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(A. Chronicle)

p As soon as the NPF and a unified FSLN command and directorate were formed, the patriots began to gird themselves for a second decisive offensive against the dictatorship.

p Opposition tactics were to give Somoza not the slightest respite, to seize every opportunity, even the slightest, to organise working class action, whether on a nationwide scale, or within the limitations of one tiny urban community. Every method was used, from armed assault to strikes. Great heed was paid to explaining to the world the aims and tasks of the anti-Somoza movement to stir up poweiful worldwide suppoit for the people of Nicaragua.

The chronicle of events between April and July 1979 traces further developments, reactionary support for Somoza, and world response to the situation in Nicaragua.

1 to 10 April

At the beginning of April, Nicaraguan oppositionists declared that according to available information, US Pentagon circles were interested in staging a military takeover in Nicaragua, which ousting Somoza would preserve the existing system intact. Which meant that the aim of the plot was to keep "Somozaism without Somoza”. In its 3 April issue, the Buenos Aires newspaper Informe reported, "A group of (Nicaraguan) military are feverishly preparing for a coup in collusion with the CIA. Named among these 95 officers are Major Franklin Montero, General Julio Gutierrez, Somoza’s envoy to Washington, General Gustavo Montiel, ex-Minister of Finance, and General Guillermo Noguela, Chief of Geneial Staff".

2 April

p In a Piensa Latina interview, Jose Maria Zelaya, Nicaragua’s former UN Ambassador who resigned in protest against Somoza genocide, declared that Somoza’s resignation and the installation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government provided the only acceptable alternative in the present situation in Nicaragua. Of US policy vis-a-vis Nicaragua, the Ambassador said its purpose was to maintain US interests there.

Reports from Managua say that over the past 24 hours, there have been armed clashes between National Guardsmen and Sandinistas in various parts of the country. In the Nueva Segovia Department, on the border with Honduras, Sandinistas killed National Guard officer Julio Salvador Pereira, and in Esteli attacked a National Guard patrol. Leon was also scene of fighting. In Managua Sandinistas occupied the National University for several hours, and seized ten firearms.

4 April

p It is announced in Managua that Somoza and his family plan to leave on “holiday”. According to the official comunique, leaving with Somoza are his mother, Salvadora de Bayle, and his son Lt. Col. Anastasio Portocarrero. It is not said for how long he is going or where. Nor is anything said as to whether Somoza’s brother Jose will still command the National Guard.

Some 10,000 college and high-school students stage a one-day strike, demanding an end to repression and the release of all political prisoners.

6 April

p In Washington a State Department spokesman says that on Saturday, 7 April Nicaraguan President Anastasio 96 Somoza will be "privately visiting" the USA for several days, but will not come to Washington, as he will be "down South”, most likely in Texas.

p In a France Presse interview, Venezuela’s Nicaraguan Solidarity Committee says that according to information from sources connected with the Sandinistas, US-backed Right-wing extremists in Nicaragua will attempt over the next week a coup to set up a military-civilian junta to enable Somoza run for the 1981 Presidential elections there. General Julio Gutierrez, the Nicaraguan military attache in Washington, and Somoza’s brother-in-law are named among the main plotters.

p Incidentally, in the past few days there have been a plethora of reports about coups in the making, all to oust Somoza and install a less odious figure for Nicaraguans who would be acceptable to the USA. Such "leaked information" must be treated with great caution, as much has been fabricated by Washington’s special services in the hope that such rumours will serve to split the opposition, and create illusions as to the likely abolition of the dictatorship through negotiation.

p In Costa Rica, Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez declares, "Somoza’s days are numbered. There is no doubt that the people will soon end the much-hated dictatorship that has been oppressing it for more than forty years.”

The National Guard counter-attacks patriots holding Esteli, but is repulsed. Sandinistas kill 25 enemy soldiers, shoot down one plane, an Israeli-made Push-Pull, and put out of commission a Sherman tank and a whippet tank. In the past three days, Sandinistas have shot down four Somoza aircraft in the Esteli neighbourhood.

14 April

p After six days Sandinistas withdraw from Esteli into the mountains. Enemy casualties include 120 officers and men killed. Much military hardware has been captured and four aircraft and two tanks have been put out of commission. The entire operation has shown that Sandinista forces 97 can successfully capture urban areas and that the organisation of a unified command is yielding positive results.

Upon entering Esteli, Somoza’s soldiery massacre many inhabitants, including surgeons Alejandro Davila Bolanos and Eduardo Selva while operating at the municipal hospital.

17 April

p Somoza forms a special commando to "kill National Guardsmen attempting to desert”. Appointed its commanding officer is the notorious hangman and torturer Julio Moya, an officer of the Nicaraguan National Security Service.

p In Nueva Segovia in the North a National Guard patrol under Lt. Ali Gonzalez defects to the Sandinistas with all their weapons.

In Leon Oscar Perez Casar Pereira, head of the military political commission of the FSLN Internal Front, and another five Sandinistas, including Mexican sociologist Araceli Perez Darias, daughter of a big Mexican industrialist, are captured and brutally murdered by National Guardsmen. Somoza announces the extermination of Commandante Dos, Dora Maria Tellez, who participated in the August 1978 operation to seize the National Palace. However, the Sandinista leadership says she is still in command of Sandinista column.

20 April

From Monitored Radio Sandino Broadcasts:

p ”In a clash between Sandinistas and National Guardsmen in Open Tres, Managua, enemy casualties number eight, while two Sandinista comrades are killed.”

p “Workers of a Managua district struck yesterday for higher pay. They are supported by all labour organisations in the industry and their strike is coordinated by the NPF.”

p “The Managua Radio Reporters Association meets at the Radio Corporation to protest Somoza misinformation.”

p The above-quoted news items show that though there is no major action against the dictatorship, the situation is still tense.

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UPI reports that Sandinista guerrillas and government forces fought a battle yesterday in Southern Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border.

21 April

At a news conference in Managua, Nicaraguan millionaire industrialist Federico Lang says National Guardsmen killed in Leon his son, Edgard, dictator Anastasio Somoza’s nephew, who joined the Sandinistas in 1976.

23 April

From Monitored Radio Sandino Broadcasts: "The NPF Trade Union Commission finalises initial preparations for a nationwide strike.”

26 April

p Orestes Valera comments in the Cuban newspaper Granma: "Israeli military experts have been in Nicaragua for some time now. Zionist economic and military aid to Somoza has been exposed repeatedly. Tyrant Anastasio Somoza is using this and North American aid to practise genocide in Nicaragua.”

p France Presse reports from Managua that "Israeli specialists are continuing to outfit a mobile anti-aircraft defence system for the Presidential Palace. Some five vehicles equipped with rocket launchers similar to those used to destroy aircraft by heat emission, have been deployed throughout the palace grounds.. .. The anti-aircraft system is armed with some 100 missiles".

p According to information from Washington, four members of the North American Coalition for Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua, one of them a nun, occupy for several hours International Monetary Fund premises in protest against IMF plans to grant Somoza a $40 million loan. All four are arrested by the police.

In Nicaragua NPF and FAO leaders continue talks started last week to discuss the political situation, and to coordinate measures to draft a common plan incorporating a nationwide strike as additional pressure to oust Somoza.

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30 April

Excerpts from a Declaration Issued by the Committee of Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua at a Meeting in Panama on 29-30 April:

p “The organising session of the Woild Conference of Solidaiity with the People of Nicaragua . . . attended by 51 delegates from 15 national and seven international organisations . . . expressing international public support to convene an international conference for solidarity with the people of Nicaragua to be held in Caracas, Venezuela, from 13 to 15 July . .. has concluded that it is the ... duty and obligation of all peoples, governments, parliaments, political organisations, and public figures throughout the world to support this conference by establishing committees and national movements for it. ...

p “We, the undersigned, support the appeal of the World Conference for Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua, and pledge to work for its successful organisation, convinced that the struggle being waged in Sandino’s homeland will culminate in its full liberation. . . .

p “We pledge to promote the campaign and set up national committees in order to make the International Conference for Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua a truly effective instrument of aid to the patriotic forces of Nicaragua and a forum exposing the crimes of the Somoza regime.”

p The organising session was arranged by the National Council for the Defence of Sovereignty and Peace and Panama’s Nicaraguan Solidarity Committee under the aegis of the World Peace Council.

p Excerpts from Monitored Radio Sandino Broadcasts:

“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is fully controlled by North American imperialism is about to grant Somoza a $44 million loan... . The Somoza dictatorship will use the money to indemnify debts and purchase arms with which to go on killing our people. This is all well known in the USA, which hypocritically talks of ’human rights’ and struts as champion of the free world.”

100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1980/AD158/20070227/158.tx"

p It would be appropriate at this point to comment in greater detail on this Radio Sandino report, to indicate the USA’s true attitude to the dictatorship, and disclose Washington’s phaiisaical claptrap about the "high-minded motives" of its policy to defend "Nicaragua’s legitimate government" horn "pro-communist teirorists".

p The facts show US ruling circles have long treated and to this day treat Somoza as flunkey and hanger-on, well aware that they are dealing with an incorrigible thief, embezzler, bribe-taker, and murderer. However they tolerate him as he acts as a watch-dog protecting the interests of North American business, whose representatives reward him by giving him a free hand to plunder his people. As proof, allow me to quote excerpts from a 26 August 1976 Washington Post story, headed "US Subsidises Nicaragua’s Dictator":

p “A year ago, we named Anastasio Somoza, the barrelbellied dictator of Nicaragua, the world’s greediest ruler.

p “The sad truth is that the United States Government has provided the ladder for his ascent to this dubious pinnacle.

p “Somoza runs Nicaragua as if it were his private estate. Through his family and flunkeys, he owns or controls virtually every profitable industry, institution, and service in the country. . . . His enormous wealth has been squeezed out of his impoverished subjects, whose average pay is 30 cents an hour. They live in shacks and teeming slums, and eke out a living as best they can while the Big Banana stashes his millions in foreign banks.

p “The dictator ... leads his people to believe that any attempt to dislodge him would bring back the US marines, who have already occupied the country twice in this century.

p “Not only do American officials let him get away with this but they have subsidised the Somoza regime for 40 years with a steady flow of foreign aid. In the past 30 years the American tax-payers have donated over a quarter of a billion dollars to the tiny Central American republic.

p “The money was pumped into Nicaragua even though the US authorities knew all along they were dealing with 101 devils. From the moment the Somozas assumed power in Nicaragua, intelligence agencies and the State Department have kept detailed records of the family’s rampant corruption. . . .

p “Classified documents .. . reveal that the man who occupies the throne today, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, is a carbon copy of his father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia.

p “Here are some highlights:

p “In a ’Strictly Confidential’ cable dated April 11, 1939, the US Ambassador to Nicaragua Meredith Nicholson reported complaints of a ’continuing campaign of violence by the National Guard in the suppression of persons critical of the President’. His informants, wrote Nicholson, ’placed the figure of political deaths at the unbelievable total of a thousand a month’. If his sources were to be believed, said Nicholson, ’the country as a whole is one great political prison’. . . .

p ”. . . Another ’Strictly Confidential’ cable, dated the same month, carried a report by the US Charge d’Affaires Laverne Baldwin. . . .

p ”. . . In May, 1939, Somoza had made a state visit to Washington, where he was royally received by President Franklin Roosevelt. While on that trip, wrote Baldwin, Somoza received ’a total of $145,000 from the coffers of the state’. This, it must be remembered, was during a time of world depression. After his return from the US, cabled Baldwin. Somoza ’shamelessly exploited the prestige accruing from his reception there as representing assurances of direct support from the American government’.”

p Why did the powers-that-be in the USA pet so odious a person? Out of affection for dictatorships? Because of Somoza’s shared anti-communism? Out of the vainglorious desire to have their own flunkey as president of another country? Or out of political myopia? Though all these factors were unquestionably there, they were not the main reasons. What has always been at the root of US policy vis- avis Nicaragua is the cash nexus. US policy makers care not a fig that Somoza is a plain criminal, who is shamelessly looting Nicaragua. What comes first with them is that the 102 Somozas give them a free hand also to loot Nicaragua and its people. The Somozas rob and let the US rob. This comes first for the USA, or rather, for those who shape US policy towards Nicaragua.

p In place of statistics on North American investment in Nicaragua and US company profits, I shall briefly quote from a quarter-page Somoza advertisement in the New York Times on 30 January 1977. It urged to invest in Nicaragua, as it "is a democracy run by a freely elected Government every six years. Its political stability combined with a very solid and stable economy, makes Nicaragua the ideal place for US investors to look into”. Then comes an explanation of why the place is “ideal”.

p “Summary of investment information.

p “a) Remittance of profits: No restriction.

p “b) Repatriation of capital: No restriction. Foreign investment law guarantees repatriation of registered foreign capital.

p “c) Policy as regards to activities of foreign investors: Virtually no restrictions.

p “d) Government guarantees regarding foreign-owned companies: Foreign Investment Law guarantees the same treatment as that accorded to nationals. .. .”

p The ad ends: "For additional information, please write to: Secretaria de Informacion y Prensa de la Presidencia de la Republica.” No more, no less. Want to reap a handsome profit? Apply direct to Somoza. He’ll guarantee you profits, and not forget himself in the process. Both sides will be happy.

p I trust that after these comments my reader will have a definite notion of why and for what purpose the International Monetary Fund decided in April 1979 to grant a $44 million loan. This regime ensuring the dominion of US investment stood in need of a financial shot in the arm. By staking a few dozen million dollars, hopes were still entertained of staying on and of getting the money back, if not a hundredfold, then at least with the old sizable interest.

p The world public disproved of this open US support for the Nicaraguan dictator. Even in the USA some congressmen 103 were shocked by the cynical action of financial tycoons. To varnish the IMF palpably unsavoury stance, several US newspapers featured comments “arguing” the legitimacy of intentions to grant Somoza a loan. Characteristic in this respect was the 14 May 1979 Washington Post editorial, "Destabilising Nicaragua”, which said in part:

p “There is a fair consensus in Washington, or there used to be, that the United States acted reprehensibly when it used its influence in international financial institutions to ’destabilise’ the government in Chile in the early 1970s—by denying loans, credits, and the like. Now some of the people most exercised by that effort urge the United States to use its influence in the same institutions to destabilise the government in Nicaragua. This raises a question: if it is wrong to use an ostensibly apolitical institution like the World Bank or International Monetary Fund to squeeze a government of the right, as a group of legislators would like the IMF to do to Nicaragua. . .?”

p What casuistry! Its sole purpose is to hide behind a figleaf of decency and objectivity a die-hard policy supporting US stooges and decrying unsuitable governments. The US plot against the lawfully and popularly elected Allende Administration in Chile is termed “destabilisation”. Full US control of IMF is styled "influence in international financial institutions”. Meanwhile, the IMF itself, the instrument the USA employs to prosecute its policies, is described as "an ostensibly apolitical institution”. Not usually given to strong language, this time I simply cannot contain myself.

p “Last year,” the Washington Post editorial continues, "the United States tried for a time to negotiate President Somoza out of power, and, to put on heat, it engineered the collapse of a routine IMF loan to Nicaragua. This touch of politicisation did not remove the Somoza dynasty. . . . This time around, with no negotiations pending, a chastened Carter Administration intends to let the loans go through. That leaves Somoza in power. . ..”

No comment.

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15 May

p The IMF decides to grant Somoza a $65.7 million loan, nearly half more than the intended $44 million loan. IMF says this has been done out of purely economic motives; as an institution devised to carry out international financial operations, it took no account of (political factors.

p By way of justification, the US Treasury claimed there were no economic motivations for IMF to deny the loan, and added that this North American move did not mean that the USA is not preoccupied with the situation in Nicaragua.

p Cast your mind back to the Washington Post editorial quoted earlier. The identity of formulas and arguments justifying the financial shot-in-the-arm for this insolvent regime at once strikes the eye. One even thinks that either the US Treasury borrowed from the editorial, or the editorial that the Washington Post published a day before the loan decision was endorsed, was written by Treasury officials to condition US public opinion to the move. At any rate, there is one more proof for you that both IMF and the Washington Post are at the full disposal of US circles who say what foreign policy should be followed, and for whom the profits accruing from support for a dictatorship come before national prestige, morality, and world public opinion.

p In a recent issue, Derechos Humanos en Centroamerica reveals the machinery of US support for the Nicaraguan regime. "The State Department, paying but lip service to disassociation from the corrupt, repressive Somoza regime,” it says, "is actually providing it with economic and military assistance via other countries to preserve that regime.” Further, it says, "Israel, the USA’s staunch political and military ally, has shipped vast arms consignments to Somoza. Argentina as well as neighbouring Central American states are doing the same.

p “On a recent US trip, a Central American Human Rights Commission member gained information from reliable sources of US support for the Nicaraguan dictator, as the USA still regards Somoza as an ally "helping the USA to 105 preserve and uphold political and military control in this region".

The question begs: for what purpose this $66-million loan, if the arms the USA has supplied Somoza with over recent years are more than enough to equip an army much larger than the National Guard? An analysis of reports in North American and Latin American information media leads to the conclusion that Sandinista guerillas arm themselves for the most part by capturing National Guard arsenals. However, should Somoza use the IMF loan to acquire more large Israeli arms consignments he, by employing more sophisticated hardware of Israeli make, will hope to rule out the possibility of Sandinistas augmenting their stores of ammunition by seizing such ammunition from the National Guard, as the more sophisticated kind will not fit the US- or Belgian-made submachine guns with which the Sandinistas are armed.

21 May

Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo meets Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo, who is in Mexico for a brief visit. In Cancun, in Quintana Roo State, the two leaders discuss a range of bilateral and international issues. Speaking at a banquet in honour of the Costa Rican dignitary, the Mexican President concentrates on the Nicaraguan situation, noting that Somoza repression is plain genocide. He says he has instructed his Foreign Minister to break off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, and urges other Latin American countries to follow suit.

22 May

p The International Herald Tribune reports: "Managua, May 21 (UPI) National Guardsmen shot and killed a Red Cross director yesterday as he evacuated children from a hospital in the town of Jinotega, where government troops were battling Sandinista guerillas. . . The Red Cross radio, monitored in Managua, said that Red Cross Director Enrique Pereira Meneses was shot by Guardsmen at the city’s 106 hospital after they became angered at the way he answered their questions. The radio said that Mr. Pereira was evacuating children at the time. It also said that the Red Cross had to move 700 persons, many of them children, who had taken refuge from gunfire in a warehouse.”

p Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, in a futile attempt to suppress the popular uprising, the National Guard increasingly attacks the civilian population, plundering, destroying, and indiscriminately killing. In an open letter to Somoza, Leon’s Bishop Manuel Salazar Espinoza, President of the Conference of Nicaraguan Bishops, exclaims, "It is impossible to tolerate the sowing of death and to watch jungle law take over. The day has come when it is each man for himself. Leon is going through the worst time in its history. It is an occupied ghost city, with troops coming and going, sowing terror and murder. I plead with you for the sake of God to stop this immense tide of crime and dolorous grief. The road we are following will lead to a reign of death. I implore you to stop this endless murder by an army which does not even spare children.”

p Naturally, this appeal to a butcher to show mercy could have no effect. I have quoted from this letter of a respected Nicaraguan ecclesiastic, Bishop Manuel Salazar Espinoza, to show the attitude of Catholic hierarchs to the Somoza dictatorship, as the Leon Bishop was expressing the view of the majority of the country’s priests.

p Indeed, only hours after the Bishop had published the appeal, a National Guard patrol in Leon was ordered by General Gonzales Evertz to execute 4 youngsters at the San Felipe Cemetery. Three were identified as Gerencio Quintanilla, Luis Rocha, and Ramiro Rocha. The firing squad was commanded by General Evertz himself, the soldiers in the firing squad were mostly drunk or high on drugs.

p When Somoza finally deigned to invite priests to his bunker for a "private conversation”, the latter categorically declined. The Conference of Nicaraguan Bishops unanimously endorsed a statement declaring: "There is nothing at all human in what the authorities have just done, and therefore we consider it ill-advised to talk with the President.”

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p Mexico’s dccibion to break off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua aroused favourable response in most Latin American countries and in Nicaragua itself. "This is a slap in the face for Somoza,” declared Carlos Tunnerman, a prominent member of the Group of 12. Rafael Cordoba Rivas, a FAO leader, expressed the conviction that the severance of diplomatic relations would place the Somoza regime in still greater international isolation, and predicted that other Latin American states would shortly follow Mexico’s example.

Indeed, a few days after the Costa Rican-Mexican summit, the Presidents of the five Andes Pact countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia met in Cartagena, Colombia, and issued a statement declaring that their countries would respect the decision of states to break off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua. The Andes Pact countries, the document said, were proceeding with consultations to promote the Nicaraguan solidarity campaign and press for collective action within the context of interstate relations, to terminate the bloodshed and guarantee human rights in this Central American country. The document was signed by Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala for Colombia, Luis Herrera Campins for Venezuela, General Francisco Morales Bermudez for Peru, General David Padilla for Bolivia, and Admiral Alfredo Poveda for Ecuador.