In July 1912, Díaz's political rival, War Minister Luis Mena, began a revolt to seize power. Although he had already won the elections to succeed the presidency in 1913, Mena was not sure that he would get support from the United States. UU. The Government will intervene to guarantee the ownership of the United States.
Nicaragua assumed a quasi-protectorate state under the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916. President Herbert Hoover (1929-193) opposed the relationship. On January 2, 1933, Hoover ended the American intervention. The forces of Emiliano Chamorro Vargas and Nicaraguan General Juan Estrada, each of whom was leading conservative revolts against the Zelaya government, had captured three small towns on the border with Costa Rica and were encouraging an open rebellion in the capital of Managua. The naval warships that had been waiting off Mexico and Costa Rica were placed in position.
When the revolution broke out, the Pacific Fleet gunboat USS Annapolis (PG-) was routinely patrolling off the west coast of Nicaragua. In the summer of 1912, 100 EE. The Marines arrived aboard the USS Annapolis. They were followed by the return of Smedley Butler from Panama with 350 marines.
The commander of the American forces was Admiral William Henry Hudson Southerland, along with Colonel Joseph Henry Pendleton and 750 Marines. The main objective was to secure the railroad from Corinth to Managua. Of the 1,100 members of the United States military who intervened in Nicaragua, thirty-seven died in combat. With Díaz safe as president of the country, the United States proceeded to withdraw most of its forces from Nicaraguan territory, leaving one hundred marines to protect the U.S.
legation in Managua. The Nicaraguan revolution was a decades-long process aimed at freeing the small Central American country from the United States,. Imperialism and the Repressive Somoza Dictatorship. It began in the early 1960s with the founding of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), but it didn't really intensify until the mid-1970s.
It culminated in the fighting between the Sandinista rebels and the National Guard from 1978 to 1979, when the FSLN succeeded in overthrowing the dictatorship. The Sandinistas governed from 1979 to 1990, which is considered to be the year the Revolution ended. Since 1937, Nicaragua had been under the rule of a dictator, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who rose through the United States-trained National Guard and overthrew a democratically elected president, Juan Sacasa. Somoza ruled for the next 19 years, mainly controlling the National Guard and appeasing the United States,.
The National Guard was notoriously corrupt, engaged in gambling, prostitution and smuggling, and demanding bribes from citizens. Political scientists Thomas Walker and Christine Wade claim that the Guard was a kind of uniformed mafia. The Somoza family's personal bodyguards. Somoza allowed the U.S.
Establish a military base in Nicaragua during World War II and provide the CIA with a training area in which to plan the coup d'etat that overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan president, Jacobo Árbens. Somoza was assassinated in 1956 by a young poet. However, he had already made succession plans and his son Luis immediately assumed power. Another son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was in charge of the National Guard and dedicated himself to imprisoning his political rivals.
Luis continued to be very kind to the U.S. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga and Tomás Borge, three socialists inspired by the success of the Cuban Revolution. The FSLN is named after Augusto César Sandino, who fought against the United States,. Imperialism in Nicaragua in the 1920s.
After succeeding in overthrowing the American troops in 1933, he was assassinated in 1934 by order of the first Anastasio Somoza, while he was in command of the National Guard. The objectives of the FSLN were to continue Sandino's fight for national sovereignty, specifically to end the United States,. Imperialism and achieving a socialist revolution that ends the exploitation of Nicaraguan workers and peasants. During the 1960s, Fonseca, Mayorga, and Borge spent a lot of time in exile (actually, the FSLN was founded in Honduras).
The FSLN attempted several attacks against the National Guard, but they were largely unsuccessful, as it did not have enough recruits or the necessary military training. The FSLN spent much of the 1970s building its bases both in the countryside and in the cities. However, this geographical division gave rise to two different factions of the FSLN, and eventually a third, led by Daniel Ortega, emerged. Between 1976 and 1978, there was virtually no communication between the factions.
Pedro Joaquín Chamorro's newspaper La Prensa covered opposition activities and detailed the human rights violations and corruption of the Somoza regime. This emboldened the FSLN, which intensified insurgent activities. Chamorro was assassinated in January 1978, causing protests and beginning the final phase of the revolution. Carter saw the need to quell violence in Nicaragua and the Organization of American States agreed to an American agreement,.
Somoza accepted mediation, but rejected the proposal to institute free elections. In early 1979, the Carter administration suspended military aid to the National Guard and asked other countries to stop funding the Sandinistas. However, events in Nicaragua had gotten out of Carter's control. By the spring of 1979, the FSLN controlled several regions and had reached an agreement with Somoza's more moderate opponents.
In June, the Sandinistas appointed members of a post-Somoza government, including Ortega and two other members of the FSLN, as well as other opposition leaders. That month, Sandinista fighters began arriving in Managua and engaged in several firefights with the National Guard. In July, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua informed Somoza that he must leave the country to minimize bloodshed.
On July 17, Somoza left for the U.S. The Nicaraguan Congress quickly elected an ally of Somoza, Francisco Urcuyo, but when he announced his intention to remain in office until the end of Somoza's term in office (198) and to obstruct ceasefire operations, he was expelled the next day. The National Guard collapsed and many fled into exile to Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. The Sandinistas were victorious in Managua on July 19 and immediately established a provisional government.
The Nicaraguan revolution was ultimately responsible for the death of 2% of the Nicaraguan population, 50,000 people. Although the Sandinista revolution succeeded in improving the quality of life of Nicaraguans, the FSLN was in power for only a little over a decade, not enough time to truly transform society. By defending themselves against the aggression of the CIA-backed Contra, they diverted necessary resources that would otherwise have been spent on social programs. Therefore, the legacy of the Nicaraguan revolution was not as broad as that of the Cuban revolution.
In this 1978 video, presenter Jim Lehrer pressures a commander of the Nicaraguan National Guard to face accusations of human rights abuses by the Nicaraguan military. .
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