Augusto César Sandino
Augusto C. Sandino | |
---|---|
Born | Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino[1] 18 May 1895 |
Died | 21 February 1934 Larreynaga, Managua, Nicaragua | (aged 38)
Cause of death | Assassination |
Years active | 1927–1934 |
Known for | Nicaraguan revolutionary leader |
Political party | Liberal |
Movement | Army in Defense of the National Sovereignty of Nicaragua (Ejército Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional de Nicaragua, or EDSN) |
Opponents |
|
Spouse | Blanca Stella Aráuz Pineda |
Signature | |
Augusto C. Sandino (Latin American Spanish: [awˈɣusto se sanˈdino]; 18 May 1895 – 21 February 1934), full name Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino, was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion between 1927 and 1933 against the United States occupation of Nicaragua. Despite being referred to as a "bandit" by the United States government, his exploits made him a hero throughout much of Latin America, where he became a symbol of resistance to American imperialism.[2] Sandino drew units of the United States Marine Corps into an undeclared guerrilla war. The United States troops withdrew from the country in 1933 after overseeing the election and inauguration of President Juan Bautista Sacasa, who had returned from exile. He fought alongside the commanders Diego Zapata and Cornelio Bravo.[3]
Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by National Guard forces of General Anastasio Somoza García, who went on to seize power in a coup d'état two years later. After being elected president by an overwhelming margin in 1936, Somoza García resumed control of the National Guard and established a dictatorship and Somoza family dynasty that ruled Nicaragua for more than 40 years. Sandino's political legacy was claimed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which finally overthrew the Somoza government in 1979.
Sandino is revered in Nicaragua and in 2010 its congress unanimously named him a "national hero".[4] His political descendants, the icons of his wide-brimmed hat and boots, and his writings from the years of warfare against the USMC continue to shape Nicaragua's national identity.[4]
Early life
Augusto Calderón was born 18 May 1895, in Niquinohomo, Masaya Department, Nicaragua. He was the illegitimate son of Gregorio Sandino, a wealthy landowner of Spanish descent, and Margarita Calderón, an indigenous servant with the Sandino family.[5] He lived with his mother until he was nine years old, when his father took him into his own home and arranged for his education.[6] It was then that young Augusto took on his father's surname, retaining his maternal surname, Calderón, as a middle name represented by the initial C.[7]
In July 1912, when he was 17, Sandino witnessed an intervention of United States troops in Nicaragua to suppress an uprising against President
Attempted murder and exile in Mexico
In 1921 at the age of 26, Sandino shot but failed to kill Dagoberto Rivas, the son of a prominent conservative townsman, who had made disparaging comments about Sandino's mother. As a result, Sandino fled to Honduras, then Guatemala and eventually Mexico, where he found work at a Standard Oil refinery near the port of Tampico. At that time the military phase of the Mexican Revolution was drawing to an end. A new "institutional revolutionary" regime was forming, driven by a wide array of popular movements to carry out the provisions of the 1917 Constitution. Sandino was involved with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spiritist gurus and anti-imperialist, anarchist and communist revolutionaries. He embraced the anti-clericalism of Mexico's revolution and the ideology of Indigenismo, which glorified the indigenous heritage of Latin America.
Emergence as guerrilla leader
Shortly after Sandino returned to Nicaragua, the
Sacasa returned to Nicaragua, arriving in Puerto Cabezas in December, and declared himself president of a "constitutional" government, which Mexico recognized. Sandino assembled a makeshift army composed largely of gold miners, and led a failed attack on the Conservative garrison nearest the San Albino mine. Afterward, he traveled to Puerto Cabezas to meet with Moncada. Because of the guerrilla's hit-and-run operations against Conservative forces, conducted independently of the Liberal army, Moncada distrusted Sandino and told Sacasa so.[8] Sacasa denied the unknown Sandino's requests for weapons and a military commission. But after he captured some rifles from fleeing Conservative soldiers, the other Liberal commanders agreed to grant Sandino a commission.
By 1927 Sandino had returned to
On 4 May 1927, representatives from the two warring factions signed the Espino Negro accord, negotiated by Henry L. Stimson, appointed by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge as a special envoy to Nicaragua. Under the terms of the accord, both sides agreed to disarm, Díaz would be allowed to finish his term, and a new national army would be established, to be called the Guardia Nacional (National Guard). U.S. soldiers were to remain in the country to supervise the upcoming November presidential election. A battalion of U.S. Marines under the command of Major General Logan Feland later arrived to enforce the agreement.
After the signing of the Espino Negro accord, Sandino refused to order his followers to surrender their weapons, and returned with them to the Segovia Mountains.
Marriage and family
During this period, Sandino married Blanca Stella Aráuz Pineda, a young telegraphist of the village of San Rafael del Norte, Jinotega.
Declaring war on the United States
In June 1927, Sandino organised a group of 50 men to march to the San Albino mines in Nueva Segovia, where he was formerly employed by American businessman Charles Butters. Sandino took over the mine, which held 500 pounds of dynamite he said was going to use to "kill Yankees", and forcibly drove out all foreigners. This led to foreigners criticizing America and how the Marines deployed in Nicaragua were ordered to protect only American property, not foreigners'.[9]
At the beginning of July 1927, Sandino issued a manifesto condemning the betrayal of the Liberal revolution by the vendepatria ("country-seller") Moncada. He declared war on the United States, which he called the "Colossus of the North" and "the enemy of our race".[10] At the height of his guerrilla campaign, Sandino claimed to have 3,000 soldiers in his army; in later years, officials estimated the number at 300.[8]
On 16 July, Sandino's followers
Later Sandino took the more official title Augusto César Sandino and renamed his insurgents "The Army in Defense of the National Sovereignty of Nicaragua". Efforts by the Marines to kill or capture him over the summer failed. In November 1927, U.S. aircraft succeeded in locating El Chipote, Sandino's remote mountain headquarters east of San Albino Mine. But when the Marines reached it, they found it abandoned and guarded by straw dummies. Sandino and his followers had long since escaped.[12]
In January 1928 U.S. Marines found Sandino's war base in Quilalí and, though they were ambushed in their approach, the American and Nicaraguan troops had no trouble in routing the 400 rebels under Francisco Estrada's leadership. The Marines lost one man while killing 20. Sandino's penchant for exaggeration was evident in his personal report of the events: he claimed to have won the battle in three hours and that 97 Americans were killed and another 60 wounded. In reality only 66 Marines were in the operation. He further boasted the capture of six Lewis machine guns, three M1921 Thompsons and 46 Lewis automatic rifles. Also among these trophies was a codebook for communicating with aircraft.
After reaching the mountains of Nueva Segovia, Sandino smuggled a message to Mexico City saying:
I will not abandon my resistance until the ... pirate invaders ... assassins of weak peoples ... are expelled from my country. ... I will make them realize that their crimes will cost them dear. ... There will be bloody combat. ... Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of Imperialists. I will fight for my cause as long as my heart beats. ... If through destiny I should lose, there are in my arsenal five tons of dynamite which I will explode with my own hand. The noise of the cataclysm will be heard 250 miles. All who hear will be witness that Sandino is dead. Let it not be permitted that the hands of traitors or invaders shall profane his remains.[13]
In April the Sandinistas destroyed the equipment of the
With aerial support, the Marines made several riverine patrols from Nicaragua's east coast up the Coco River during the height of the rainy season, often having to use native dugout canoes. While these patrols limited Sandino's forces' movements and secured tenuous control over northern Nicaragua's principal river, the Marines failed to find Sandino or to effect a decisive victory. By April 1928 the Marines reportedly thought Sandino was finished and trying to evade capture.[16] One month later, his army ambushed another Marine post and killed five troops.[16] In December 1928 the Marines located Sandino's mother and convinced her to write a letter asking him to surrender.[17] Sandino announced that he would continue to fight until the Marines left Nicaragua.[18]
Despite massive efforts, American forces never captured Sandino. His communiqués were regularly published in American media; for instance, he was frequently quoted during 1928 in
Efforts at winning recognition
The Struggle
Having addressed his declaration of war to the whole of the "Indo-Hispanic race", Sandino saw his struggle in racial terms, as the defense not only of Nicaragua but of the whole of Latin America. At the beginning of his rebellion, Sandino appointed the Honduran poet, journalist and diplomat, Froylán Turcios, as his official foreign representative. Residing in Tegucigalpa, Turcios received and distributed Sandino's communiques, manifests and reports; he also acted as his liaison to sympathizers who provided him with arms and volunteers. Working with a number of prominent Nicaraguan exiles, Turcios sought to build support for Sandino's struggle in other Central American nations and in Mexico, which had backed the Liberals during the Constitutionalist War. In Mexico, Sandino's principal representative was the Nicaraguan exile Pedro Zepeda, who had previously served as the liaison between Sacasa and the Mexican government.
Sandino's principal demands were the resignation of President Díaz, withdrawal of U.S. troops, new elections to be supervised by Latin American countries, and the abrogation of the Bryan–Chamorro Treaty (which gave the United States the exclusive right to build a canal across Nicaragua). In October 1928, José María Moncada was elected as president, in a process supervised by the United States, which proved a major setback for Sandino's claim to be acting in defense of the Liberal revolution.
Prior to the election, Sandino had attempted, with three other marginal factions, to organize a
He made this demand a central component of his political platform. In a letter he wrote in March 1929 to the Argentine President Hipólito Yrigoyen, "Plan for Realizing Bolívar's Dream", Sandino outlined a more ambitious political project. He proposed a conference in Buenos Aires to be attended by all Latin American nations, which would work toward their political unification as an entity he called the "Indo-Latin American Continental and Antillean Federation". He proposed that the unified entity would resist further domination by the United States and be able to ensure that the proposed Nicaragua Canal would remain under Latin American control.
Solidarity with foreign nations
As Sandino's success grew, he began to receive symbolic gestures of support from the
Year-long exile in Mexico
Sandino's relations with Turcios soured, as Turcios disliked the Junta proposal. Sandino criticized him for siding with Honduras in a border dispute with Guatemala, which Sandino saw as a distraction from the goal of Central American unification. Conflict between the two men led Turcios to resign in January 1929, which resulted in cutting off the flow of arms to Sandino's forces and leaving them increasingly isolated from potential supporters outside Nicaragua. Sandino's army suffered a major blow in February 1929 when Gen. Manuel María Jirón, who masterminded his raids, was captured by U.S. Marines.[22] More defeats for Sandino's army at the hands of the Marines soon followed.[23] In an effort to secure military and financial support, Sandino wrote letters appealing to various Latin American leaders. Sandino looked for aid from revolutionary Mexico, but the country had taken an anti-communist turn under the de facto ruler Plutarco Elías Calles. Sandino also wrote a letter that was sent to Al Capone in Chicago. Mr. Capone was uninterested in personally helping Sandino. Mr. Capone then hand delivered the letter to Tony Eduardo Delduca leader of the Purple Gang 1929 to 1935. Mr. Delduca had followed the stories of Sandino in the press and was very proud and honored to help Sandino. The Packard car in the picture is a present for Sandino from Mr. Delduca.
After failing to negotiate his surrender in exchange for a withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Mexican President Emilio Portes Gil offered Sandino asylum. The leading guerrilla left Nicaragua in June 1929. In the political climate of the Maximato, Sandino's radicalism was unwelcome. To appease the United States, the Mexican government confined Sandino to the city of Mérida. Living at a hotel, Sandino was still able to maintain contact with his supporters.[24] He traveled to Mexico City and met with Portes Gil, but his request for support was quickly rebuffed. The Mexican Communist Party offered to pay for Sandino to travel to Europe, but the offer was withdrawn after he refused to issue a statement condemning the Mexican government. In April 1930, as Sandino's relations with the Communists grew increasingly cool, they leaked information suggesting that Sandino was critical of Portes Gil's government. Put at risk in Mexico, Sandino left the country and returned to Nicaragua.
EMECU
During his period in Mexico, he had become a member of the
Although Sandino had communicated with Trincado only through a series of letters, after his return to Nicaragua, his manifests and his personal affiliations were increasingly shaped by his applying the ideals of the EMECU. He named Tricado as one of his official representatives and replaced the former seal (with an image of a campesino beheading a U.S. Marine) with the symbol of EMECU. His distrust of his former Communist associates led him to break off relations with Farabundo Martí, a Salvadoran who was formerly one of his most trusted lieutenants, and accused Martí of spying for the Communists. In February 1931, Sandino issued his "Manifest of Light and Truth", which reflected a new millenarian tone in his beliefs. The manifest proclaimed the coming of the Last Judgment, a time of "the destruction of injustice on the earth and the reign of the Spirit of Light and Truth, that is, Love." He said that Nicaragua had been chosen to play a central role in this struggle, and his army was an instrument of divine justice. "The honor has fallen to us, brothers, that in Nicaragua we have been chosen by Divine Justice to begin the prosecution of injustice on earth."[25]
U.S. withdrawal
Although Sandino had been unable to secure any outside aid for his forces, the
In May 1931, an
In accordance with the
Sandino remained opposed to the Nicaraguan National Guard, which he considered unconstitutional because of its ties to the U.S. military,[8] and insisted on its dissolution.[8] His attitude toward General Anastasio Somoza García, the National Guard leader, and his officers made Sandino unpopular with rank-and-file National Guard troops.[8] Without consulting Sacasa,[8] Somoza García ordered Sandino's assassination in the hope that it would help win him loyalty from the Guard's senior officers.[8]
Death
On 21 February 1934, Sandino, together with his father, his brother Sócrates, two of his favorite generals, Estranda and Umanzor, and the poet Sofonías Salvatierra, Sacasa's Minister of Agriculture, attended a new round of talks with Sacasa. On leaving Sacasa's Presidential Palace, the six men were stopped in their car at the main gate by local National Guardsmen and were ordered to leave their car.[31] The Guardsmen brushed aside Sandino's father and Salvatierra. They took Sandino, his brother Sócrates, and his two generals to a crossroads section in Larreynaga and executed them.[31] Sandino's remains were buried in the Larreynaga neighborhood of Managua by a detachment of National Guard troops under the command of Major Rigoberto Duarte, one of General Somoza García's confidantes. Duarte was the father of Roberto Duarte Solis, Minister of Social Communication during President Arnoldo Alemán's tenure.
The following day, the National Guard attacked Sandino's army in force and, over a month, destroyed it.[8] Two years later, General Somoza García forced Sacasa to resign and declared himself President of Nicaragua. He established a dictatorship and dynasty that dominated Nicaragua for the next four decades.
Sandino's body has never been found, and the full details of his assassination and what became of his remains are among Nicaragua's most enduring mysteries. Some theories about the disposition of Sandino’s body include:
- Burial:[4] witnesses to the execution claimed to have seen the guardsmen force Sandino and the three other captives to the ground and shoot and bury them.[31] Sandino's followers are said to have later exhumed Sandino's body to rebury him in an undisclosed location.[31]
- Cremated: in 1944, ten years after Sandino's assassination, the remains that had been buried in the La Calavera pit were exhumed and taken near the south side of the Tiscapa lagoon to be burned, then their ashes thrown into Lake Xolotlán. This occurred due to the student protests of the Central University of Managua that took place that year, against the re-election of Somoza to the presidency.
- Trophy: according to Sandinista lore, Somoza's assassins decapitated and dismembered Sandino and delivered his severed head to the U.S. government as a token of their loyalty.[4]
Legacy
Sandino became a hero to many in Nicaragua and much of Latin America as a Robin Hood figure who opposed domination from wealthy elites and foreigners, such as the United States. His opposition to U.S. control was tempered by the love he said he felt toward Americans[clarification needed] like himself. His picture and silhouette, complete with the oversized cowboy hat, were adopted as recognized symbols of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca and Tomás Borge, among others, and later led by Daniel Ortega.
Sandino has been idolized by notable Latin American figures including
In 1979 Somoza's son,
In 2007, President Daniel Ortega renamed again the airport in honor of Sandino. Nicaraguan artist Róger Pérez de la Rocha has created many portraits of Sandino—whose image was banned by the Somoza dictatorship—and of his associates, adding to the country's iconography.[32]
The Chilean-Spanish biopic Sandino (1990), directed by Miguel Littin, was filmed in Nicaragua[33] with an international cast including Joaquim de Almeida as Sandino, Kris Kristofferson, Dean Stockwell, Victoria Abril and Ángela Molina.[34][35]
Quotes
- In an address delivered on 1 July 1927 (now referred to as the San Albino Manifesto) to the people of Nicaragua and to the American armed forces stationed in Nicaragua at that time:[36][37]
Come, you pack of morphine addicts; come to kill us in our own land, and I will await you standing strong at the head of my patriotic soldiers, not caring about how many of you there are; bear in mind that when this happens, the destruction of your greatness will shake the Capitol in Washington, with your blood reddening the white sphere crowning your famous White House, the cavern where you plot your crimes.
See also
References
- ^ sandinorebellion.com
- ^ Gilbert, Dennis, 1988. Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution. Mass.: Basil Blackwell
- ISBN 978-0-02-588210-2.
- ^ a b c d Blake Schmidt, "Nourishing Family Roots to Help a Campaign Bloom", The New York Times, 15 February 2011
- ^ Augusto Cesar Sandino Archived 2013-03-08 at the Wayback Machine, Expressions of Central America
- ^ Neill Macaulay, The Sandino Affair, (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967) p. 49.[ISBN missing]
- ^ Augusto Lostanau Moscol (22 May 2023). "Esteban Pavletich y Augusto César Sandino". Retrieved 24 September 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "US Intervention, 1909-1933", Tim Merrill, ed. Nicaragua: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1993
- ^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1927, Volume III, Assistance by the United States marines in the suppression of bandit activities in Nicaragua, United States, Department of State (U.S.G.P.O., 1942), Document 453.
- ^ "Augusto César Sandino's Manifesto", 1 July 1927, Latin American Studies
- ISBN 0-465-00721-X
- Neill W. Macaulay, Jr., Sandino Affair, p. 113
- ^ "Nicaragua: Defy!" Time, 16 January 1928, accessed 12 December 2012
- ^ "Nicaragua: Brothers' Plight", Time, 7 May 1928, accessed 12 December 2012
- ^ "Nicaragua: Pirates: Samaritans" Time, 28 May 1928, accessed 12 December 2012
- ^ a b Time
- ^ Time
- ^ Time
- ^ American Foreign Relations: A History, Since 1895, Volume 2, Thomas Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, et al., New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004 (paperback edition), p. 163[ISBN missing]
- ^ Patterson (2004), American Foreign Relations, pp. 163–64[ISBN missing]
- ^ A Companion to Latin American History. Thomas H. Holloway ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). p. 409.
- ^ Time
- ^ Time
- ^ Time
- ^ Sandino: Testimony of a Nicaraguan Patriot, 1921–1934, translated by Robert Edgar Conrad, pp. 105–06
- ^ ineter.gob.ni
- ^ "Nicaragua: End of a Capital". Time. 13 April 1931. Archived from the original on 6 January 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
- ^ "Nicaragua: Man after Nature". Time. 20 April 1931. Archived from the original on 15 December 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
- ^ "The Cabinet: Logtown and After". Time. 27 April 1931. Archived from the original on 15 December 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
- ^ a b c d e Time
- ^ a b c d "Nicaragua: Murder at the Crossroads". Time. 5 March 1934. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
- ^ "Cultural" Archived 2014-04-09 at the Wayback Machine, El Nuevo Diario, 19 February 2000
- YouTube
- IMDb
- YouTube
- ^ Augusto César Sandino (1 July 1927). "Manifesto a los Nicaragüenses, a los Centroamericanos, a la Raza Indohispana" (in Spanish). Mineral de San Albino, Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua: www.sandinovive.org. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
Venid, gleba de morfinómanos; venid a asesinarnos en nuestra propia tierra, que yo os espero a pie firme al frente de mis patriotas soldados, sin importarme el número de vosotros; pero tened presente que cuando esto suceda, la destrucción de vuestra grandeza trepidará en el Capitolio de Washington, enrojeciendo con vuestra sangre la esfera blanca que corona vuestra famosa White House, antro donde maquináis vuestros crímenes.
- ^ Sandino, Augusto César (1984). "Introduccion, Seleccion y Notas de Sergio Ramirez". In Ramirez, Sergio (ed.). Augusto C. Sandino: el pensamiento vivo (in Spanish). Vol. Tomo 1 (2nd ed.). Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua.
Texts
- Hodges, Donald C. Sandino's Communism: Spiritual Politics For The Twenty-First Century. University of Texas Press (1992)
- Macaulay, Neil. The Sandino Affair. Duke University Press. (1985) [1967].
- Navarro-Génie, Marco. Augusto César Sandino: Messiah of Light and Truth. Syracuse University Press (2002).
- Ramírez, Sergio and Conrad, Robert Edgar trans., Sandino: The Testimony of a Nicaraguan Patriot 1921–1934, Princeton University Press (1990)
- Woodward, Bob. Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987: extensive discussion of Iran–Contra affair
- Wünderich, Volker. Sandino: Una biografía política, Editorial Nueva Nicaragua (1995). In Spanish.
- ISBN 978-0822325956.
Further reading
- Neugebauer, Rhonda L. (1988). "Augusto César Sandino, 1895–1934". Reference Services Review. 16 (4): 75–91. ISSN 0090-7324.
External links
- Augusto C. Sandino, 1895–1934
- A.C. Sandino Biography (in Spanish)
- Article about Sandino (in Polish)
- WAIS Forum on Nicaragua Archived 2012-10-21 at the Wayback Machine at Stanford University
- Collection of articles and photos about Sandino
- The Sandino Rebellion in Nicaragua 1927–1934: a collection of primary documents
- Newspaper clippings about Augusto César Sandino in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW