In 1967, Anastasio Somoza Debayle became the latest of a series of Somoza family members and associates who had established an authoritarian regime in Nicaragua since 1937.
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The first of these rulers was General Anastasio Somoza Garcia, responsible for the execution of Sandino while serving as head of the National Guard. Somoza Debayle's regime was particularly corrupt. Somoza and his National Guard (which he led, like many of his predecessors) took advantage of the devastating 1972 earthquake in Managua to loot whatever they could find, diverting quake relief supplies to the military, with plans for later resale. Many people might recall the earthquake as the time when American baseball star, Puerto Rican Roberto Clemente, died in a plane crash while traveling aboard a plane carrying relief supplies to Managua funded by his relief fund of $160,000. He had wanted to make sure that the supplies got to those who needed them the most.
Somoza thought he had eliminated the Sandinistas by 1970, a guerrilla organization which grew in the early 1960's, taking the name of Sandino, and engaging in armed resistance to the Somoza regime. By 1970, it had split into three factions, one among the rural peasants, one made up of urban workers and intellectuals, and the third was a non-Marxist opposition group which attracted many conservative anti-Somosaists. However, by 1979, they had made a comeback, and ousted Somoza, just like the ousting of Batista in Cuba, twenty years before. In August 1978, Sandinistas seized the Presidential Palace, and forced the release of 59 political prisoners by taking the Congress hostage. They were led by Eden Pastora, the leader of the third faction, the Terceristas, who took the name "Commander Zero." He led the more conservative end of the Sandinista Front. His position got him ousted after two years in power, and a year later, he was leading one of the Contra factions. Despite US support for Somoza in the form of arms and funds (Carter had supported him in the effort to encourage human rights reforms in the region) the Sandinistas triumphed.
The Sandinistas started off their leadership by implementing agrarian reform, redistributing land held by the Somozas, approximately 20% of Nicaragua's cultivable land. They immediately established a foreign policy that was "nonaligned" with US interests. President Carter invited Sandinista leaders to the White House and gave them $8 million in emergency relief funds, seeking a $75 million aid package from Congress. They further implemented social policies similar to Cuba's, and for which Cuba was well-known: eliminating illiteracy, reforming health care and improving the education system. They also received extensive aid from Western Europe, although almost none from the Soviets, surprisingly.
Their governing success, however, was thwarted by US Republicans. The Regan Administration, beginning in 1980, expressed its strong displeasure with the Marxist regime in Nicaragua, and began by declaring a trade embargo. After all, explains Geroge Black,
"...the fall of the Shah and Somoza within 5 months of each other in 1979 symbolized, for US conservatives, the collapse of American prestige and national will. Iran and Nicaragua were the twin, interwoven neruroses that demonstrated the limits of US power in the modern world, and in the end came clsoe to ruining the Regan administration."
Regan, advancing his Cold War agenda, declared that the Soviet Union was behind all the unrest in the region.
The Contras, an army of exiles funded by the United States and commanded by ex-Somoza officials, fought against the Sandinista military, but was unable to take and hold any major sites. Back in the US, the Regan administration manipulated television and mass media to show how Nicaragua was becoming a repeat of the Cuban "nightmare." Soviet-style military buildup was described to reporters in press conferences. The discovery that the Sandinistas has committed human rights abuses on the Atlantic coast by evacuating and killing a dozen Miskitos, the indigenous people of the region, to ease military actions in that war zone, gave the United States another excuse to reinforce the Contras.
Eventually, the Contra presence forced the Sandinistas to spend more than they could on defense, and the wartime conditions sent the economy downhill, leading to inflation as shockingly high as 33,000% in 1988. Elections were held in 1990. An opposition party led by anti-Somoza Violeta Barrios de Chamorro won out, with 54.7% of the vote, to the Sandinistas 40.8 %. However, Sandinistas still maintained high numbers in the Congress, an Chamorro was limited in her power to make reforms. The US offered little support, and economic recovery was slow. |
