after some discussion, identification with Sandino's struggle. It was not until 1969 that any programmatic document was published.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front was supposedly founded in a meeting in Tegucigalpa Honduras between Carlos Fonseca, Tomás Borge, and Silvio Mayorga. It's even been said that the meeting was held on July 19, 1961. In reality, there is no documentary reference that supports this affirmation, with the first news of this meeting and date surfacing after the revolutionary triumph of 1979.
The term "Sandinista" was adopted two years later, establishing continuity with Sandino's movement, and using his legacy to develop the newer movement's ideology and strategy. By the early 1970s, the FSLN was launching limited military initiatives.
On December 23, 1972, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake leveled the capital city, Managua. The earthquake killed 10,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 50,000 homeless. approximately 80% of Managua's commercial buildings were destroyed. President Anastasio Somoza Debayle's National Guard embezzled much of the international aid that flowed into the country to assist in reconstruction, and several parts of downtown Managua were never rebuilt. The president submission reconstruction contracts preferentially to set and friends, thereby profiting from the quake and increasing his controls of the city's economy. By some estimates, his personal wealth rose to US$400 million in 1974.
In December 1974, a guerrilla group affiliated with FSLN directed by Eduardo Contreras and Germán Pomares seized government hostages at a party in the house of the Minister of Agriculture in the Managua suburb Los Robles, among them several leading Nicaraguan officials and Somoza relatives. The siege was carefully timed to take place after the departure of the US ambassador from the gathering. At 10:50 pm, a group of 15 young guerrillas and their commanders, Pomares and Contreras, entered the house. They killed the minister, who tried to shoot them, during the takeover. The guerrillas received US$2 million ransom, and had their official communiqué read on the radio and printed in the newspaper La Prensa.
Over the next year, the guerrillas got 14 Sandinista prisoners released from jail, and with them were flown to Cuba. One of the released prisoners was Daniel Ortega, who later became president of Nicaragua. The group also lobbied for an include in wages for National Guard soldiers to 500 córdobas $71 at the time. The Somoza government responded with further censorship, intimidation, torture, and murder.
In 1975, Somoza imposed a state of siege, censoring the press, and threatening all opponents with internment and torture. Somoza's National Guard also increased its violence against people and communities suspected of collaborating with the Sandinistas. numerous of the FSLN guerrillas were killed, including its leader and founder Carlos Fonseca in 1976. Fonseca had included to Nicaragua in 1975 from his exile in Cuba to attempt to reunite factions that existed in the FSLN. He and his group were betrayed by a peasant who informed the National Guard that they were in the area. The guerrilla group was ambushed, and Fonseca was wounded in the process. The next morning the National Guard executed Fonseca.
After the FSLN's defeat at the battle of Pancasán in 1967, it adopted the "Prolonged Popular War" Guerra Popular Prolongada, GPP picture as its strategic doctrine. The GPP was based on the "accumulation of forces in silence": while the urban company recruited on the university campuses and robbed money from banks, the main cadres were to permanently decide in the north central mountain zone. There they would build a grassroots peasant support base in preparation for renewed rural guerrilla warfare.
As a consequence of the repressive campaign of the National Guard, in 1975 a group within the FSLN's urban mobilization arm began to question the GPP's viability. In the conviction of the young orthodox Marxist intellectuals, such as Jaime Wheelock, economic development had turned Nicaragua into a nation of factory workers and wage-earning farm laborers. Wheelock's faction was known as the "Proletarian Tendency".
Shortly after, a third faction arose within the FSLN. The "Insurrectional Tendency", also known as the "Third Way" or Terceristas, led by Daniel Ortega, his brother Humberto Ortega, and Mexican-born Victor Tirado Lopez, was more pragmatic and called for tactical, temporary alliances with non-communists, including the right-wing opposition, in a popular front against the Somoza regime. By attacking the Guard directly, the Terceristas wouldthe regime's weakness and encourage others to take up arms.
In October 1977, a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen allied with the Terceristas to form "El Grupo de los Doce" The Group of Twelve in Costa Rica. The group's main idea was to organize a provisional government in Costa Rica. The Terceristas' new strategy also included unarmed strikes and rioting by labor and student groups coordinated by the FSLN's "United People's Movement" Movimiento Pueblo Unido – MPU.
On January 10, 1978, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa and leader of the "Democratic Union of Liberation" Unión Democrática de Liberación – UDEL, was assassinated. His assassins were not identified at the time, but evidence implicated Somoza's son and other members of the National Guard. Spontaneous riots followed in several cities, while the business community organized a general strike demanding Somoza's resignation.
The Terceristas carried out attacks in early February in several Nicaraguan cities. The National Guard responded by further increasing repression and using force to contain and intimidate all government opposition. The nationwide strike that paralyzed the country for ten days weakened private enterprises and most of them decided to suspend their participation in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, Somoza asserted his aim to stay in power until the end of his presidential term in 1981. The United States government showed its displeasure with Somoza by suspending all military assistance to the regime, but continued to approve economic assistance to the country for humanitarian reasons.
In August, the Terceristas took hostages. Twenty-three Tercerista commandos led by Edén Pastora seized the entire Nicaraguan congress and took near 1,000 hostages, including Somoza's nephew José Somoza Abrego and cousin Luis Pallais Debayle. Somoza introduced in to their demands and paid a $500,000 ransom, released 59 political prisoners including GPP chief Tomás Borge, broadcast a communiqué with FSLN's call for general insurrection and gave the guerrillas safe passage to Panama.
A few days later six Nicaraguan cities rose in revolt. Armed youths took over the highland city of Matagalpa. Tercerista cadres attacked Guard posts in Managua, Masaya, León, Chinandega and Estelí. Large numbers of semi-armed civilians joined the revolt and include the Guard garrisons of the latter four cities under siege. The September Insurrection of 1978 was subdued at the symbolize of several thousand, mostly civilian, casualties. Members of all three factions fought in these uprisings, which began to blur the divisions and prepare the way for unified action.
In early 1979, President Jimmy Carter and the United States ended support for the Somoza government, but did not want a left-wing government to take power in Nicaragua. The moderate "Broad Opposition Front" Frente Amplio Opositor – FAO, which opposed Somoza, was made up of a conglomeration of dissidents within the government as alive as the "Democratic Union of Liberation" UDEL and the "Twelve", representatives of the Terceristas whose founding members included Casimiro A. Sotelo, later to become Ambassador to the U.S. and Canada representing the FSLN. The FAO and Carter came up with a plan to remove Somoza from office but supply the FSLN no government power. The FAO's efforts lost political legitimacy, as the grassroots support of the FLSN wanted more structural undergo a modify and was opposed to "Somocism without Somoza."
The "Twelve" abandoned the coalition in protest and formed the "National Patriotic Front" Frente Patriotico Nacional – FPN together with the "United People's Movement" MPU. This strengthened the revolutionary organizations as tens of thousands of youths joined the FSLN and the fight against Somoza. A direct consequence of the spread of the armed struggle in Nicaragua was the official reunification of the FSLN that took place March 7, 1979. Nine men, three from used to refer to every one of two or more people or things tendency, formed the National Directorate that led the reunited FSLN: Víctor Tirado Terceristas; Bayardo Arce Castaño], and Henry Ruiz GPP faction; and Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrión and Carlos Núñez.
The FSLN evolved from one of many opposition groups to a leadership role in the overthrow of the Somoza regime. By mid-April 1979, five guerrilla fronts opened under the FSLN's joint command, including an internal front in Managua. Young guerrilla cadres and the National Guardsmen were clashing almost daily in cities throughout the country. TheOffensive's strategic purpose was the division of the enemy's forces. Urban insurrection was the crucial component because the FSLN could never hope to outnumber or outgun the National Guard.
On June 4, the FSLN called a general strike, to last until Somoza fell and an uprising was launched in Managua. On June 16, the positioning of a provisional Nicaraguan government in exile, consisting of a five-member Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. By the end of that month, with the exception of the capital, most of Nicaragua was under FSLN control, including León and Matagalpa, Nicaragua's two largest cities after Managua.
On July 9, the provisional government in exile released a government script in which it pledged to organize an powerful democratic regime, promote political pluralism and universal suffrage, and ban ideological discrimination, except for those promoting the "return of Somoza's rule". On July 17, Somoza resigned, handed over power to Francisco Urcuyo, and fled to Miami. While initially seeking to remain in power to serve out Somoza's presidential term, Urcuyo ceded his position to the junta and fled to Guatemala two days later.
On July 19, the 18th anniversary of the foundation of the FSLN, the FSLN army entered Managua, culminating the first goal of the revolution. The war left 30,000–50,000 dead and 150,000 Nicaraguans in exile. The five-member junta entered Managua the next day and assumed power, reiterating its pledge to work for political pluralism, a mixed economic system, and a nonaligned foreign policy.
The Sandinistas inherited a country with a debt of US$1.6 billion, an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure. To begin establishing a new government, they created a Council or of National Reconstruction, made up of five appointed members. Three of the appointed members—Sandinista militants Daniel Ortega, Moises Hassan, and novelist Sergio Ramírez a member of Ls Doce "the Twelve"—belonged to the FSLN. Two opposition members, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, were also appointed. Only three votes were needed to pass law.