Introduction to the Site

     Nationalist and anti-imperialist guerrilla wars, often mingled with ethnic, religious, and class conflict, rank among the most important and widespread phenomena of the modern era — the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, East Timor, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq — the list is long, the legacy bloody.  (Right: hyper-masculine statue dubbed "Rambo" by locals, dilapidated, paint-splashed & graffiti-ridden, months before its dismantling, with children clustered on pedestal, Managua, Nicaragua, 1996; photo by the author; click on image for full photo)   

     THIS WEBSITE offers a documentary history of one such war:  the nationalist rebellion against US intervention in Nicaragua led by Augusto Sandino in the 1920s and 1930s.  Right now this Website houses and integrates some 780 archival documents, all transcribed and fully searchable.  In time it will house and integrate some 12,000 pages of documents, transcribed and searchable — materials collected over two decades from archives in the United States and Nicaragua.   This tsunami of evidence on this well-known guerrilla insurgency (or in the lexicon of today's military historians, "small," "unconventional," or "asymmetrical" war) offers an unprecedented look at what was happening "on the ground" during a major foreign invasion and occupation; the nationalist insurgency spawned by that invasion; and the counterinsurgency campaign that resulted.  The portrait of Sandino's revolt that emerges from these 12,000 or so pages of documents is vastly more nuanced and complex than any scholar or poet has yet conveyed.  

     Yet however nuanced this portrait,  however intricate and messy and confusing, it is also true that everything you read about in these pages — all the murders and killings, all the heroism and sacrifice, all the planning and scheming and marching and spying and fighting and dying — all were rooted in a simple reality:  the United States of America decided to invade and occupy this small Central American country, and a small group of Nicaraguans decided to resist.  (Left: 1984 Bulgarian postage stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sandino's death)

     As a social and cultural historian, I am mainly interested in the Sandino revolt as a social and cultural process, as a local response to foreign invasion and occupation.  The documents presented here reflect this focus.  They were selected because they speak, in some fashion, to the agency of Nicaraguans and Segovianos in shaping their own history.   

     The US Marines first intervened in Nicaragua during the civil war of 1912, and were stationed in the country more or less continuously for the next 20 years.  In May 1927, after another civil war (1926-27), a mechanic and patriot named Augusto C. Sandino rebelled against the US occupation and the "sellout" Nicaraguan government.  Sandino needed a place to wage an armed rebellion against US imperialism, and loyal soldiers to follow him.  He found both in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, a place called Las Segovias.  There, for nearly six years (1927-1933), he and his "crazy little army" waged a guerrilla insurgency against the US Marines and the Nicaraguan National Guard.   (Right: photo of the Segovian town of Yalí by the author, 1990)

     In the late 1920s, this rugged region bordering Honduras was home to about 120,000 people spread over some 6,000 square miles of mountains, valleys, forests, and jungles, in several dozen towns and hundreds of villages, hamlets, and homesteads.  After May 1927, people flocked to Sandino's banner.  The Marine invasion intensified; the US-created National Guard grew in power; and by 1932 the Sandinista rebels, based in Las Segovias and organized into a government of their own, threatened to topple the national government.    (Left:  Campesino in field, Western Segovias, 1928, George F. Stockes Collection, Marine Corps Research Center [MCRC], Quantico VA, one of 70 photos from the Stockes Collection published here)  

          I want to know what the US invasion, Sandino's revolution, and civil war meant to ordinary Segovianos — campesinos, Indians, tenants, sharecroppers, smallholders, seasonal laborers, day laborers, townsfolk, migrants — women and children as well as men — as well as peddlers and traders, boat-drivers and mule-drivers, ranchers and coffee growers, merchants and professionals, politicians and military leaders — individuals, families, and communities caught up in a whirlwind of foreign invasion and insurgency as complex and multifaceted as any in history.  I also want to know what it meant in the broader sweep of history — in Nicaragua, Central America, the Western Hemisphere, and the Atlantic World — and how it intersected with broader patterns and processes of social change within in these overlapping spheres.  (Right: street boy, Telpaneca, ca. 1929, Carl P. Eldred Papers, MCRC)

       Historians come and historians go, but the documents endure.  These documents, if read with enough care and attention (and along with the published literature) will bring us as close as we can get to understanding what this tumultuous period meant to ordinary Segovianos, and to its complexities as a social process locally, nationally, and transnationally.  Documents, of course, do not speak for themselves.  They must be interpreted, which is the job of historians.  Publishing these documents online creates not only a valuable tool for students and researchers.  It also means that others might interpret these documents differently than I do.  That is as it should be.  I try to introduce (or conclude) each document with some interpretive comments.  Others might disagree with my interpretations or emphases.  If you do, let me know!  Let a thousand interpretations bloom!   (Left: detail of letter from Sandino to Faustino González, 2 April 1931, one of around 1,000 Sandinista documents to be published here for the first time)

     By my reading, one of the main lessons to emerge from this mass of evidence concerns the destructive and unintended consequences of the imperial enterprise.  Through its imperial hubris, the United States in Nicaragua in the 1920s and 1930s essentially created and then nurtured its own enemy — much as it did in Vietnam, and is doing today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.  The invasion also created conditions under which sectarian divisions among Nicaraguans could flourish, in ways analogous to what is happening today in Iraq.  The whole of the intervention, in short, was a colossal mistake.  Reading these documents we can see exactly how and why this was true, and with what horrific consequences. 

     Others might disagree, or ask different questions.  That's the beauty of densely integrating all this information on a single Website:  one can ask just about any kind of question one wants to ask.  One can ask about war-making or coffee making.  Vocabularies of political violence or social geographies of production and trade.  Gender, class, and race relations.  Popular nationalism.  Military tactics and strategy.  Insurgency and counterinsurgency.  Borderlands.  Local political economies.  State formation and guerrilla war.  Leadership, weapons, and tactics.  Production and settlement patterns.  Social memory.  Just about anything.   

     I create this site in the classical tradition of scholarship:  as a substantial and original contribution to existing knowledge on a specific topic.  In part it is envisioned as a documentary annex to my forthcoming book.  In part is meant to give back to the Nicaraguan people a part of their own history.  In whole it is rooted in the hope that we — humanity, and especially US citizens and policymakers — might learn from our mistakes.  And it is here because the story told by these documents is not only edifying and important but endlessly interesting, and should become part of humanity's common stock of knowledge.

       Right now only a fraction of the available documents are published here (maybe 5%).  All can be found via this UPDATE BOX:     (back to top)

           The filing system I've developed over the years is also reproduced here.  Each document is identified by a unique alphanumeric code:  [DOCUMENT TYPE][YEAR.MONTH.DAY].   PC28.05.17 means "Patrol and Combat Report, 17 May 1928."   M29.11.30 means "Miscellaneous Intelligence Report, 30 November 1929."  Just take the "Docs" off the document type, put it in front of the date, and you've identified the document. 

     Around two-thirds of this material comes from the Records of the United States Marine Corps, housed mainly in the US National Archives (Record Group 127, or RG127) and comprising about 100 linear feet of files.  Sifting through this material I sometimes feel like a big vacuum cleaner — a ruthlessly selective vacuum cleaner that sucks up only the few good and useful documents — those that speak in some fashion to how Nicaraguans shaped their own history.  (Left:  US National Archives, Washington D.C.; that little black door at the bottom has got to be one of my very favorite doors of all time.)

     For RG127, these good and useful documents I divide into six main categories:

1.  PC-Docs  (Patrol and Combat Reports) 

These 1,000-plus reports tell an incredible story of the quotidian, spontaneous interactions of Segovianos and Marines; the also paint an exceptionally fine-grained portrait of the messiness, confusion, and complexity of guerrilla warfare; some astonishing information (over 2,400 pages at last count).  Currently the first 125 patrol & combat reports are published here, taking events to June 1928.

2.  IR-Docs  (Serial Intelligence Reports)  

In this category are serial reports, produced on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis and distributed to intelligence officers across Nicaragua — variously designated the Bn-2, B-2, R-2, and GN-2 Intelligence Reports (around 1,600 pages).

3.  M-Docs  (Miscellaneous Intelligence Reports)  

In this category falls everything else having to do with intelligence that is not from air or ground patrols, and not serial intelligence reports; a great deal of valuable information here (about 1,400 pages).

4.  S-Docs  (Sandinista-Produced Documents)

More than 1,000 hitherto unpublished documents produced by Sandinistas — letters, orders, diaries, warnings, prayers, poems, songs, sketches, lists — most seized from dead or captured rebels or camps; so far 160 published here for the first time.  An extraordinary cache (about 2,000 pages of original documents).

5.  Air-Docs  (Air Patrol Reports) 

A smaller collection on this specific aspect of the war; mostly completed, as documentary annex to my article, "Social Memory and Tactical Doctrine"  (International History Review, Sept. 2007) focusing on the air war (about 150 pages).

6.  AH-Docs  (Anastacio Hernández File)  

A more specialized collection, on the Chamorrista gang leader figuring in my journal article, "Horse Thieves to Rebels to Dogs" (Journal of Latin American Studies, Oct 1996); includes newspaper accounts, State Dept records, and other documents dealing with the topic, but based mostly on RG127 (about 150 pages).

There are seven other major types of documents besides those in RG127:

7.  IES-Docs  (IES Testimonies)

Eighty-two oral testimonies of elderly Sandinistas, most produced in the early 1980s by the Instituto de Estudio del Sandinismo, a branch of the Sandinista Ministry of Culture, based in Managua.  An extraordinary collection (1,000 pages).

8.  News-Docs  (Newspapers) 

Mainly Nicaraguan newspapers, but also some US (maybe 300 pages).

9.  USDS-Docs  (US State Department) 

A very rich collection (about 2,000 pages and growing).

10.  RF-Docs  (Rockefeller Foundation Archives)

Valuable information on public health and demographics from the philanthropic organization (about 500 pages).

11.  ANN-Docs  (Nicaraguan National Archives)

From los Archivos Nacionales de Nicaragua (ANN) in Managua; not much here, but some valuable material (maybe 50 pages).

12.  USMC-Docs  (Marine Corps Historical Center - Personal Papers Collection, others)

Not a ton here either, but helps to round out the collection; also includes ancillary pages and a bibliography of related Marine Corps material (say 300 pages, including the Emil Thomas letters and the Robert L. Denig Diary).  Includes a comprehensive list of Marine Corps casualties in Nicaragua, 1927-1933 (already published).

13.  Honduras  (Honduran National Archives)

A small collection from the Honduran National Archives and other sources, but again helps round things out (about 150 pages).  The page serves mainly as a place to organize materials in other categories relating to Honduras.  Included here are the draft of a paper titled "The Vexatious Frontier Question:  Coercion, Capital, and Sovereignty in the Western Nicaragua-Honduras Borderlands, 1919-1936" (presented to CLAH in Jan. 2008), and about 120 documents on political-military unrest in the borderlands in the eight years before the eruption of Sandino's rebellion in mid-1927.

The sum total of the numbers above is 12,000 pages of archival documents, which sounds about right, though it's only an estimate and if anything conservative.  Each is included only because it adds something of substance to the existing stock of knowledge on the subject.

There are nine other main parts of the website:

14.  Biblio

A bibliography and select excerpts of published and secondary literature.

15.  Maps

Understanding Las Segovias as a place is essential for understanding the Sandino rebellion as a social process.  I hope that soon the map pages will be interactive and 3D.  Images here are based on a digitized version of the 1934 US Army map that came out of the US occupation; I originally digitized this map using MapInfo 4.0 (took about six months — the hard part's done).  What I need now is the time to bring the mapping software to a higher level. 

16.  Contacts

Details in time and space the more than 700 military "contacts" (as the Marines called them, i.e., battles and skirmishes) in the ground war between rebels and the Marines & Guardia.

17.  MJS

My vita, scholarship, and contact information.

18.  Names 

Biographical sketches and links to about 1,000 individuals who played important roles in the conflict.

19.  Photos

So far there's two main collections, most of which have never been published anywhere else:  from the US National Archives (about 100 photos), and from the George Stockes box in the Marine Corps Research Center (another 70 or so).

20.  Top 100

Around 100 of the most illuminating Marine & Guardia documents generated during the war; actually around 81 listed right now, with 57 or so included here, but it'll grow.

21.  Notes

Envisioned as a gateway to the site's interpretive core; also, a gateway to working notes, analyses, drafts, etc.

22.  Links

Links to related sites.

     From these 22 gateway pages emanate scores of additional pages; all are still under construction.  The day they're not is the day I die or undertake a spirit quest in the outback of New Zealand (or maybe Patagonia or Yukon).  Until then this baby's being built.  Suggestions and comments invited.  This website launched March 2007.

     One last thing:   If these 12,000 or so documents represent the most valuable and important sources of information on this topic, they also represent probably less than a quarter of the total stock of useful documentary evidence.  For instance, there's the Hemeroteca Nacional  in Managua (national newspaper repository) which I've barely touched (assuming that the newspapers haven't yet turned to dust, as they almost had by my last visit) — the holdings of the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua (IHN) and other repositories in Managua and elsewhere — the Guardia Newsletters on microfilm, which I never did photocopy — some missing IR-Docs; more PC-Docs (most from 1931-32, again on microfilm, which I never copied); lots more M-Docs — though, barring some miracle of document regeneration, probably no more S-Docs — hundreds more photographs — archival material from Mexico and other Central American countries, especially newspapers — and LOTS more State Dept. documents — and materials from elsewhere, such as private archives, of which I remain ignorant. 

     In other words, as massive as this website is intended to be, it can only be the first step.  There's more to this topic than can be grasped in one person's lifetime.  But you have to start somewhere. 

     I start here, at the heart and core.

Painting by Thelma Gómez F., Masaya, Nicaragua, 1989

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