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05/10/2005:

"Another Look at Daneil Ortega and the Sandinista Struggle"

by Joe DeRaymond
"This movement is national and anti-imperialist. We fly the flag of freedom for Nicaragua and for all Latin America. And on the social level it's a people's movement, we stand for the advancement of social aspirations."
Augusto C. Sandino

In 1911, Nicaragua was occupied by a force of United States Marines that invaded to protect United States interests. This was just the next of a series of US "interventions" and invasions of Nicaragua. The marines remained till 1925, then returned again in 1926, to quell a rebellion organized by a Nicaraguan, Augusto C. Sandino, who grew up under this US occupation. His guerrilla forces were never defeated, despite the deployment of 12,000 troops and the use of aerial bombardment. The Marines left Nicaragua in 1933, after the US had trained a Nicaraguan security force, The National Guard. In 1934, Sandino was assassinated by Anastasio Somoza Garcia, a United States-trained officer who was the head of the National Guard, in a treacherous act of betrayal after a negotiated disarmament of Sandino's forces. Hundreds of disarmed Sandinista fighters were slaughtered at this time by the forces of Somoza. This massacre ushered in the brutal 45-year reign of the Somoza dictatorship. Anastasio ruled till 1956, when poet Rigoberto Lopez Perez ended his life with four bullets delivered as the ruler was drinking the night away at a party. His elder son, Luis Somoza Debayle ruled till 1967, when his heart gave out - his brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle took the reins. When he was forced from power in 1979, he owned one fifth of the farmland of Nicaragua, two meat packing plants licensed for export, three of the six sugar mills, 168 factories comprising one quarter of the national output of the nation, the national airlines, a radio and television station, and the Mercedes Benz dealership. He financed his enterprises with his own banks and the national treasury. He had bankrupted a nation for his personal benefit. During the rule of the Somozas, the National Guard quelled dissent with assassination, torture and imprisonment. The United States took the position that this family dictatorship was acceptable because the Somozas were ever-staunch defenders of US interests. "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch", as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described Anastasio, the father of the dynasty. The Nicaraguan people paid with their lives.
Full: counterpunch.org