|

"Discovering your site was like finding a buried treasure. .
. . I am just beginning a personal study of the
history of Nicaragua and of Sandino in particular.
I find
Sandino's life and exploits fascinating. He has become one
of my heros (I am not Nica and am a Marine - ironic) but I
find it difficult to find information on him.
Your site will
be an asset in my study of Nicaragua and Sandino. Again,
from the bottom of my heart, Thank You. Semper Fidelis,"
--
William Alvarez, Atlanta GA
"A Nicaraguan artist friend just forwarded me your website.
I've read enough to know that it is like finding gold on the
moon!
I
traveled to Nicaragua from 1984 on, to simply see 'how they
did it.' I returned again and again . . . I have many
friends and customers with their own experiences, loves and
tales of Nicaragua.
But all of us, now
in the 'autumn' years, are feeling the weight of what we
carry, as we realize that we may be among the last for
generations to come who had the privilege of meeting and
sharing with people who had risked all and amazingly won,
and had a brief period to try to create a new way of life.
And now, the past - both the Sandinista history of the
30's and the 80's -- is being erased and banned in
Nicaragua. Which is why your work is so valuable! The
young women and men who committed to live or die in an
effort to rid the country of Somoza were fortified and
inspired over and over again by Sandino and the first 'ejército
loco.' They excavated what they could of that buried
history and then they MADE history in their own time.
So, I just want to say THANK YOU for all the work you have
done and especially for making it accessible to all and to
the future."
-- Linda John, San
Francisco CA
"Amor, Paz y Justicia, sea para todos nuestros Hermanos y Hermanas que
visitan este Web Site.
Y de manera muy especial en nombre de
toda nuestra familia,
sea también este deseo para nuestro querido Hermano el
Profesor Michael Schroeder, por haber dedicado una parte
importante de su vida a la recopilación de información sobre
la Vida y Obra del General Augusto C. Sandino y de sus
compañeros de lucha, pues reconocemos la dedicación y el
esfuerzo en su trabajo, logrando avanzar en beneficio de los
nicaragüenses y de la humanidad.
No creo que exista en la
Web un historiador capaz de haber recopilado tanta
información sobre estos acontecimientos historicos.
Siempre más
allá . . . "
-- Walter
C. Sandino, grandson of Augusto C. Sandino, Executive
President of the Fundación Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino (FANCS),
and author of the book
El libro de Sandino: El Bandolerismo de Sandino en
Nicaragua
(2009) and his wife Señora
Marbely Castillo.

Visit the FANCS website at
www.acsandino.org.ni
|
|
"A stunning enterprise -- a virtual Sandino online
encyclopedia and data base -- and an obligatory starting
point for anyone researching twentieth century Nicaraguan
history."
--
Barry Carr, Senior Fellow, Institute of Latin American
Studies, La Trobe University
|
|
SEEKING VOLUNTEER TRANSLATORS & TRANSCRIBERS
As readers of this website will note, there are thousands of
documents on this topic that still need to be transcribed
and translated into Spanish. If you or someone you
know is interested in helping to develop this website by
transcribing or translating documents, please be in touch!
Much of the work can be done electronically. Thank
You!
|
|
SE
BUSCA TRANSCRIPTORES Y TRADUCTORES VOLUNTARIOS
Como los lectores de este Website se nota, hay miles de
documentos sobre este tema
que deben ser transcrito y traducido al español.
Si usted o alguien que usted conoce está interesado en
ayudar a desarrollar este Website con la transcripción o
traducción de documentos, por favor estar en contacto!
Un gran parte del trabajo se puede realizar por vía
electrónica. Muchas gracias!
|
|

PLEET INITIATIVE GRANT RECIPIENT AT LEBANON VALLEY COLLEGE
In Spring 2009 this website was awarded $5,000 from Lebanon
Valley College's Pleet Initiative for Student--Faculty
Research Across the Curriculum.
Funded by a generous
gift from David & Lynn Pleet of Lebanon, PA, the Pleet
Initiative seeks to foster student collaboration in
faculty-driven research initiatives.
For two years (2009-2011), participating students will be
involved in all aspects of this website's redesign and
construction.
We
will also take several trips to the U.S. National Archives
in Washington D.C. and the Marine Corps Historical Center in
Quantico, VA.
Copious thanks to David & Lynn Pleet and the Pleet Initiative Committee for their generous
funding of this website. More information on the Pleet
Initiative can be found
here. |
|
 |
|
Gold & nickel coin minted by Sandino's rebel forces at
San Albino Mine in June 1927,
marking the inauguration of
their struggle and the parallel sovereignty of the
Sandinista rebel republic, which would govern much of Las
Segovias for the next six years.
Inscription reads "INDIOS
DE A.C. SANDINO". Click on images for full photos.
Photos courtesy W. C. Sandino. |
|
 |
|
Flip side of Sandinista gold coin: "$10
PESOS ORO R. DE N." (República de Nicaragua) .
Why did the rebels name their coins "Indios"? Some
important clues lie in the following letter from Sandino to Gen.
Manuel Echevarría dated 2 July 1927 (click on image for full
view): |
|
 |
|
Here we see that Sandino first instructed Echevarría to call the coins "montañeses" ("people of
the mountains").
Then he changed his mind and wrote "campesinos"
("rural folk" or "rural producers") over "montañeses."
Then he changed his mind again (probably after discussion
with his men) and the coins ended up being called "Indios
de A.C. Sandino."
How
do we interpret this sequence of names?
For one, the final product suggests Sandino's men played an
active role in the process of creating their own new
political identity.
The inscription also inverts the racist connotations long
associated with the label "Indio"
while reproducing the personalism and
caudillismo characteristic of
Segovian and Nicaraguan politics. There are some
bigger stories here . . .

. . . including the very fact of the coins' creation --
for what symbolizes more the inviolable sovereignty of a
nation-state in the modern era than the minting of currency?
Only a handful of these coins survive,
marking them as among the rarest in the world; no numismatic
compendium (to my knowledge) includes them . . .

Rebels continued mining gold at San Albino & nearby
mines throughout the war, smuggling nuggets & bullion into
Honduras to buy much-needed arms & ammunition & medicines &
other supplies for their popular-nationalist campaign to
expel the Marines from their homeland.
In June 1927, US citizen Charles Butters, owner of the San
Albino Mine (pictured below), described the uprising of
October 1926, led by Sandino, and the rebels' return to the
mine earlier that June. His report to the Marines can
be found in the Top 100,
here.

Charles Butters, owner of the San Abino Mine
Three years later, in June 1930, Butters wrote a letter to
Sandino proposing a joint gold mining venture. The
letter concludes with the instructions, "Now do as I ask you
and be a good sport":


Sandino, who had
scathingly denounced Charles Butters from the war's
inception for his inhumane treatment of mine workers and for
stealing Nicaragua's mineral wealth, did not reply.
More than a year later, in November 1931, Butters wrote to
General C. B. Matthews saying he wanted to reopen the mine
and asking what kind of protection the Marines could offer
him:


The next month, in December 1931, Marine Lt. John Hamas
described the damages inflicted on the mine complex when the rebels
sacked & looted it back in June of '27. His report
offers a compelling glimpse into the rebels' moral &
political universe:


After June 1927 the mine became an indelible symbol of
Sandino's nationalist struggle. It never reopened.
Here is what the ruins of the San Albino Mine looked like in
2007 -- eighty years after Sandino's rebels first seized the mine
and began minting their hefty gold ten-peso "Indios de A. C.
Sandino":
_small.jpg)
_small.jpg)
_small.jpg)
Photos thanks to the kind courtesy of Mr. Dan Plazak,
M.S.,
adventuresome geologist, engineer, and author of the book,
A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top,
University of Utah Press, 2006.
|
|

ECO-TOURISM IN NICARAGUA
A great way to see Nicaragua's countryside and support local
businesses is the award-winning Finca Esperanza Verde in the
verdant mountains of San Ramón near Matagalpa.
To quote from FEV's promotional materials, "Come
relax at our organic coffee farm complete with 5 hiking
trails, gorgeous views, a butterfly garden, yoga pavilion,
hammock hut and waterfall swimming hole ...

"All of Finca Esperanza Verde's ecotourism income stays
in the community supporting local jobs and businesses."
FEV is a project of Sister Communities of San Ramón,
Nicaragua.
Visit
the Finca Esperanza Verde website
here
|
|
Introduction
to the Site.
This
Website is envisioned
as a comprehensive digital interpretive archive on the
nationalist rebellion against US military intervention in Nicaragua led
by Augusto C. Sandino in the 1920s and '30s.
(Right: Statue in
Managua commemorating the 1979 Triumph of the Sandinista Revolution,
July 19, 2009; photo by the author.)
Right now this Website
houses and integrates around
780 archival documents
on the rebellion,
all transcribed and fully searchable. Eventually (by the year
2015, I hope) this Website will house and
integrate over
20,000 pages of documents
— and thousands more pages of published texts
— materials collected over two decades in archives & libraries in the United
States and Nicaragua.
This tsunami of evidence
on this
oft-mentioned but little understood guerrilla war and nationalist
campesino rebellion offers an unprecedented look at events "on the
ground" in a major episode of foreign invasion & occupation during the
Golden Age of US imperialism in the circum-Caribbean (c. 1898-1934).
The portrait of Sandino's revolt that emerges from this documentary
deluge 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 killing and
suffering, all the heroism and sacrifice, all the planning & scheming & marching
& spying & fighting & dying — all were rooted in a
simple reality: the government of the United States of America decided to invade and
occupy this small Central American country, and a small group of
Nicaraguans, led by a charismatic patriot, decided to resist.
(Left: 1984 Bulgarian
postage stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sandino's death)
The
Website's Focus.
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.
By Way of Background & Context.
The US Marines first intervened
militarily in Nicaragua in the civil war of 1912, and were stationed in the country more or less
continuously for the next 20 years. Nicaragua effectively became a
U.S. protectorate, surrendering much of its sovereignty to the United
States, as was true of much of the circum-Caribbean during this period.
(see
Bibliography)
In May 1927, after another civil war
between Nicaraguan Liberals and Conservatives (1926-27), a mechanic and
ardent patriot named Augusto C. Sandino
rebelled against the US occupation
and the "sellout" (vendepatria) 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 north-central Nicaragua, a region called
Las Segovias.
There, for five and a half years (May 1927-January 1933), he and his
"crazy little army" -- officially called the
Defending Army of Nicaraguan National Sovereignty (Ejército
Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional de Nicaragua
or
EDSN)
waged a guerrilla insurgency against the US Marines and the Nicaraguan
National Guard. The Marines withdrew in January 1933, and the
rebellion simmered until Sandino's assassination by the US-created
National Guard, acting under the orders of its Chief Director Anastasio Somoza
García (and with the knowledge & complicity of the US Minister to
Nicaragua Arthur Bliss Lane) on 21 February 1934.
Las
Segovias. 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. Even before the Marines arrived,
extreme inequality, oppression, exploitation, and violence dominated the
social landscape. After May 1927 Segovianos 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: photo of the Segovian town of Yalí by the author, 1990)
Animating
Questions.
As a
social and cultural historian, I want to know what the US
Marine invasion and occupation, the formation of the
Guardia Nacional, and Sandino's revolutionary movement
meant to ordinary Segovianos — campesinos, Indians,
tenants & sharecroppers,
smallholders & squatters, seasonal laborers & day laborers (who
together comprised some 85-90% of the region's
population), as well as townsfolk, migrants, artisans &
smugglers, peddlers & traders, boat-drivers &
mule-drivers, ranchers & coffee growers, merchants &
professionals, politicians & military leaders —
individuals, families & 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 the Sandino rebellion meant in the broader
sweep of history — in Nicaragua, Central America, the
Western Hemisphere, and the Atlantic World — and how
these events intersected with broader patterns and
processes of social change within these overlapping spheres. All
the documents here speak in some fashion to these
broader themes.
(Right: 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)
Why
a Documentary History?
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 for 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
analyzed and
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)
What's the Point?
By my reading, one of the main lessons to emerge from this mass of
evidence centers on the destructive and unintended consequences of the
entire 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 in the
1960s, 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.
The documents published here show 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 & race relations. Popular nationalism.
Military tactics & strategy. Insurgency & counterinsurgency. Borderlands
& identities.
Local political economies. Historical geography. State
formation & guerrilla war. Leadership, weapons & tactics.
Production & settlement
patterns. Social memory & identity formation. Just about anything.
(Right: street
boy, Telpaneca, ca. 1929, Carl P.
Eldred Papers, MCRC)
I create this
site in the classic 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 it 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. 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.
What's
Here?
Right
now only a
fraction
of the collection is published here (less than 5%).
All can be found via
this
UPDATE BOX:
back to top
|
Update Box
Primary
Documents Currently Available:
781
|
How Is the Website Organized?
back
to top
This
Website is divided into 22 Gateway Homepages and 13 Document Types.
Links for each Homepage appear at the top of every page. Thirteen
Gateway Homepages lead to 13 Document Collections of the 13 Document
Types (my
quasi-arbitrary
imposition of categories but a handy
filing scheme nonetheless: M-Docs, PC-Docs, S-Docs, etc. as
described more fully below).
The nine other Gateway Homepages treat subjects other than primary
documents.
Each of the 13 Document Collections is organized chronologically.
Thus, in order to read all documents relating to a particular period
(e.g., August 1928), one must encompass all 13 Document Collections.
Every individual
document can be identified by a unique
alphanumeric code:
[DOCUMENT TYPE][YEAR.MONTH.DAY]. For
example,
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.
(Right: 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.)
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), comprising about 150
linear feet of files. All the documents filtered out of this huge
collection and presented here speak in some way to how Central
Americans, Nicaraguans, and Segovianos acted to shape their own history.
For Record Group 127, These Good & Useful
Documents
Are Divided 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; they 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
intelligence 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)
Into 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 (about 1,400
pages and could grow by thousands).
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), and in terms of their rarity as voices
of the vanquished, probably the most historically significant.
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, fraught
with interpretive issues, and probably the single most important
primary source on the Sandino rebellion produced since the 1930s (ca. 1,000 pages).
8.
News-Docs
(Newspapers)
Mainly Nicaraguan
and US newspapers, but also some Honduran, Mexican, others (ca.
1,000 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; small in quantity but some
valuable material (maybe 50 pages).
12.
USMC-Docs
(Marine Corps Historical Center - Personal Papers Collection, others)
Oral interviews;
letters, diaries, bibliography of
related Marine Corps material (say 500 pages, including the Emil
Thomas letters and the Robert L. Denig Diary). Currently
included is the comprehensive official Marine Corps final list of
Marine Corps casualties in Nicaragua, 1927-1933 (say 1,000 pages).
13.
Honduras
(Honduran National Archives)
A place to organize
materials relating to Honduras. Currently included is 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.
There Are Nine Other Gateways in the Website:
14.
Biblio
A bibliography and select
excerpts of published and secondary literature.
15.
Maps
Understanding Las Segovias as a geographic and social 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 2.0 (took about six months — the hard
part's done). What I need now is the time & expertise 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 Sandinista 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: from the US National
Archives (about 100 photos), and from the George Stockes box in
the Marine Corps Research Center (another 70 or so); most are
published here for the first time.
20.
Top
100
Around 100 of the
most illuminating Marine & Guardia documents generated during the
war, with critical introductions; around 81 listed right now, with
57 or so included here.
At one point I envisioned publishing this section as a
full-length book. Some real dynamite here.
21.
Notes
Gateway to the site's interpretive core; also
a space for
working notes, analyses, drafts, etc.
22.
Links
Links to related sites.
CURRENTLY
this Website's software is being upgraded and its organizational scheme tweaked.
The new organization
is envisioned with 25 links on every masthead as follows:
|
10 Primary
Document Types |
10
Thematic
Document Collections |
5 Other
Pathways |
|
IES-Docs: |
IES Testimonies |
Anastasio Hernández
Collection |
Bibliography
& Secondary Lit |
|
IR-Docs: |
Serial Intel Reports |
Air War |
K-12 & College Curricula |
|
M-Docs: |
Misc Intel Reports |
Atlantic Coast |
Author's Vita,
Pubs, Contact Info |
|
N-Docs: |
Newspapers |
Military
Contacts |
SandinoBlog Readers' Forum |
|
PC-Docs: |
Patrol & Combat Reports |
EDSN |
User's Guide & Sitemap |
|
PMI-Docs: |
Photos, Maps, Images |
Guardia Nacional |
. |
|
R-Docs: |
Rockefeller Foundation |
Honduras & Borderlands |
. |
|
S-Docs: |
Sandinistas / EDSN |
Pedrón |
. |
|
USDS-Docs: |
US State Department |
People |
. |
|
USMC-Docs: |
US Marine Corps |
Top 100 |
. |
|
That's a lot of links
for every masthead, but I think it can be done in an economical &
aesthetically pleasing way... e.g. here's a hint of
what it might look like using buttons for the links and tweaking the
titles ...
In short, what's here
now represents only the first very rough draft of what's to come.
The CSS template for the new site will probably be designed & built by
an outfit in Harrisburg PA called MudBrick Creative, should be up &
running soon (target: 15 March 2010). A couple things I'd like to
integrate into the site: a "labels cloud" as appears on the
website of The Haitian
Blogger; and dynamic interactive maps such as appear on many sites
nowadays, including
CivilWarAnimated.com. Additional ideas welcome!
Meanwhile these are probably the
Suggestions & comments invited. This website launched March 2007.
Painting by Thelma
Gómez F., Masaya,
Nicaragua, 1989
Use this
Google
search engine to search the site:
back
to top
¡Que lo disfrute!
Y que aprendamos.
|
Visitors since April 2007

|
|
|