Revolution of the Scarves

Opposition to Tacho Somoza finally erupts into all-outfighting

I't's civil war. Somoza has to go." The teen-age girl shouting anti-government slogans in the battered town of Masaya last week hardly looked like a revolutionary. But, as upon countless others, revolution had been thrust upon her. An overwhelming number of Nicaragua's 2.6 million people had come face to face with something most of them had long anticipated and feared--civil war.

Leading the fighting was the small but deadly Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which has been waging a battle against the entrenched regime of President Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle, 52. Last month, in a daring attack on Managua's National Palace, the Sandinistas took 1,500 hostages and forced Tacho to ransom them back for $500,000 in cash and the release of 59 political prisoners. Next, the well-armed Marxist guerrillas staged a pitched battle against Somoza's National Guard in the coffee and cattle town of Matagalpa. Finally the Sandinistas raised the stakes to civil war by launching coordinated attacks against guard posts in widely scattered cities and towns: in the capital itself, Managua; in Masaya, 20 miles southeast of the capital; in the pleasant coffee town of Diriamba, 28 miles south; in Leon, Nicaragua's second largest city; in Chinandega; and in Esteli, on the Pan American Highway in the north.

Fighting back, Nicaragua's longtime dictator last week declared martial law, a familiar tactic of troubled governments (see page 40). Somoza instructed his tough, 8,100-member National Guard to destroy the rebel forces and end the uprising. Guard units set out to rescue the embattled towns; in the south at Sapoa and Pena Blanca, they also violated the Costa Rican border in hot pursuit of Sandinistas. After a week of steady fighting, the conflict had taken on the proportions of a bloodbath, and U.S. diplomats met hastily with the government to speed the evacuation of a reported 1,500 Americans caught in the fighting.

In each place where the Sandinistas struck, National Guard posts were the principal target. In Esteli, beleaguered guardsmen protected themselves by holding twelve of the town's leading citizens hostage. And in Monimbo, an Indian barrio of 12,000 people on the outskirts of Masaya, angry rebels who have been battling the National Guard almost daily since February finally overran the local guardia station and slaughtered its two officers and a dozen enlisted men.

Ominously for the Somoza regime, the Sandinistas were not the only force that had risen. As soon as the guerrillas' well-planned attacks began, they were spontaneously joined by other youths--"los muchachos" (the boys), townspeople called them--and even by older men and women wielding their own hunting rifles and automatic weapons grabbed from the hands of fallen members of the guardia. Copying the Sandinistas, the new rebels tied handkerchiefs over their faces to avoid identification. Their fight, as a result, soon was dubbed "The Revolution of the Scarves."

The National Guard, increasingly trigger-nervous as the widespread support for the Sandinistas became apparent, tried to prevent newsmen from following the war. But TIME Mexico City Bureau Chief Bernard Diederich, a veteran of Central American conflict, slipped into Masaya. His report:

"Two days after the Sandinista attack, the guardia launched a counteroffensive, and the centuries-old town of 45,000 people was sealed tight for three days without water, food or electricity. As in other towns, like Esteli, people were finally forced to scoop up water from puddles in the street. 'We have been living for days on the floor. All this shooting, my God, Hail Mary!' moaned one old woman as she paced on her patio fingering her rosary beads.

"Not only was there shooting but many of the low adobe buildings, including 50 stores and the 87-year-old central market, were burned out. The buildings caught fire when los muchachos inexpertly hurled Molotov cocktails at the guardia. But most Masayans appeared forgiving. When one man complained that his car had been incinerated by the inept bomb-throwers, another said, 'We must make sacrifices if Somoza is to go.' The crowd around them agreed.

"How many had died, no one knew. Said a young man carrying a flour sack as a white flag--a safety device quickly adopted by the populace: 'Everyone is burying the dead in backyard patios or gardens, wherever they fall or wherever there is soil. I helped bury five today.' At one government-owned building where Somoza's picture was displayed, someone had pasted a red-and-black flag of the FSLN on the wall outside. Infuriated guardsmen drove an armored car into the building, plastered the place with bullets and tear gas, and shot down Maria Jesus Gadea, 32, as she stood protectively over her four terrified children. The dead woman's two teen-age daughters scooped a shallow grave in the patio near by for their mother.

"No one ran in Masaya. 'To run is to commit suicide,' explained one man. As I walked out of the city I was halted by the guardia sweating in their U.S.-supplied flak jackets. They were frightening, because one could see that they were frightened. On the grass was a well-dressed youth who had just been hauled out of a house. A soldier stood with his rifle pointed at the young man's head. Tears rolled down the boy's face. He looked like someone who knew he was going to die. An elderly soldier examined my press credentials and ordered me to leave Masaya. The guard did not want any witnesses."

Ironically, the civil war erupted just as the country prepared for Independence Day, the annual celebration on Sept. 15 of the break by Nicaragua and other Central American states from Spanish rule in 1821. Somoza, directing the war from a windowless bunker at National Guard headquarters overlooking Managua, marked the day with a champagne reception that U.S. Ambassador Mauricio Solaun declined to attend. The Sandinistas promptly labeled this year's observance Second Independence Day. But neither side could really celebrate a victory in one of the most savage and confusing wars that Central America has ever seen. Each side predictably deflated its own casualties and exaggerated the number of those on the other side. The Nicaraguan Red Cross, whose members heroically retrieved the dead and wounded and rescued refugees in the midst of the shooting, estimated at week's end that at least 500 people had been killed and as many more wounded in the initial fighting. Most of the casualties appeared to be civilians like Maria Jesus Gadea.

At least four of the dead were decidedly not civilians. Brigadier General Jose Ivan Alegrett, 47, the guard's tough chief of operations, who was openly contemptuous of Somoza for having capitulated to the Sandinistas at the National Palace last month, died when the plane he was piloting crashed near the Costa Rican border. Killed with Alegrett were three of half a dozen foreign mercenaries employed by Somoza to train the guard. One of these was an American known in Managua as Mike the Mercenary. When news of the death of the most hated guard officer spread through Managua's Intercontinental Hotel, few people mourned. "Great! Wonderful!" shouted one woman. "The bastard is dead!"

From his bunker, West Point Graduate Somoza, whose favorite pastime is watching war movies, called for more mercenaries. Newspaper ads suddenly appeared in the U.S. Southwest: "ExMarine combat veterans needed to fight Communist takeover in Central America." An Albuquerque recruiter, Guy Gabaldon, quickly signed up his quota of 100 men and asked Managua for permission to enroll more. Somoza also ordered up his own National Guard reserves. Reportedly, he did so with reluctance because of suspicions that they might not otherwise remain loyal and turn over arms to the rebels. In any case, Somoza needed the extra help. His regular guard forces were said to be spread so thin that some were taking Dexedrine to stay awake and were so distraught that they shot civilians and even unarmed Red Cross teams.

Somoza boasted that his side had already won. Even if that were so, he may have lost the larger war. Two weeks before the fighting began, 15 opposition political parties, labor groups and business organizations, banded into a "Broad Opposition Front," mounted a general strike to force the Somoza family out of power. The strike had a quick effect since the participants controlled 75% of the nation's industry and 90% of its commerce. Last week, in a further show of unity, the front, joined by the Sandinistas, called on five friendly Latin American nations to mediate a ceasefire; the front itself refused to deal directly with Somoza and demanded that he and his family leave the country. It further proposed--when Somoza is gone--a provisional democratic junta and offered three possible "representatives": Industrialist Alfonso Robelo Callejas, 38, Lawyer-Writer Sergio Ramirez Mercado, 36, and Lawyer Rafael Cordova Rivas, 54, who had helped establish the foremost anti-Somoza political coalition, UDEL (Democratic Liberation Union).

The U.S., meanwhile, had cut off military aid for Somoza and was seeking to bring the Broad Opposition Front and the government together in hopes of finding a "Nicaraguan solution." Explained a State Department official: "We're trying to avoid any 'U.S. solution.' If we were to suggest that Somoza should take a three-month vacation, that's exactly what Somoza's people would do--and then say that this was what the Americans told them to do." But Nicaraguan opposition leaders demanded more substantial U.S. support than that; for example, a cut in $11 million worth of food, health and education loans that they maintain have mostly benefited Somoza's politicians. Said one Conservative Party spokesman acidly: "Somoza is part of the American system, not ours." Added Conservative Congressman Eduardo Chamorro Cornel, 44, referring to the American military force that installed Somoza's father in power in 1933: "Somoza is the last Marine." qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.