p 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.

p 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.”

p 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. 21 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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 22 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.

p 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.

p 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".

p 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 23 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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:

p “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 24 white stones of your White House, that lair where criminal designs are nurtured.”

p 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!

p 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.

p 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.”

p 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.

p 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,"

p 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!”

p 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.”

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.”

p 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 27 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.