When access to authorities is callously denied a people, as it was in Nicaragua by the Somoza family and its National Guard, they can either acquiesce to dictatorial rule, resist it nonviolently, or take up arms against it. Acquiescence was a way of life in Nicaragua until 1978, when people turned to strikes and boycotts to protest their abuse by authorities. Then, under the leadership of well-armed guerrillas, they went to war against the Somoza tyranny and won at the cost of 50,000 lives. Twenty years after Fidel Castro and the Cuban guerrillas had won their war with Batista, the Nicaraguan people evicted dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the youngest of the three Somozas who had ruled over Nicaragua for four decades. In July 1979, one of the hemisphere's poorest and most repressed peoples celebrated an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild their nation.

The rebellion

The Somoza dynasty was launched in 1938, when Anastasio Somoza García, head of the Nicaraguan National Guard, became president. He ruled the nation without interruption until he was assassinated in 1956. His eldest son, Luis, succeeded him only to die of a heart attack a decade later, leaving the reins of government to his younger brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who, some years before, had assumed the leadership of the National Guard after completing his education at West Point in the United States. He ruled until the revolution in 1979.

From the beginning the Somozas were supported by the United States government.