p In many tents I spot the picture of a boyish-faced man wearing a Stetson, bow tie, and a civilian jacket of thick cloth with a Sam Browne belt and cartridge belt unexpectedly peeping out. This is General Augusto Cesar Sandino. The Sandinistas have many honest-to-goodness heroes, but the picture they pin up in their tents is always that of General Sandino, thus not only to stress equality (you’re hero today, I’ll be one tomorrow) but chiefly to emphasise the continuity, that today’s Sandinistas are fighting the same dictatorship and the same imperialism which Sandino and his predecessors fought.

p Though US marines might depart from Nicaragua de jure, occupation continued de facto. After Somoza’s National Guard was created and officered by graduates of West Point or men trained at US military bases in the Panama Canal Zone, there was no need for a Yankee marine presence. Enough local professional butchers, local occupationists, had been trained. Left only were American military advisers, for “consultation”, in event of a “contingency”.

p Neither the present Somoza, nor the one before him, nor the one before that, has ever acted without US advice. In Nicaragua the meetings he has almost daily with the US Ambassador are dubbed "our working parliament”. All Somozas have always repaid the help and friendship of their North American master with loyal service.

p When Somoza found himself in a predicament during the September uprising and -there was a surging worldwide 143 tide of protest against continued American economic and military aid, the dictator’s cousin urgently took himself off to the USA. I saw him speak on television. In panic the bloated-faced gentleman excitedly exhorted his audience, "How can the USA ditch us! We’re the only bulwark against communism in Central America! We helped the USA topple Guatemala’s communist President Arbens! We helped the USA smash the communist revolution in the Dominican Republic! It was from our land that you launched the Bay of Pigs invasion. How can you ditch President Somoza after all that!" An amazingly straightforward harangue from a hired killer, shouting out to his masters from the housetops about all the crimes in which both were involved.

p Somoza had no reason to funk. Washington had no intentions of ditching him. Washington officialdom provided consistent proof of its staunch sympathy for the blood-stained dictator.

p During my brief trip to Central America, four Israeli transports piled with weapons (that was the minimum identified!) landed in Managua. Only a little earlier an Israeli ship with a similar cargo put in. Weapons were supplied from Guatemala, El Salvador, and some other countries. When world information media gained wind of this, a White House spokesman shrugged the question off at a news conference with the words, "We have no influence over Israel.” In contradiction, another spokesman, now from the State Department, threw out in justification, "We allowed Israel to supply Somoza only with light weapons!”

p Are any other weapons needed besides light weapons, to kill teenagers and children, to massacre the unarmed?

p When the September 1978 uprising was suppressed, when Somoza was bombing and strafing towns and villages that the Sandinistas had long left, simply to wreak ferocious vengeance on peaceful inhabitants for their hate, two planes appeared over Esteli. The American airman in one radioed the airman in the other to dive-bomb the hospital.

p “But it’s a hospital,” the second, a Nicaraguan, said.

p “Sandinistas are hiding there.”

p “There are wounded people there.”

p “This is an order!”

p “I can’t do it!" came the reply.

p He was at once ordered back to base. A little later, another plane came over to join the first. In this day and age, it is hard to keep a thing like that secret. Someone on the ground had a radio and tape recorder with him. The communication between the two aircraft was monitored on tape, which is now in possession of the Sandinistas. It will come in handy some time in the future.

p The Sandinistas told me that quite a few of the American pilots bombing Nicaraguan cities and towns had had experience bombing cities, towns, villages, nurseries, and schools in Vietnam. This autumn no small number of SouthVietnamese instructors, former high-ranking officers of the South-Vietnamese puppet army, came to Nicaragua to pass on to the National Guard their priceless, peerless experience in waging war against one’s own people.

p Some time ago, a Nicaraguan air-force plane, in which Captain Alegret, one of Nicaragua’s notorious butchers, was making an inspection flight, blew up in mysterious circumstances. The explosion of a big military aircraft in such a small country as Nicaragua is no joke. In such cases the dead tell much more than the living. The dead bodies of two American and two South-Vietnamese military advisers who were aboard the plane with Alegret told many a tale.

p From Florida counter-revolutionary Cuban emigres, including several from the sadly notorious brigade involved in the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing, were sent to help Somoza. Among his mercenaries one finds Israelis, Guatemalans, Chileans, and Germans.

p Of course, among all this scum who have rushed to Tacho’s salvation are some who have come of their own accord, sundry adventurers, people out of work, professional mercenaries. But one would be terribly naive if one thought this could take place without the knowledge of the Pentagon and the CIA. All the more, as Sandinistas told me, it is in the USA where one finds the recruiting, or rather induction and coordination centres, arranging for a steady flow of men and arms to Somoza. They are in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 145
 
Thousands of Managuans gathered at the rally to mark the overthrow of the dictatorship
 

 
The Intercontinental Hotel is now Hotel Nicaragua Libre (Free Nicaragua)
 

 
Remains of the barricades in the streets of Managua
 

 
Tiscapa Hill The entrance to dictator Somoza’s bunker Journalists in the Las Americas district of the capital
 

 
Managua’s shanty town
 

 
Both are guerrillas
 

 
Isolda Machado, guerrilla fighter, is with the detachment guarding Managua Airport, now named after Augusto Sandino
 

 
A Sandmista unit at the airport, July 19, 1979
 

 
Sandinistas who took part in the street fighting m the capital
 

 
Sandmista forces enter Managua
 

 
This soldier serving in a punitive unit wanted to flee from besieged Managua in a National Guard vehicle
 
Miami, and San Antonio. The FSLN leadership protested to the US government, as even under US law the recruiting of mercenaries for foreign armies is forbidden in US territory. But this naturally had no effect.

p Hence, Somoza’s bloated-faced relative had no reason to whip himself up into such a lather on US television. Not for a moment has the US ever ditched its allies, either now or before. Which does not mean it likes Somoza so much. He is rathei a hot potato. Too odious. The USA would prefer to replace him with someone else. Merely to preserve intact what is known in local parlance by that fluffy, indigestible word of “Somozaism”.

p But it’s not easy to make Somoza go. Not only because he resists. Somoza is more than a dictator. Somoza is a 50- year-old dynasty with a whole gang of hangers-on, an empire within a state. In a television interview an American newsman asked Somoza, "Is it true you’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars?" "That’s a lie! I’m not worth more than $ 100,000,000" Somoza calmly returned. "Is it true you personally own the country’s only airline?" "Yes.” "And the biggest shipping firm?" "Yes.” "And your own seaport?" "Yes, I built it.” "And you supply Mercedes trucks to Nicaragua?" "Yes.” "And these trucks are for the National Guard?" "Well, not all, but most.” "And you own the country’s main television station?" "Yes.” "And newspapers?" "Yes.” "And Nicaragua’s biggest hotel?" "I’m only a stockholder.” "But you own the controlling packet?" "Yes.” "And you own hundreds of thousands of acres of land?" "Yes.” "And you own huge herds of cattle?" "Yes.” "And you own banks, insurance firms, construction materials and cement factories?” "That’s all true,” the dictator imperturbably said, seemingly pleased to see that the TV reporter had apparently not expected such brazen-faced gall, and was beginning to lose his self-possession. Eventually, the TV man heatedly asked, "So what do you think when . . . whenever you see beggars in your country, where you . . . where you own everything?" Somoza looked at the American with his 146 vacuous cow-like eyes, and said, "I only think I ought to get still richer.” The American was completely taken aback. "I don’t understand,” he said. "It’s all very simple,” the dictator explained. "The richer I am, the better my people live. The more business I do, the more jobs there are. And so on.” At this point, the interview broke off. I think the television correspondent, an old hand accustomed to surprises, who had seen all manner of men, had simply lost the power of speech.

p For the USA to oust that kind of Somoza is hazardous, especially considering the possible consequences of destabilisation. On the other hand, to keep Somoza going in a land that hates him, in a land where the Sandinistas are so tremendously popular, are a political, let alone military, force, also spells the threat of destabilisation. And destabilisation today is the worst pitfall for US policy vis-a-vis Latin America.

p The Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, the big American banks, including Chase Manhattan, which has the greatest investment in Nicaragua, and sundry US companies have computers working overtime to figure out which of the threats is worse.

p Throughout all of US interference in Nicaraguan affairs, the so-called "Mediation Commission" has possibly played the worst hypocritical role. In September 1978 a nationwide strike in Nicaragua was followed by an armed uprising, in the process of which Sandinistas captured four big cities. Only lack of arms prevented capitalising on this initial success. They had to pass to a defensive when Somoza, from his bunker across the road from Hotel Intercontinental in Managua, dispatched aircraft and armour against a people armed with sticks and stones and Sandinistas armed with rifles and submachine guns. They could hit back against National Guardsmen but were powerless in the face of aircraft and armour. A fearful bloodbath was in the offing.

p At this moment mediation should have come, but the Americans preferred to play a waiting game, to give Somoza time to recover from the first blows, gather strength, and unleash carnage. Between five to ten thousand people were 147 killed, gunned down, burned alive with napalm, or crushed under tanktreads. Thousands more were jailed. The Sandinistas had to call a retreat. Young people fled from town and village, rallied to their banners.

p Only after Somoza completed the massacre did the Americans set up a body for “mediation”, to "bring the warring sides to the negotiating table”. They called on Guatemala and the Dominican Republic for assistance. “Mediating” between Somoza and his supporters, the US body raised with facile ease the dictator’s own invention to "go to the country”. Now “moving” after Somoza had drowned the country in blood with American help, and mounted genocide against his own countrymen to "reach them a lesson”, after he had reduced cities and villages to ruin and rubble, and was continuing with torture and executions, after he had doubled National Guard strength by recruiting underworld criminals and foreign mercenaries.

p In a land where torture and detention are rife, where three-quarters of the population can neither read nor write, where free elections are unknown and there is no electoral machinery, indeed where any vote would be rigged by Somoza, to speak of "going to the country" is a nightmarish travesty mocking the very meaning of human rights.

p But this is exactly what Somoza agreed to with the USA for which “mediation” was merely one more vehicle for intervention. Moreover, on the most advantageous terms for himself, and of course, for the Americans. Even if a plebiscite were to go against Somoza, implying inability for some reason to rig results, Tacho wouldn’t leave, but simply turn over the Presidency to another fellow from his own (“Liberal”) Party and consequently go on ruling through this front, through his own cabinet and own National Guard.

p No change!

p Of course, the dictator had to pay, but this was a mere trifle. All he had to do was to stop gagging the radio, which he, incidentally owns, to lift the curfew, which meant killing could go on without that, to amnesty political prisoners, whom it would be even easier to gun down after their release. No wonder that when the US newsman I mentioned asked 148 Somoza whether he would really go, the dictator retorted, "I haven’t the slightest intentions of going!”

p In an interview, Daniel Ortega, an FSLN leader, presented his view of the trend that developments could take in Nicaragua. "We, of course, realise,” he said, "that a plebiscite is only one of the things the imperialists have up their sleeve. Quite likely they have several other ’solutions’ for the Nicaraguan crisis, which they find so dangerous. A coup is not ruled out. This may be scripted as follows: the National Guard will overthrow Somoza and install its own man, as much of a dastardly butcher as Somoza, as President; or Somoza may himself stage a palace revolution to consolidate his position; or finally, one of his bosom cronies will stage a spurious coup; or something else like that. Their sole purpose is to thwart democratisation and keep the Somoza regime going at all costs, with or without Tacho. Naturally, the Americans have several formulas pat to stretch a helping hand out to the man offering the most advantageous option. Should nothing work, the imperialists may stoop to outright armed intervention. I am taking advantage of this interview to let everyone know, to tell the whole world, that there is the very real danger of imperialist armed intervention in Nicaragua. As for us, for our people, our only option is to go on fighting.”

At the camp, a Sandinista guerilla, describing the September fighting, commented, "That’s only the beginning.”