Background
Ferdinando Aguero Rocha was born on 11 June 1918 in Nicaragua.
Ferdinando Aguero Rocha was born on 11 June 1918 in Nicaragua.
At Aguero’s insistence, the PCT refused to participate in the February 1963 elections. He at first insisted that the party also boycott the February 1967 presidential elections unless they were supervised by the Organization of American States (OAS). However, in the early Fall of 1966, Aguero organized the National Union of Opposition, a coalition of the PCT, the Independent Liberal Party, and the Social Christian Party behind his own presidential candidacy. Aguero went to Washington, in a vain attempt to get State Department help in petitioning the Human Rights Commission of the OAS to investigate PCT charges of violations of the electoral code.
On January 22, 1967, Aguero and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro held a major political rally in Managua, and a crowd estimated at between 40,000 and 60,000 began calling for the National Guard to overthrow the Somozas. More than 40 demonstrators, 1 Guard officer, and 2 enlisted men were killed, and at least 100 persons wounded. Aguero was put under house arrest until after the election.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle (“Tachito”) won the election. The PCT, however, was given one-third of the seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
According to the 1950 Constitution, the president was not eligible to succeed himself. Tachito Somoza, seeking to wiggle out of this prohibition, offered Fernando Aguero a deal: the PCT would share power in almost every branch of government, and Congress would dissolve itself and convene a constituent assembly; Tachito would resign and transfer power to a triumvirate—two designated by his party and one by the Conservatives; and the OAS would be invited to supervise the first elections under the new constitution.
Aguero accepted. Congress dissolved itself, Somoza stepped down, and a triumvirate was formed, with Aguero representing the PCT. However, following the December 23, 1972, earthquake which destroyed about three-quarters of Managua, Tachito Somoza took over effective control as head of both the Guard and a new National Emergency Committee. Aguero resigned in protest.
When four Conservative factions united in March 1979, Fernando Aguero was elected one of six members of the executive committee of the new Democratic Conservative Party of Nicaragua. He continued to hold that post after the overthrow of the Somoza regime by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, but he soon faded from an active role in Nicaraguan politics.