![General Sandino [center] and Entourage enroute to Mexico. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration](jpg/general_sandino_center_and_staff_enroute_to_mexico._siglo_xx.__06-1929_-_nara_-_532357.tif-scaled07b9.jpg)
In 1912, the United States invaded Nicaragua and began what would become the longest US occupation in Latin American history. The occupation would birth both a dictatorship and one of Latin America’s most important revolutionary heroes: Augusto Sandino.
Sandino would wage a six-year-long guerrilla insurgency to rid Nicaragua of the US Marines. And he would win. The United States finally pulled out in 1933, the year before Sandino was assassinated by the forces of the man who would take power and rule for decades.
In this episode, host Michael Fox takes us on the trail of Augusto Sandino. We visit his hometown and then speak with University of Pittsburgh historian Michel Gobat about Sandino’s life, the US occupation, and how it set the scene for everything that would come decades later, including the 1979 Sandinista Revolution.
Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present.
In each episode, host Michael Fox takes us to a location where something historic happened — a landmark of revolutionary struggle or foreign intervention. Today, it might look like a random street corner, a church, a mall, a monument, or a museum. But every place he takes us was once the site of history-making events that shook countries, impacted lives, and left deep marks on the world.
Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
Guests: Michel Gobat
Edited by Heather Gies.
Sound design by Gustavo Türck.
Theme music by Monte Perdido and Michael Fox
Other music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Follow and support journalist Michael Fox or Under the Shadow at https://www.patreon.com/mfox
For background, see Michel Gobat’s book Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (2005, Duke University Press)
Transcript
Michael Fox: Hi folks, I’m your host, Michael Fox.
So before we begin, I want to say that today’s episode is gonna be a little different. As usual, I’ll begin by taking you to a spot that’s important for understanding this moment in history — This week, I’m looking at the longest US occupation in Latin American history. But most of the episode after this is centered on one interview, similar to the updates I’ve released in recent months. I decided this was the best way to highlight this story. I’ll return to the regular sound-immersive style for the coming episodes and the remainder of the series.
OK. Here’s the show.
I’m at the central plaza of this small town named Niquinohomo. It’s on the backside of Masaya and Granada heading south out of Managua. It’s very homemade and grassroots. They’ve got these small little parks for the kids, little jungle gyms. And overlooking everything is a huge statue of Sandino, who, of course, is the main revolutionary figure here in Nicaragua.
And there are statues of Sandino in many different towns across the country. Flags, of course, from the FSLN, Frente, Sandinista, Liberation, National, and Nicaraguan flags. But this plaza and this statue is important because it sits just across the street from Sandino’s birthplace. This is his hometown. And the little house in the corner, the blue and white house on the corner is where he grew up.
Kind of. Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino was born in 1895. The so-called illegitimate son of a wealthy coffee grower and merchant and his Indigenous servant Margarita Calderón. As a young boy, Sandino lived with his mother.
Michel Gobat: When he’s young, he sometimes also helps his mother work out in the coffee harvest, working on large coffee estates owned by the wealthiest elites of Nicaragua, the regional elite of Nicaragua — That’s Granada, which is just a bit south of Masaya. So I think that also leads him to develop some sense of social consciousness.
Michael Fox: That’s historian Michel Gobat. We’ll hear a lot from him in this episode. He’s the author of Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under US Imperial Rule. It’s about the two-decade-long occupation of Nicaragua by the US Marines from 1912 through 1933 — The focus of this episode.
It was a time when the United States was intervening not just in Nicaragua, but up and down Central America and the Caribbean, fighting what would become known as the Banana Wars in defense of US interests and profits for US businesses in the region.
But for now, back to Sandino. At around the age of 9, he goes to live with his grandmother and eventually his father, the coffee grower and merchant. And that is when he comes to this house on the corner, just across the street from the main square in Niquinohomo. I walk over to it.
The home is preserved like it would have been when Sandino lived here. And it’s really well done; tiled floors, wooden furniture from the period. The walls are all painted this cream color with details, doors and the baseboards in baby blue.
Otto Estrada runs the place and gives the tours. He’s tall, and passionate about Sandino and what he means today.
Otto Estrada: Sandino is a light for freedom, which we admire.
Michael Fox: Otto walks me through Sandino’s house, pointing out the details, walking me into the past. Sandino is larger than life here in Nicaragua — Think George Washington, but with way more humble origins. And instead of fighting for the independence of the United States, he was fighting against the US occupation for the true independence of Nicaragua, as we will look at in depth in this episode.
Hung around the house are iconic images of Sandino. But back in the day, he was just a teenage kid who worked for his dad.
He supported his father a lot, says Otto. His father bought and sold coffee. The train passed only two blocks away. And Sandino helped him. And then Sandino started buying and selling on his own. That’s how he was able to buy his mother’s property.
Michel Gobat: Contrary to what people now think of him, he was also a pretty successful small-time entrepreneur, because he also becomes, at that time, a successful merchant of basic grains: beans and rice at that time that he sells. He uses the railroad, in part, to sell these beans.
Michael Fox: But then, in his mid-20s, something happens. He ends up in a dispute over a business deal.
Otto says he shoots the thief, but then has to flee, because being born outside of wedlock means others might respond by trying to kill him or locking him up.
He travels to Honduras and then Guatemala. He works for United Fruit — Remember the huge, US banana company that we talked about in Episode 2 that would later overthrow the democratic government there?
Michel Gobat: But the most important thing is he ends up in Mexico and Tampico, which is an oil-producing region close to Veracruz, and works for US-owned oil companies.
And there, this is the time of the Mexican revolution, the 1920s. He then encounters these militant labor groups. Some of them are anarchists, and I think that really shapes his political views.
And that’s where he is when the Civil War breaks out in Nicaragua in 1926. He must be in touch with his family because he’s aware of what’s going on. He goes back and joins the Liberal army and becomes a general.
Michael Fox: When the Civil War ends in 1927 with a US-imposed agreement and a continued US occupation, Sandino is one of the only Liberal generals who refuses to lay down his weapons. He has 29 men. “I will not sell out, nor will I give up,” he says. “I want patria o muerte — A free country or death.”
Michel Gobat: He already controls troops, and is in a position to wage his anti-US insurgency. And his political views have also been very much shaped partly because of his Liberal upbringing, but also very much shaped by his experience in Mexico, where he encounters radical leftist ideologies from socialism, anarchism, communism. And also there’s a very strong sense of anti-imperialism in Mexico at that time.
Michael Fox: I follow Otto out into a breezy courtyard and a garden behind Sandino’s colonial-style childhood home in Niquinohomo.
Otto Estrada: Sandino fought against imperialism. He fought against the US intervention. But to understand deeper who he really was… He was a campesino who fought for rights, who looked for opportunities. He looked for truth.
Michael Fox: In the middle of the garden, there’s this life-sized statue of Sandino: Tall laced boots, a gun in a holster around his waist, big cowboy hat, determined stare. Someone has draped a black and red bandana around his neck of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN. That’s the insurrectionary movement, and later political party, named after Sandino that led the 1979 Revolution against the US-backed dictator.
What surprises me most about Sandino is his size.
Otto Estrada: 5 feet tall. Small. Yes, he was small. You’re small —
Michael Fox: Otto points at me.
Otto Estrada: — He was only up to here, though. That’s why he wrote, “My greatest honor is to come from the bosom of the oppressed. It is the soul and the mind of the Indigenous peasant race.”
He was proud. Proud to be an Indigenous campesino. Only 5 feet tall. Small, but powerful.
Michael Fox: It’s fascinating to be here, to walk in Sandino’s footsteps, to step into the past. It’s also fascinating to see old celebratory images of the US Marines shipping off to Nicaragua — Remember, this is the 1910s and the 1920s, the early years of film. But you can actually find a lot of these old videos online on YouTube. They’re all silent, or I’d be playing them for you here. Sound only began accompanying film in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s.
The movies show rows and rows of US Marines in uniform, marching with rifles and bayonets, or boarding ships, being sent off for their tour of duty in far away Nicaragua by large, exuberant crowds. Thousands of US Marines would invade Nicaragua and be stationed there over the more than two decades that the US would occupy the country.
Otto Estrada: Basically, Nicaragua, for the United States, they look at it as their backyard, and they felt they could do what they wanted with it. They had their eyes on our natural resources. We don’t have oil, we don’t have a lot of gold, but they saw that our resources would be important in the future. They wanted to dominate.
And they’ve been invading since the mid-1850s; William Walker, then bananas. They didn’t come here to help, they came to appropriate our resources. What we have in large quantities is water. They came always with their boots. Nicaragua always under the boot of the United States.
But unfortunately, they saw that the children of Sandino remain. And we would not let the US have what they wanted. Because, as Sandino said, “My cause is the cause of my people. The cause of the oppressed people in Nicaragua and across Latin America.”
Michael Fox: It is impossible to understand what comes later — The Somoza dictatorship, the 1979 Sandinista revolution — Without grasping the role of the United States in its longest occupation in Latin American history and the independence struggle of Augusto Sandino.
That in a minute.
[Under the Shadow theme music]
This is Under the Shadow — An investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time to tell the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present.
This podcast is a co-production in partnership with The Real News and NACLA.
I’m your host, Michael Fox — Longtime radio reporter, editor, journalist. The producer and host of the podcast Brazil on Fire. I’ve spent the better part of the last twenty years in Latin America.
I’ve seen firsthand the role of the US government abroad. And most often, sadly, it is not for the better: invasions, coups, sanctions, support for authoritarian regimes. Politically and economically, the United States has cast a long shadow over Latin America for the past 200 years.
In each episode in this series, I will take you to a location where something historic happened — A landmark of revolutionary struggle or foreign intervention. Today, it might look like a random street corner, a church, a mall, a monument, or a museum. But every place I’m going to bring you was once the site of history-making events that shook countries, impacted lives, and left deep marks on the world. I’ll try to discover what lingers of that history today.
In the last episode, I retraced the steps of US filibuster William Walker as he invaded Nicaragua and took over the country. Today, I look at the country a half century later, amid the longest US occupation in Latin American history, and how it birthed both a revolutionary icon and a devastating dictator.
This is Under the Shadow Season 1: Central America, Episode 9: “Nicaragua. Sandino.”
[Music]
So as I mentioned at the start of this episode, today I’m going to walk back in time with Professor Michel Gobat. He is a professor of Latin American history at the University of Pittsburgh. His focus is on US intervention in Central America, and, in particular, the Central American response to US intervention. We heard from him a lot in the last episode on William Walker, and he’ll be with us for the rest of today.
[INTERVIEW BEGINS]
Michael Fox: Michel, thank you so much for joining. I’m really excited to have you on.
Michel Gobat: Thanks for having me.
Michael Fox: Michel, first off, when we mention the longest US occupation in Latin America, most people probably would never imagine that this was Nicaragua. They just don’t know that moment.
And it’s also one of the longest US occupations in the world, right? If we’re looking back historically, 21 years, that’s longer than Afghanistan, it’s longer than Vietnam. Of course, those were wars. This is an occupation. A little bit different. But still, I think it’s fascinating. This is a period that we just don’t remember.
Michel Gobat: I was struck when I started teaching as a history professor. This was my first job, at the University of Iowa, and so the first courses I taught were before the US invasion of Iraq. And when was that… 2003, ‘04, ‘05? I don’t remember anymore. My students, my undergraduates, were shocked to hear that the US occupied other countries. So I think that generation was totally oblivious to the fact that the US actually occupied other countries for a lengthy period.
I think if I had talked to undergraduates in the 1980s, it probably would be a bit different because Reagan’s anti-communist crusade that was waged mainly in Central America, it was certainly on people’s minds. You had a strong Central American peace movement and solidarity movement in the US.
But prior to then, yes, I think Nicaragua is certainly not on people’s mind. And now it’s probably, if it’s on people’s mind, it’s maybe more because of immigration or because of the political situation in Nicaragua. But I think you’re right. People nowadays also don’t remember this.
But in the moment, in the 1910s, and particularly the 1920s, a large sector of the US public was actually aware of the US occupation of Nicaragua because that triggered an early solidarity movement in the US — We’re talking about the late 1920s — That turned the leader of an anti-US insurgency in Nicaragua. That is the one led by Augusto Sandino. That turned the leader, Sandino, into arguably one of the world’s first major anti-imperialist heroes of the era. So at that moment, people would have known.
Michael Fox: Wow. So he was like the Che Guevara of the 1920s, 1930s.
Michel Gobat: [Laughs] If you want to put it that way [Fox laughs], that might be a nice way to sell a biography of him.
But just to give you a sense. When the Chinese nationalists, when they were waging their own war in the late ‘20s against the pro-Japanese puppet regime based in Beijing, when they marched into Beijing, they marched with huge placards, portraits of Sandino. They, in fact, also named one of their battalions after Sandino.
Keep in mind, this is before we have the Internet, before we have the web. And so there were pro-Sandino movements throughout Latin America, in the US, in Europe, and also, apparently, parts of Asia.
Michael Fox: Wow, that’s fascinating.
Michel Gobat: But people’s historical memory comes and goes.
Michael Fox: That’s right.
Before we dive into Nicaragua, I want to talk about the US; the context of the US role in the region at that time. Because it wasn’t just the Nicaragua occupation, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. But you also had the US invading, sending Marines all across the region: 19-year occupation in Haiti, 8-year Dominican Republic occupation, invasions, Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, Panama.
And all of this comes, obviously, in the wake of the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, which basically puts Monroe on steroids, giving the US justification.
But can you talk about this larger context of the United States at that time and the US role in the region?
Michel Gobat: Right. Well, it begins with, many people would say, the War of 1898, when the US invades Cuba — Officially to liberate, to help Cubans who are waging their own war of independence, liberate the island from Spanish colonial rule that began early on in the 1500s.
And then, quickly, that war expanded into the Pacific. And with the US triumph over Spain, the US acquired territories not just in the Caribbean, mainly Cuba, but basically Cuba and Puerto Rico, and then, also in the Pacific, the Philippines, mainly Philippines and Guam.
And so there are different interpretations. Some scholars, or many scholars in the US, for a long time saw this as an accident. There’s an un-American thing to go out and acquire territories, and largely they saw this as a response to what the European imperialists were doing at that time. So there’s the so-called scramble for Africa, and in Asia too.
And so a lot of historians believe that the US was forced to play this, what Mark Twain called the un-American game, as a way to defend national security. In other words, if the US did not do this, the Caribbean would really be consolidated as a European lake, and that would threaten US national security.
And that’s why someone like Roosevelt could invoke the Monroe Doctrine, because the Monroe Doctrine, in many ways, is all about keeping Europe out of the Americas as a way of defending US national security. And so that’s how he could, in turn, invoke the Monroe Doctrine to basically justify, even more blatantly than Monroe, US intervention in Latin America.
A very different way of looking at it is that this is not at all un-American. This is part of the DNA of US political culture. And so these are people, these are scholars like Walter LaFeber who would say this is a new form of Manifest Destiny. So they call this the era of New Manifest Destiny.
In other words, this is a continuation of the Manifest Destiny expansion of the mid-19th century that was cut short by the US Civil War, and that it took the US a couple of decades to recuperate from the destruction wrought by this war. And that by the 1890s, the US was again ready to expand.
And not coincidentally, it certainly expanded first toward Hawaii. In 1892, there was a pro-US coup that overthrew the monarchy, and there was already talk about annexing Hawaii then that didn’t occur until 1898. And then moving further west, towards China. But it’s not coincidental that the main thrust was south into Latin America, which also happened in the mid-19th century.
And so for them, the idea is that this is just a natural evolution of US history that was cut short by the occupation.
And then there’s a third group that basically says that it was essentially for economic reasons that the US expanded. This is a moment, the 1890s, where you have a major economic crisis plaguing the US. And so the idea was that the US would try to solve its economic problem by creating new markets abroad for US products. So this is often associated with the Open Door policy.
Those are the three main interests. So the point here is that one is more geostrategic, that the US is a reluctant imperialist. The second is that this is part of US political culture, and the third sees this more in economic terms. But whatever it is, it shows that the US is interested in Latin America, particularly in the Caribbean, as a region.
So you’re right that the US occupation of Nicaragua should not be seen as an isolated incident, but it’s important to connect that US occupation with other interventions in the area. And that’s why some scholars don’t like the term “intervention”, because intervention suggests that these are isolated incidents that are not connected with each other.
There are scholars who argue that the more appropriate term is to use the concept of imperialism, because then you can see how the US is trying to create what some scholars would argue is an informal empire — Because it’s an empire based on US control of independent nations, largely by turning them to protectorates, but not turning them into formal colonies, with the exception of Puerto Rico. In other words, these territories are not formally incorporated into the US. They remain independent, but clearly the US exerts extraordinary influence over their internal affairs.
And, of course, with each country you have different interests at play. Some countries, more economic interests predominate. In others, it’s more strategic. So there are obviously differences, but I think it’s important to see see the connections among them all
Michael Fox: Completely. So let’s dive into Nicaragua. Take us back to that moment in the beginning, in the lead up to the occupation. Why did the US occupy Nicaragua for 21 years? What was happening at the time?
Michel Gobat: Well, in the case of Nicaragua, I would argue that it’s largely strategic interests. Some people would argue that this is part of dollar diplomacy, where diplomacy helps dollars. In other words, that the US government is doing the bidding of US corporations.
And when we’re talking about a place like Nicaragua, we’re talking about Central America. Often scholars think we’re talking mainly about fruit companies, like the United Fruit Company that was established in 1899 and then quickly came to control or establish large banana plantations throughout Central America, mainly on the Caribbean coast, from Guatemala all the way down to Panama. And there were certainly banana plantations in Nicaragua. Not as large as, let’s say, in Guatemala, Honduras, or in Costa Rica, but they were certainly there.
But the main reason why the US government was so interested in Nicaragua had to do with the canal. Nicaragua’s often been seen, together with Panama, as the ideal site for a canal. And the need for the US to control a canal through Central America became even more urgent with the War of 1898, when battleships that were in the Pacific had to go all the way around the tip of South America to reach the Caribbean. So it became even more urgent.
But US dreams of a Central American canal go all the way back to the founding of the United States. Already Thomas Jefferson was talking about the need to create a canal. So there are long-standing US plans to create a canal in Central America.
And in the end it was Panama. The US construction on the Panama Canal began in 1904 and lasted for 10 years. In 1914, it was opened. But for a long time, up to 1904, Nicaragua was seen as the so-called America route. That means the US government was mainly interested in Nicaragua, not Panama. Panama was more associated with European initiatives particularly.
And it wasn’t until the very end, even in 1903, when US Congress finally decided to construct the canal in Panama. I forget exactly what month that was, but a few months earlier, if I’m not mistaken, they took a vote again on the canal, and it was Nicaragua, that one. So up to close to the very end, it seemed like the US was going to build the canal through Nicaragua and not Panama.
But in the end, it went for Panama, in part because… It has a lot to do with the fact that Nicaragua was an independent country, while Panama, at that time, was still a province of Colombia. And the US is able to help Panamanian separatists gain their independence from Colombia. So US control of Panama was greater than in the case of Nicaragua.
But Nicaragua, at that time, was ruled by a Liberal dictator by the name of Jose Santos Zelaya, who came to power in 1894, and nowadays in Nicaragua is seen as very much an anti-US, nationalist hero.
But up to the moment when the US decided to build a canal through Panama rather than Nicaragua, Zelaya was arguably the most pro-US president in Nicaraguan history. He really wanted the US to construct the canal through Nicaragua, gave them unprecedented concessions. But then once the US turned, or decided to do the canal in Panama, he then tried to get other powers to create an alternative canal through Panama, courting mainly European powers. And Germany seemed very interested.
But he also was courting the Japanese. Japan was becoming an imperial power at that time, and the US really wasn’t very fond of his efforts. In fact, they saw that as a strategic threat to their control of the Panama Canal, and really didn’t want a rival canal to be built just north — Nicaragua is not that far away from Panama. And that’s how the US then turned against Zelaya, essentially forced his ouster. That’s why Zelaya is now seen as such an anti-US nationalist.
The US tried to install a pro-US puppet government that only created greater unrest in the country that led to the outbreak of a civil war in 1912. And that triggered the first major US military intervention in Nicaragua in the 20th century after the Walker episode of the 1850s, and that’s really when the occupation begins.
Although US military intervention already began in 1910, when the presence of US warships off the Caribbean coast played a very key role in the overthrowing of Zelaya and also in the downfall of a successor government led by a Liberal who had enjoyed great support in Nicaragua and was seen as a democratic alternative to this dictator. But the US just lumped all Liberals in the same boat and saw him, this Liberal, as a mini Zelaya, and was adamantly opposed to him, and installed, essentially, a Conservative government. And that government wasn’t able to control things, and things just got worse.
And that’s how you get that outbreak of the Civil War. That’s essentially the beginning of the US military occupation that lasts until 1933.
Michael Fox: Wow. So there’s two fascinating things that you just mentioned: the Liberals. Because I remember, at first, the Liberals, that’s who invited William Walker to come to the country, that was his people. So now you see this shift over 60 years where, as you note, the Liberals are no longer who the US wants to work with. So it’s an interesting transition.
Walk us through, Michel, the occupation. What does this look like? How many troops are on the ground? What’s the reality, and why is the United States there so long?
Michel Gobat: So you have the invasion force. The Civil War breaks out in May, June, something like that. And there are various things happening, including a hunger crisis. People are clamoring for food imports.
The government is opposed to importing food because it would then increase the government debt, and the US was really gung ho about making sure that the government debt would decrease —
A belief that the great problem in a place like Nicaragua was financial instability.
What you have are these irresponsible elites fighting over the National Treasury. So what the US did, after 1910, was have Wall Street bankers take over the National Treasury of Nicaragua. And with the support of these US officials, the Conservative government is blocking the import of food, but there’s this famine going on. And that also leads to a lot of unrest.
In any case, you have this US military invasion in September. I think, ultimately, the invasion force totals about 2,500 troops. I’m not quite sure. And they are able to defeat the rebel army that is, essentially, a Liberal-Conservative alliance.
So that’s part of the reason why you have the Civil War. The Liberals are ostracized by the US, so they’re not not able to participate politically. But what triggers the Civil War is a conflict among Conservatives. And an important sector of the Conservatives take up arms against the Conservative government, and then the Liberals join them.
That’s important to keep in mind, because a lot of people think it’s just the Liberals that opposed the the US, but no — It’s a Liberal-Conservative joint army that opposes the US. I would argue these two groups enjoy public support, more than in the case of the Conservative government. In fact, they also control more seats in the Congress. But the US is opposed to them and quickly is able to defeat this rebel army. And after the defeat, the vast majority of US troops are withdrawn.
So what you have then is what’s called a legation guard. It’s a small guard, I forget exactly how many men, maybe about 200, who are based in the capital of Managua. They basically defend the legation. That is what, back then, was the US Embassy. It’s more a symbolic presence. As long as the legation is there, Nicaraguans know that if they ever try to overthrow the government, the US will quickly intervene with a much larger force.
And that lasts, mainly, until another civil war breaks out in 1926. Again it’s a civil war triggered by a Liberal-Conservative alliance that’s opposed to a Conservative government. And the US intervenes again, probably with a similarly sized force, I forgot exactly what, but 2,500 maybe, or 3,000 troops.
And unlike the first time, however, they intervene, but they know the solution is no longer to prop up the existing Conservative government, but to promote free elections. And so, for the first time, you have free elections in Nicaragua, in the sense that they’re competitive. And those elections are won by the Liberals. They’re in power until the end of the US occupation in 1933.
It’s the Liberals and a small sector of the Conservatives that constitute the rebel army in the Civil War of 1926-27 that triggers the second major US invasion. And nearly all Liberal generals support the US invasion, because they now believe that the US is sincere in allowing them to come back to power through free elections.
Except for one general. This is Sandino, and he refuses to support this new form of US protectorate, and he refuses to lay down his arms and goes to this northern, corner borderlands area with Honduras called the Segovias, and starts his insurgency. It starts very small, but then obviously it becomes a very potent insurgency that the US occupiers ultimately aren’t able to put down.
Michael Fox: Can you talk about his guerrilla war against the Marines once the Civil War ends?
Michel Gobat: I think, for a while, people were not quite clear what was the social basis of his army. Some people think that these are miners because this region, this isolated region, this frontier region of Nicaragua, also has US-owned mines, and some of his earliest attacks are against these US-owned mines. He attacks them and is able to gain recruits there, and also funds things like that.
But in the end, the people who study Sandino’s rank and file most closely come to the conclusion it’s largely a peasant-based army. And it matters because if you think his guerrilla army mainly consists of miners then you would think that they would promote a socialist identity. If they’re mainly peasants, then the idea is maybe they’re defending different interests.
But they’re essentially a guerrilla army, and their home base is largely in the Segovias, but eventually they’re able to carry out attacks or offensives that go well beyond their home base. So they go at, one point, from their home base all the way to the Atlantic coast, where they attack some US-owned plantations. But they are also able to go southwest towards Lake Nicaragua. And at one point, it seems like they’re even threatening to attack the capital of Managua.
So they do spread, but their main theater of operations is in the Segovias. And they’re a classic guerrilla army. At the very beginning, he waged these more like open field battles. But the US used airplanes. It was very easy for them to decimate — Is that the word in English? — Sandino’s troops.
And then, after that, he embraces classic guerilla strategy. So small troops, small groups of soldiers that attack with more like a hit and run tactic. And they often also don’t wear uniforms, so they blend more easily into the civilian population.
But that said, he does try to create an alternative state in the Segovias. He names authorities. He even has letterhead and official stamps. So there is this idea that he’s trying to create a new Nicaragua or a new liberated Nicaragua. Liberated not just from the US occupation but also US hegemony.
He becomes very critical of the Americanization of popular culture. He’s opposed to… I don’t think he’s opposed to baseball. But he’s opposed to, for example, the modern woman, the flappers. He sees that these are degenerated Nicaraguans, and not really true Nicaraguans.
Which is very different than his brother, Socrates, who also supported Sandino, and the legitimate son of his father. So he’s a couple years younger. He actually goes to the US when the Civil War breaks out. Lives there for two years in Brooklyn, and became really enamored with the US lifestyle flappers and all that. But eventually he also hooks up with his brother, and he is killed with his brother in 1934 when they’re assassinated.
Michael Fox: Wow. So I want to get to his assassination in a second, but there’s a couple things that I want to dive into in the meantime. One of them, when I was in Panama recently, I found a 1951 copy of a book titled The Story of the US Marines by Maj. George P Hunt. And I picked it up on purpose, because I wanted to see what he was saying about the Marines and occupations in Central America and the Caribbean at the time.
It’s interesting, because he literally describes Sandino as “A wily Nicaraguan bandit, Sandino”. That’s his description. And while he’s describing the episode that you’re talking about, the planes, it was the first time that US planes are used to support ground troops, close air support and whatnot. But it’s fascinating that he’s referred to as a bandit even though he’s Nicaraguan, and meanwhile the United States is an occupying army. Could you explain that a little bit more, and also how he is seen in Nicaragua by Nicaraguans at the time?
Michel Gobat: Well, the bandit thing is a typical US trope. They also saw Pancho Villa when with the Pershing Expedition in Chihuahua in 1916, ‘17. Villa was also seen as a bandit, even though, at one point, he was the leader of, arguably, the largest revolutionary army in modern Latin American history.
So Sandino is also seen as a bandit, both by the US but also by the pro-US Nicaraguan government. And one of the key goals of his brother, Socrates Sandino, when he’s in the US… For a while, he doesn’t publicly identify with his brother. But very quickly, once Sandino starts attacking US troops, the US occupiers, and becomes a hero among anti-imperialists in the US and the anti-imperialist movement is based in New York. So Socrates is well-known among people who know him because of his brother, but he doesn’t publicly identify with the solidarity movement for fear of deportation.
But then, for whatever reason, he does decide to support the pro-Sandino solidarity movement, and makes these talks and big speeches. The very first speech he gives in Irving Hall, I think it’s called, in New York. An audience of about 1,000 or 2,000 people. So a lot of people are hearing him.
And one of the main goals is to defend his brother’s reputation, saying, no, he’s not a bandit, he is a patriot, just like George Washington or Simón Bolívar, because a lot of people in the audience are Latinos, recent immigrants from Latin America. And so it was very important to him to underscore that his brother was not a bandit and more like a liberator. You can see also that that’s very important to the Sandinista propaganda at that time. How they explain themselves: we’re not bandits.
But reinforcing his bandit image is, like anybody participating in the war, there was a lot of violence going on, and not just against the US occupiers, but also against the local population, particularly those who were seen to be collaborating with the US occupiers. And that goes to your other question, what was Sandino’s image in Nicaragua?
Later, when another revolution triumphed in Nicaragua in 1979, Sandino was seen as the quintessential Nicaraguan hero, and it would have been very hard to imagine that Nicaraguans would have opposed Sandino at that time, except for elites who are in the pocket of the US. These are the so-called… The term we call them in Spanish is the vende patrias. The people who sell out their country. They sell their country, vende patrias.
But in fact, it was more complicated. There’s a US historian who’s done great work on this, Michael Schroeder, who shows that before the Sandino insurgency or rebellion began, the Segovias is a place plagued by a lot of conflict among, I think he calls them gangs. But these armed groups, for whatever reason, are fighting against each other.
So there’s quite a lot of violence there. And so people who have that experience see Sandino, if they’re not on his side, they see him as part of this gang warfare. And outside of the Segovias, for a while, Sandino is, because of the way the newspapers report about him, he’s often seen as a bandit or as someone who is promoting a lot of political violence.
But it’s interesting that some of his greatest supporters outside of the Segovias are not people that are usually identified with his cause. So, Sandino, for a while, enjoyed strong support from the Communist International. So he’s often associated with leftist groups. But leftist groups in Nicaragua outside the Segovias, like artisan groups or the labor movement, they had an ambivalent relationship with Sandino.
Towards the end, some of his greatest supporters actually were members of the most Conservative sector of the elite. These oligarchs from Granada who would then often go out at night, spray pro-Sandino slogans on the walls of their hometown, Granada, or they would go out on horseback and shout pro-Sandino slogans.
And this is something that most scholars have overlooked, but it’s an odd… It seems like a paradoxical convergence between Sandino and these oligarchs, who are often very young, who then later embrace quasi-fascist ideas. But what brings them together is this hatred for the US occupiers, this belief that Nicaragua needs to be rejuvenated, and also to expel the American way of life out of the popular spirit of Nicaraguans.
So there are things that bring them together, but in the end there’s no real alliance between them. But there’s some of it, there’s some of his greatest supporters, and that also affects the way in which maybe more leftist Nicaraguans would view Sandino. Because they would see that quasi alliance between Sandino and these reactionaries — They call themselves reactionaries — To put it mildly, with suspicion.
Michael Fox: Wow. Fascinating.
Michel Gobat: So he is, at the time, a complex… Nicaraguans’ views of him are contradictory.
Michael Fox: I want to dive in real real fast to talk about these complicated relations. You mentioned the American way of life. The title of your book is Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua Under US Imperial Rule. And, in fact, you mentioned the paradoxes in your book, which I want to dive into a second.
But I love the title because it raises so many questions. The American dream is supposed to be inside the United States; what is it doing in Nicaragua? What are we talking about? Can you talk about where does that come from, and why does that make sense within this context for Nicaragua?
Michel Gobat: Well, the title of the book is a play on an important book that came out… Oh, God, when did that come out? Probably in the 1980s, I think, by Emily Rosenberg, called Spreading the American Dream. She focuses on this time period, the 1890s to about the 1920s, if I’m not mistaken, where she argues that there are various ways in which the US spreads its way of life. One way is through businesses. US government, too. But a key promoter of the American way of life at this time is Hollywood, with a dramatic expansion of Hollywood, the film industry, in the 1920s.
And so, Confronting the American Dream is because the book focuses on the wealthiest regional elite of Nicaragua, the ones based in Granada who, for a long time, admire the American way of life. Many of them actually go to the US to study. Mainly young men, but also women. Young men tend to go to the US to go to college or maybe get a medical degree, something like that. Women often are going more to high schools, finishing schools. But a lot of them go to the US.
And so there’s this one family, it’s the Urtecho family, and one of the most prominent members of this family is José Coronel Urtecho, who then becomes a very important intellectual in 20th century Nicaragua. Conservative upbringing. He’s one of these reactionaries who supports Sandino. Then later he supports, basically, the person who ordered Sandino’s assassination: Anastasio Somoza, who becomes the dictator of Nicaragua.
And then Coronel Urtecho experiences also the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979 and becomes one of its main supporters. So, he’s a great person to see all these changes over time.
He wrote this really interesting essay explaining the Americanization of his family, how everybody, when he was growing up in the early 20th century, everybody in the family spoke English, admired the American way of life. And he himself spent time with his mother in San Francisco, I think in 1925 or ‘26 he was there. And then comes back to Nicaragua and becomes a prominent… Even though he’s young, but because of his elite status, he becomes a prominent journalist and literary figure.
And he then turns against the American dream. So he then believes that the problem of Nicaragua is that it’s too Americanized. That it’s not just undermining Nicaraguan sovereignty but is also creating all these conflicts among Nicaraguans, and that’s facilitating, that’s helping the US control the country. So he becomes one of Sandino’s main supporters at the very end.
So I use him and his group to show how Nicaraguans were not always… This group was not always opposed to the American way of life. On the contrary, they embraced it, and are seen as the main promoters, or the main symbols, of the American way of life in Nicaragua. But then they turn against it.
And so what I wanted to show is how a US occupation can promote this tension between anti-Americanism and Americanization. That the relationship between these two is complicated. So some of the main opponents of the US occupation were highly Americanized Liberals who never abandoned the American dream. They supported the American dream, but they believed that Nicaraguans were not able to realize the American dream precisely because of the US occupation.
Very similar to the role highly Americanized young Cubans played in radicalizing the Cuban Revolution that triumphed in 1959. Nowadays, we see that, essentially, as a communist revolution. And it did become a communist revolution, and communism is often seen as the very opposite of the American dream. But at the beginning it was these highly Americanized Cubans who believed that the reason why Cubans couldn’t experience the American way of life was because of the strong influence the US exerted over the island. So you have something very similar in Nicaragua.
Michael Fox: How ingrained in the US occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 was the goal of Americanizing Nicaragua, turning it into a little United States?
Michel Gobat: You mean by the US government?
Michael Fox: Yes, exactly, exactly.
Michel Gobat: I think the US government was just mainly interested in stability in Nicaragua. Again, its main goal was to make sure that political instability would not open the door to another foreign power, be it Germany or Japan, to build a canal. And it was looking for the least expensive form of control, and that was dollar diplomacy.
So it basically wanted to have a pro-US government in place. This would be the Conservatives. And since it believed that the main source of political instability in Nicaragua was infighting among elites, particularly with the National Treasury, it turned, essentially, Nicaragua into a financial protectorate. So Wall Street bankers control the National Treasury, as well as the railroads and things like that.
But their goal wasn’t really trying to Americanize the country, unlike maybe with other more deeply rooted US occupations that not only had a greater presence of US troops, but also where the goal of the US was really very different.
I’m thinking, for example, the US occupation of Germany or Japan after World War II, where the US probably did have a goal of Americanizing those societies to, in many ways, get rid of fascism. You didn’t have that in Nicaragua.
That doesn’t mean that there weren’t agents of the US occupation that tried to promote Americanization. Some of the greatest promoters of Americanization were US missionaries. During the occupation, you have Protestant missions that set foot in various parts of Nicaragua, and so they are trying to promote Americanization. In many ways, and sometimes in unintended ways, they’re going against the Nicaraguan ideals of patriarchy and they’re trying to educate young women, particularly in the countryside.
And so a lot of Nicaraguan men see this as a threat, that these Protestant missionaries are trying to liberate local women and turn them into so-called modern women, even though it’s more complicated. But that’s what they were thinking was happening. And so you have quite a bit of violence meted out against these Protestant missionaries, a number of them who were actually women.
So I would argue it’s those agents, US citizens who go to Nicaragua, who are the ones more gung ho about promoting Americanization than the US government.
Michael Fox: How much of an influence did the occupation have on local politics itself, in particular in those final years? And do we have a sense of how much support the United States and the Marines had?
Michel Gobat: Until the second Civil War breaks out in 1926-27, the main political impact of the US occupation was that until about 1923, ‘24 it basically blocked Liberals from participating in national politics of the Liberal Party. So the Liberal Party, even though one could argue it was the main political party in Nicaragua, it was ostracized, it was proscribed by the US, so that allowed the Conservatives to stay in power at the local level.
However, elections were a bit more competitive, in part because sometimes Liberals participated or the Conservative Party itself was not a homogeneous group. You had different factions and so it was a bit more competitive.
Things really changed and became, I would argue, more democratic with the second major US invasion in 1927, when the US decided that the main source of instability in Nicaragua was no longer financial conflicts of the National Treasury, but rather of the issue of free and fair elections.
And so what the US then did was have the US military, US troops, together with troops from the newly formed Nicaraguan army, the so-called National Guard, or in Spanish Guardia Nacional, that was recreated in 1927 and was led by US officers. So the rank and file are Nicaraguans, but the officers are US Marines. This new “Nicaraguan” army and US troops then controlled or supervised elections that occurred between 1928 and 1932. And so you have the national election, the presidential elections of ‘28 and ‘32, and then, also in 1930, you also have regional elections and congressional elections. And so they’re all controlled by what’s called the US electoral mission.
And the idea was to make them free and fair. For example, US troops would man the voting booths. they’re called mesas, the electoral tables. They would prohibit local strongmen, the so-called caudillos, from manipulating the local vote.
I studied that pretty carefully, and I would argue they weren’t completely free and fair because the US would also proscribe third parties. This is the US model of democracy. That democracy you have to have, it can only be two parties. In this case, the Liberals and Conservatives. And there were other parties that the US basically prevented from participating in the elections, either more radical or more nationalistic. But for Nicaraguan circumstances, these were pretty free and fair elections. And this is even acknowledged by some prominent leftists who could hardly be seen as lackeys of US imperialism.
But the unintended consequence was that it gave the local military a lot of political clout. Essentially what the US was trying to do by controlling these elections was not only to guarantee free and fair elections, but also to undermine the power of these local strongmen, the so-called “caudillos“. They believed that the big problem in Nicaragua was caudillismo. And that these were irresponsible, anti-modern, backward-looking, regional strongmen who treated the poor, essentially that they would herd them as sheep into the voting booth and things like that.
And you have some really powerful quotes from US officers at the time who were part of the electoral mission who really believe that they’re promoting democracy at the local level. But in doing so what they did was essentially have the Nicaraguan military, which was led by US officers at that time — The Guardia Nacional — Take over the role of the caudillos. So, indirectly laying the foundations for the military dictatorship that emerged in Nicaragua three years after the withdrawal of the last US troops in 1933. That’s the Somoza dictatorship that lasts all the way until 1979.
A lot of scholars, or people in Nicaragua, believe that this was an intended consequence of the US occupation, that the US wanted Somoza to create this military dictatorship. And there were certainly US officials that supported Somoza, including the US ambassador. But I would argue that this was more an unintended consequence of the way in which the US tried to use the military to promote democracy.
And so it points more generally to the perils of US democracy promotion at the point of bayonets, which became a very important mode of US democracy promotion in the 20th century, particularly after the end of the Cold War.
I think the Nicaraguan experience just shows that we have to take into account the issue of unintended consequences to get a better understanding of the perils of US democracy promotion via the military.
Michael Fox: I love this, Michel, because that’s seen as the ideal for every president in the United States: We’re going to spread democracy to the world. Our democracy. Not any other style, but our democracy of the world. And this is such a great example of how it can go terribly wrong.
Michel, talk about Sandino’s capture and his assassination, and what happens that then leads to the Somoza dictatorship in the following years.
Michel Gobat: Well, he’s not actually captured. So, in 1933, the US troops withdraw, and the question is what’s going to happen to Sandino’s troops up in the Segovias, because obviously they are a powerful force. The US occupiers were not able to defeat this insurgency.
And so Sandino travels a couple of times to Managua from the Segovias to create a new political party, and he’s not successful. But it’s on one of his last trips to Managua, he’s there, he’s actually meeting with the president of the time, Sacasa, who’s a Liberal.
And it is after that meeting where he and a couple of his closest advisors, including his brother, they’re leaving the presidential palace. They’re driving away from it, and then a Guardia patrol — And by now the Guardia Nacional, the Nicaraguan military force that was established during the US occupation, initially led by US officers, it’s not been totally Nicaraguanized, was the term they would use then. That is, it’s now led by Nicaraguan officers who don’t have any formal military training. And so the leader is Somoza. He was a former Liberal politician, who then becomes the head of this Nicaraguan army.
And he orders Guardia troops to capture, to arrest Sandino. And what they do is they kill them all. And then what they do is the Guardia then goes up to the north and essentially commits this massacre against Sandino’s followers. He has this camp in [inaudible], up in the north. And that is the beginning of the dictatorship.
For a while there’s outrage in Nicaragua. Somoza is able to survive this political outrage. And in 1936, he feels comfortable enough to overthrow Sacasa, the president. And then there are elections that are anything but free and fair, and he becomes the president.
But essentially he’s the dictator, and is assassinated by a young leftist in 1956. And that’s when his eldest son takes over…. What was his name again?
Michael Fox: Luis Somoza Debayle
Michael Gobat: Luis, yeah, thank you. Luis, who actually studied agricultural engineering or something like that at LSU in the US. And under Luis… So it’s 1956, he dies from a heart attack in ‘67. There’s a sense that maybe there’s some political opening, maybe a way out of the dictatorship. This is also the era of the Cuban Revolution.
But then his younger brother, after he dies, his younger brother, Tacho… Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who is a graduate of West Point and is the head of the Guardia Nacional, takes over, and clearly is opposed to any attempts to promote democratization, and he’s the one who’s overthrown by the Sandinista revolution in 1979.
Michael Fox: What would be a good summary of those 43 years of dictatorship under the Somozas, and particularly Anastasio Somoza? Is this what we just envision, of a brutal, bloodthirsty, no-democratic-rights style dictatorship through over four decades?
Michel Gobat: Yeah, I think that, for a long time, that was the dominant view, that this was essentially a brutal military dictatorship from day one in 1936 to the last day on July 17, 1979, that it’s essentially the same thing. I think that would be a mistake. In many ways, our views of the dictatorship are colored by the last years, particularly the third Somoza, Tacho Somoza, who’s the head of the National Guard, who essentially uses the US’s paranoia of communism to squash any efforts to promote democracy in Nicaragua, and becomes very violent.
It’s a bit more complicated because also the Guardia becomes much more of a praetorian force, like a family army. And so for a long time, I think scholars, or the general view of the Somoza dictatorship was that they turned Nicaragua into their family estate, their family hacienda.
What gets lost is that the original Somoza was a bit of a populist and that the National Guard, the army, for a while — And this is where maybe you can see this is a legacy of the US occupation. The National Guard and some of its officers had a very strong anti-elite streak. Not all of them, but some of them, especially those who were trained by the US and so they would help peasants wage their battles over land against local landlords, especially if the landlords were Conservatives. Then Somoza, he’s a Liberal, so had no problem supporting this.
So there’s a scholar by the name of Jeffrey Gould who showed in his first book how there’s a populist basis to the dictatorship that often gets overlooked, and helps us better understand why it lasted for so long.
But that all started collapsing in the 1960s, and it’s still unclear why. But I would argue that it had a lot to do with the way in which the Guardia officers, who until that moment were military officers but also occupied important, formally or informally, local political positions. They then become quasi-military entrepreneurs. They take advantage of this second agro export boom that dramatically transforms Nicaragua in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The main product here is not coffee, but it’s cotton. You get the expansion of the cotton industry.
And this is where they become the landlords and then, essentially, no longer are supporting the peasants. So this is where the Somoza dictatorship starts dramatically losing its popular support, particularly in the countryside. Because of the expansion of cotton, you have a lot of land conflicts, you have peasants losing their land, they’re migrating to the cities. This helps the revolutionary movement that was established in the early ‘60s, the National Sandinista Liberation Front, recruit followers. And the Guardia becomes much more of a praetorian force, beholden to Somoza, becomes much more brutal.
And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that now these military officers have also become important economic actors. And so they have a lot to lose if they start supporting the opposition to the Somoza dictatorship.
Michael Fox: Michel, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you think is important to talk about in terms of legacy, or that we haven’t touched on about the longest US occupation in Latin America from 1912 to 1933, and why it’s important to remember today?
Michel Gobat: That’s a big question [both laugh]. I don’t like to draw lessons from history. History doesn’t repeat itself, but I do think this military occupation, particularly the end and the way… So what you have is the lengthiest US military occupation shortly followed by the lengthiest military dictatorship in modern Latin American history. And a lot of people see this as a natural outgrowth, as I mentioned earlier, so the US occupation produces this dictatorship.
Again, I think it’s really important to see this more as an unintended consequence. And I think if you don’t take, for example, the US efforts to promote democracy via the military seriously, you don’t really see the perils of it. And I think the Nicaraguan case shows neatly the dangers of US democracy promotion.
Michael Fox: Absolutely. It’s so powerful and interesting to be able to weave through all these things and to hearken back to other stuff, mentioning here this is where we’re headed with 1980s Contra War stuff, and then look back at William Walker and understand how one thing leads to another. And then like you said, the democracy promotion stuff is so key.
But also understanding when a country is occupied for 21 years, that leaves a mark. That has a profound impact. It’s not just like, oh, they’re there and, oh yeah, we’ll leave now and it’s all fine. That means something, and that legacy remains.
Michel Gobat: You’re right. We still need to know a lot more about the impact on local society.
So there’s a graduate student, a Nicaraguan named Eimeel Castillo at the University of Michigan who’s now working more on the impact the US occupation had on local society, particularly in terms of gender relations. Because a lot of Nicaraguan women were prostitutes or married US military personnel, how did that affect their relations with their families? It’s that Americanization at the local level that, as you said, must have left a deep imprint on local society. That’s really hard to get at.
Michael Fox: And baseball. Is this when baseball becomes an important sport in Nicaragua, around that same time?
Michel Gobat: A lot of people think that baseball… And baseball is the most popular sport in Nicaragua, which stands out in Central America. It’s usually soccer. A lot of people think it’s because of the US occupation. But actually baseball becomes popular, or is already popular, before the US occupation begins in 1912. It’s imported mainly by students, elites, these elites from Granada who go to the US and study, and they bring back baseball, and baseball then becomes, quickly, very popular.
And I would argue that, certainly by the early years of the US occupation, baseball probably replaces cock fighting as the most popular sport in Nicaragua. It’s often seen as a sport that promotes civilization. It’s a team sport and it’s regulated, not like cock fighting that’s seen as bloody.
But actually at the very beginning, baseball games were pretty bloody because you didn’t have stadiums, so there was no separation between the spectators and the players. And you had teams from competing towns play against each other, and sometimes they got really violent. Blood was spilled then, just like in a cock pit, but the blood spilt was not animal blood, it was human blood.
I think also… It might be a bizarre way, but I think that underscores the popularity of baseball, that it could play such a prominent role in these local conflicts between towns.
Michael Fox: And cock fighting was the main sport before baseball, then?
Michel Gobat: Yeah, you see that in the Walker period, just how critical cock fighting is.
Michael Fox: Oh, my gosh. Michel, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Michel Gobat: Thank you. I’m looking forward to your next podcast on cock fighting [both laugh].
Michael Fox: Absolutely.
[INTERVIEW ENDS]
Michael Fox: That is all for Episode 9 of Under the Shadow.
Next time, we fast forward into 1980s Nicaragua to an insurgency that overthrew a dictator, to US attempts to stymie its success by any means necessary, and the scandal that ensued.
Speaker: We hold these hearings, because in the course of the conduct of this nation, something went wrong. Seriously wrong.
Michael Fox: That’s up next on Under the Shadow.
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