¡Si Somoza ya se fue, que se vaya Pinochet!       -Popular slogan

Sandino lived at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. His memory was the inspiration for Daniel Ortega, Carlos Fonseca and Tomás Borge in 1979. The FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) successfully overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and they did it without provoking a US invasion. They had massive popular support, and Somoza’s troops were pretty much lazy slobs with no real commitment to their cause. It was not as dramatic as the Cuban revolution of ’59, nor was it a foregone conclusion, like Vietnam. But it was the only successful revolution in the Americas after 1960. Even then, it didn’t last.

It’s hard to say why the State Department let it happen. Maybe, they were taken by surprise. Or maybe they thought Somoza deserved it, or that the FSLN could be domesticated, though it was unusual for the CIA to be friendly with anything that had Front in the name. It could be that it was a bad time for “another Vietnam”. The images of the last helicopter leaving the US Embassy in Saigon were still pretty fresh, though, back then.

It could have been because Jimmy Carter was a die-hard Evangelical, looking to turn the other cheek. He didn’t get reelected, and Ronald Reagan did everything in his power to topple the Sandinistas. He even got caught laundering money to overthrow a foreign government, and never received so much as a slap on the hand. In fact, as he descended into oblivious senility, blue-haired old ladies in the United States tried to elect him to a third term in 1988.

The Sandinista victory occurred just months before my arrival in Chile. There was some excitement in the air. Pinochet was still going strong. He had been forced to give lip-service to some human rights reform after he got caught assassinating people on Embassy Row in Washington, the year before. But he was also engaged in some serious saber rattling with Argentina over a few glaciers in the Patagonia and some islands south of Punta Arenas where only penguins lived. That made him popular at home. And a third of Chileans still thought military rule was a good thing, and that included almost all of the rich and powerful. 

But for those who considered themselves clandestine resistance fighters, the victory of the FSLN in Nicaragua made the fall of Pinochet seem not only practical but imminent. If it was within reach, then random acts of violence were morally justified and, even, ethically imperative. If Somoza is gone, then Pinochet should go. That was the slogan. But reality is more complicated than slogans.

Some people believed that Daniel Ortega was going to be just like Fidel, that he was going to wear combat fatigues for the rest of his life and play the revolutionary fighter until he became a decrepit little old man. But it didn’t roll that way. Ortega held out against Reagan’s right-wing guerilla fighters for a while. But he was no Che Guevara. There was no deep-rooted idealism, there. He used his office to get laid and get rich. Then, he called for elections.  Saved himself a lot of trouble, that way.

Today, the Nicaraguan ship of state navigates murky waters with the characteristic abundance of corruption. Ortega wears a shirt and tie, he visits the UN, and he runs for office and wins, sometimes. Sandino can’t do anything about it, except maybe roll over in his grave. Revolutions are supposed to last, comrade. The Sandinista revolution faded over time.  

But they did get rid of Somoza. In September of 1980, a commando of Argentines and Nicaraguans blew him away in an ambush on the streets of Asunción. They declared, We cannot tolerate the existence of millionaire playboys while thousands of Latin Americans die of hunger. We are perfectly willing to give up our lives for this cause. They were wrong about him being a millionaire. His fortune was estimated at somewhere between one and five billion. He had bank accounts all over the world, including the Vatican. His body was buried in Miami. 

Unfortunately, Sandino’s given name was Augusto. A good poet would find a way to dissimulate that. They called him, The General of all free men. That works.  

Mother’s Day in Nicaragua is still May 31st. Somoza’s mother’s birthday. A very special day. To remember him. ¡Chau, conchetumadre! (Bye-bye, mother…..r!)

Augusto Pinochet died in his bed, an old man, of natural causes. He was richer than God, too, and too old to go to jail. His five wayward children got the money.

The CIA couldn’t take down the Sandinistas, but time wore them down. Time and the importance of not getting left out of the international banking system when you are one of the poorest nations on the American continent. When the Sandinistas started wearing ties to work, like the pigs at the end of Orwell’s famous fable, it was all over. After a while, you could hardly tell there had ever been a revolution at all.