Augusto César Sandino
Augusto César Sandino was a Nicaraguan revolutionary, founder of the militant group EDSN, 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. 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.
Sandino was executed 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, with the Somoza family dynasty ruling Nicaragua for more than 40 years. Sandino's political legacy was claimed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which overthrew the Somoza government in 1979 and then ensconced itself in power for more than 40 years.
Sandino is revered in Nicaragua and in 2010 its congress unanimously named him a "national hero". 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.
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 of the Sandino family. 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. 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.In July 1912, when he was 17, Sandino witnessed an intervention of United States troops in Nicaragua to suppress an uprising against President Adolfo Díaz, regarded by many as a United States puppet. General Benjamín Zeledón of La Concordia in the state of Jinotega died that year on 4 October during the Battle of Coyotepe Hill, when United States Marines recaptured Fort Coyotepe and the city of Masaya from rebels. The Marines carried Zeledón's body on an oxcart to be buried in Catarina.
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 Constitutionalist War began when Liberal soldiers in the Caribbean port of Puerto Cabezas revolted against the Conservative President Adolfo Díaz, who had recently been installed after a coup with United States involvement. The leader of this revolt, General José María Moncada, declared that he supported the claim of the exiled Liberal vice-president Juan Bautista Sacasa.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. 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 Las Segovias, where he recruited local peasants for his army and attacked government troops with increasing success. In April Sandino's forces played a vital role in assisting the principal Liberal Army column, which was advancing on Managua. Having received arms and funding from Mexico, Moncada's Liberal army seemed on the verge of seizing the capital. But the United States, using the threat of military intervention, forced the Liberal generals to agree to a ceasefire.
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. 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'.At the beginning of July 1927, Sandino issued a manifesto condemning the betrayal of the Liberal revolution by the vendepatria Moncada. He declared war on the United States, which he called the "Colossus of the North" and "the enemy of our race". 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.
On 16 July, Sandino's followers attacked a patrol of U.S. Marines and the Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional was sent to apprehend him at the village of Ocotal. Armed primarily with machetes and 19th-century rifles, they attempted to besiege the Marines, but were easily repulsed with the help of one of the first dive-bombing attacks in history, conducted by five Marine de Havilland biplanes. The Marine commander estimated that 300 of Sandino's men died. The actual number was about 80. The Marines suffered two casualties, one dead and one wounded, and the Guardia three dead and four taken prisoner.
Despite their heavy losses and the lopsided nature of these battles, the rebels made other attempts to swarm a small post guarded by 21 Marines and 25 guardsmen at Telpaneca. The 200 assaulting Sandinistas had 25 deaths and 50 wounded while killing one Marine, wounding another and seriously injuring a guardsman.
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.
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. 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.
In April the Sandinistas destroyed the equipment of the Bonanza and La Luz gold mines, the two largest mines in the country, both owned by three American brothers: James Gilmore, G. Fred, and D. Watson Fletcher, all of Manhattan, who were brothers of Henry P. Fletcher, the United States Ambassador to Italy. After destroying the Fletchers' mines, Sandino wrote that he was targeting not just U.S. Marines but also Americans in Nicaragua who "uphold the attitude of Coolidge."
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. One month later, his army ambushed another Marine post and killed five troops. In December 1928 the Marines located Sandino's mother and convinced her to write a letter asking him to surrender. Sandino announced that he would continue to fight until the Marines left Nicaragua.
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 Time magazine during the Marines' offensive. At one point he staged a fake funeral to throw off pursuers. The U.S. Congress did not share Coolidge's ambition to capture Sandino and declined to fund operations to do so. U.S. Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana argued that if American soldiers intended to "stamp out banditry, let's send them to Chicago to stamp it out there ... I wouldn't sacrifice ... one American boy for all the damn Nicaraguans."