Background
Augusto César Sandino was born on 18 May 1895 in Niquinohomo. He was the son of a moderately prosperous farmer and an Indian servant.
Augusto César Sandino was born on 18 May 1895 in Niquinohomo. He was the son of a moderately prosperous farmer and an Indian servant.
Little is known about his education.
In 1921 he left Nicaragua and in the next five years held various jobs in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.
in May 1926, hearing that a Liberal revolution had broken out in Nicaragua, he returned home. Starting with a band of 20 followers, within a year he headed a group of about a hundred. They participated in several successful combats with Conservative troops.
When Liberal Party leader José María Moneada negotiated a truce with the Conservatives in May 1927, Sandino refused to accept it, announcing that he was going back to the northern mountains to fight “while even one gringo remains in Nicaragua.” For nearly six years, the U.S. Marines and the Nicaraguan National Guard that they trained battled against Sandino without success. Finally, President Herbert Hoover ordered the Marines withdrawn shortly before leaving office in 1933.
For some months in 1929-1930, Sandino was in Mexico, seeking to gain support from the government there. His efforts were unavailing, but in Mexico he gathered around himself a number of Latin American supporters.
With the Marines gone in 1933, Sandino entered into negotiations with President Juan Bautista Sacasa. Coming into Managua, he dined with Sacasa and National Guard commander Anastasio Somoza García on February 18, 1934. Three days later, members of the National Guard arrested and killed Sandino and his two principal aides.
Quotes from others about the person
Neil MacAulay has said of Sandino that he “was one of the precursors of modem revolutionary guerrilla warfare—the process used to seize political control of an entire country by guerrilla action, without resort to conventional military operations, except perhaps in the final stages of the struggle, when the guerrilla army has acquired many of the characteristics of a regular army.”