Augu-~ sto César Sandino, refused to acquiesce in abrogating his country's constitution. On May 24, 1927, five days after his thirty-fourth birthday, he wrote Moncada that he would not surrender his arms to the marines. He then departed, with his small band, for the northern mountains in order to resist the invasion.
Several hundred volunteers were attracted to Sandino's cause from many Latin-American countries, swelling his effective fighting force to about 1,000 men.
The marines were so frustrated by the guerrilla tactics used that they systematically bombed the Nicaraguan villages in the guerrilla zone -- 70 in all (including Las Timas and other villages in Honduras by "mistake").
The American commander, sick of chasing shadows through the rain forests and mountains, attempted a concentration policy at Ocotal in May 1930. All inhabitants of specified areas were ordered into six designated villages by June l, 1930. All persons found in the restricted area were considered enemies and dealt with accordingly.
By December 1932 command of the Nicaraguan National Guard, which had been operating under the marines, was entrusted to Moncada's under-secretary of foreign affairs, Anastasio Somoza, a former mechanic and storekeeper, who had received his college education in the U.S.
Somoza proved to be the kind of storekeeper the Nicaragua company store needed. On February 21, 1934, one year after the marines gave up and left Nicaragua, he sprung a trap (approved by U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane) and murdered Sandino and his chief assistants long after they had disbanded their army and established a government-sponsored cooperative farm.
With Sandino dead there was no one capable of stopping Somoza, who ruled and looted Nicaragua with a Liberal party terroristic military dictatorship for over 22 years.
Anastasio Somoza was assassinated in 1956. His two sons -- Luis, an agricultural engineer (a graduate of the University of California) and Anastasio Jr. (a graduate of West Point) -- continued the dynasty.
Iuis died, reportedly of a heart attack, in April of this year. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in its obituary that he was "credited with having helped write a social security law enacted in 1956 which benefited 30,000 work~ ers.
In 1962, as president of the country, luis Somoza did push reform measures through Congress. The working day of domestic servants was drastically cut to 14 hours a day and they were given the legal right to one day off a week.
In June 1963 he set the minimum daily wage for any job at six cérdobas [seven cérdobas = U.S.$1].
This brilliant record was not un-
marred. In June 1962, after months of futile negotiations, teachers unions in the Federacién Sindical de Maestras de Nicaragua struck for higher pay. They asked for $71 [U.S.] a month; Somoza's best offer was only $57.
This writer tried to live in the cheapest boarding houses he could find in Leén and Managua, the capital, on #100 a month and found it to be impossible.
The recent "election" was won by Iuis' brother Anastasio. It remains to be seen what "reforms" he will undertake; but it can confidently be predicted that they will not be much.
That part of the "free world" known as Nicaragua is in the firm hands of a leader who heads the National Guard, who knows how to manage both police and army as well as the postal, telegraph and telephone services, and who has had experience in chasing the shadowy figures of the various Frente Sandinista de Liberacién Nacional groups through the rain forests and mountains.
One of these days Somoza's soldiers will catch up with the Sandinistas -- and then we shall see whether or not they will prove receptive to the idea of a new perspective for their country. For the Sandinistas, like Che Guevara, say:
"Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and an-