The Indigenous Origins of the Sandinista Movement

Abstract

In an effort to fulfil his desire to restore the dignity and sovereignty of the Nicaraguan people,¹ General Augusto César Sandino initiated an independent insurrectionary movement in Las Segovias. A mechanic originally from a family of relatively prosperous peasant farmers from Niquinohomo, he had taken part in the constitutionalist war with the aim of returning the government to its legitimate head under the constitution, Dr Juan Bautista Sacasa. Following the sudden capitulation of the constitutionalist Army, Sandino took a firm decision to continue fighting, only this time directly against the American Marines who remained in military occupation of the country. In order to do so he withdrew to the mountains, and with an initial nucleus of a hundred men who had already been fighting alongside him before then founded the ‘Army in Defence of the Sovereignty of Nicaragua’.² This small first group would shortly be joined by hundreds of new combatants, who for seven years would struggle heroically against an invader who was both numerically and technically very much more powerful.³