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Marine-Guardia analyst concludes bandits have organized a civic guard

     One of the most important and least understood aspects of the rebellion is how Sandino & the Sandinistas tried to create a fully independent and autonomous nation-state in the mountains of Las Segovias, with its own sense of national identity and its own lines of civil and military authority.  Sandinista authorities were authorized to gather and funnel material goods and information from their zones to the central command; to gain recruits; and to spread the word about Sandino's nationalist vision.  Cultural constructions of authority were central to everything happening here. 

     Here a Guardia analyst finally 'gets it', at least in a rudimentary way.  Carefully reading a captured Sandinista letter, he offers his superiors a glimpse into something much bigger ? that the Sandinistas were basically working to build a sovereign rebel republic across much of northern and central Nicaragua.  This was something the US-dominated military should have already known, and had a hard time learning (and relearning) in the coming months and years.  The document thus speaks mainly to the deep ignorance about the enemy that pervaded the US intelligence apparatus at this time, a month before the US-supervised elections that were the official centerpiece of the whole intervention.

     In fact the 'civic guard' had been organized more than a year before, in the founding of the Ej?rcito Defensor.  From this item and others like it, we learn that Marine-Guardia intelligence had no idea that the Ej?rcito Defensor even existed.  Crude, oversimplified, but essentially accurate, this snippet suggested what the EDSN was in fact most focused on:  acquiring material supplies, dominating flows of information, and spreading the word about Sandino & Sandinismo.  Substitute "insurgent" for "bandit" and these 66 words effectively summarized the EDSN's most important quotidian operations.  There is no way to know who wrote it.  It has the feel of a Nicaraguan member of the Guardia translating the originating message to his English-only superior, who wrote it up for the weekly intel report.   (left: high-res 6 MB JPEG file of the founding Pauta of the EDSN, Sept. 1927, courtesy Walter C. Sandino).

 

 

[October 8, 1928]  Following is an extract from B-2 Report of 11th Regiment, Ocotal:
 
... (b) The "Civic Guard" which has been organized in at least one section (Nueva Segovia) is an important agency in the bandit supply. The members of this organization collect food and other supplies for the bandits and have them ready for use when called upon. The also act as spies, and in addition, assist in propaganda work by conveying messages throughout the countryside by word of mouth.

IR28.10.08: 8, RG127/43A/3l

Ancillary Document

The foregoing report was evidently based mainly on the following letter from Jos? Antonio P?rez to Ciriaco Picado, 15 July 1928  (EDSN 28.07.15), seized along with Ciriaco Picado on 18 September 1928:

 

General Barracks of the Defenders of National Rights for Nicaragua.
 
The undersigned, 2nd Chief of Military Operations for this zone, lets it be known that by authority of my superior, from this day on, Captain Ciriaco Picado has been named Chief of Civicos of Guallava, in the jurisdication of San Lucas, and that he is hereby authorized to develop the interests of the Party of proper government of Nicaragua. Be watchful for the well-being of those who belong to our Party and do not leave them subject to the traitors, the invaders and the pro-Yankees, keeping in mind to let this Barracks know, once in a while, of all operations that you make and keep in agreement with the other Chiefs of the Civicos of that place. When they seem to be in danger and you need help promptly, send word quickly to this command.
 
Patria y Libertad
 
/s/ J. Antonio Perez M., 2nd Chief of Military Operations

Jos? Antonio P?rez Maldonado, 1st Chief under Ortez 

Engl. only. IR28.10.08: 15. RG127/43A/3

 

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