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Horse Thieves to Rebels to Dogs: Political Gang Violence and the State in the Western Segovias, Nicaragua, in the Time of Sandino, 1926–1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Michael J. Schroeder
Michael J. Schroeder
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan-Flint
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Abstract

This study of organised political violence in north-central Nicaragua from 1926 to 1934 focuses on the infamous Conservative gang leader Anastacio Hernández and on Sandino's rebels. The contexts of a weak central state and local-regional caudillismo are outlined. It is shown that after the 1926–27 civil war. Hernández and others produced ritualised spectacular violence in the service of their Chamorrista caudillo patrons. The language, practices, and characteristics of organised violence are examined. It is argued that Sandino's rebels appropriated these tools of political struggle, and that changes and continuities in the organisation of violence in Nicaraguan history merit greater attention.

Type
Central America: New Assessments
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , May 1996 , pp. 383 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Arauz, Pedro Antonio, ‘Después de la terminatión de la guerra constistutionalista’, unpubl. ms., Instituto de Estudio del Sandinismo, Managua (currently Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua, hereafter IES), c. 1980Google Scholar. Hernández was euphemistically dubbed a ‘cuatrero’ by Luis Arturo Ponce of Ocotal, interview with the author, Ocotal, Oct. 1990.

2 Untitled report describing active ‘bandits’, Office of the Director of Police, Ocotal, 11 Nov. 1927, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., Record Group 127, entry 43A, box 3, file B–2 Intelligence and Patrol Reports (hereafter cited as NA127/[entry]/[box]/[file]).

3 Quote from Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 8 Oct. 1927, NA127/198/1.

4 For general introductions see Booth, John A., The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder, 1985)Google Scholar; Walker, Thomas W., Nicaragua: Land of Sandino (Boulder, 1981)Google Scholar; for a useful bibliographic guide see ‘Background Books: Nicaragua’, The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (1988), pp. 140–1. On the civil wars of the 19th century see Burns, E. Bradford, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gamez, Jose Dolores, Historia de Nicaragua desde los tiempos prebistóricos hasta 1860 (Managua, 1889)Google Scholar, and Historia moderna de Nicaragua (Managua, 1975); Chamorro, Fruto, Estudio sobre la ubicación histórica, sociológica e ideológica de los partidos políticos de Nicaragua (León, Nicaragua, 1961)Google Scholar; Urtecho, José Coronel, Reflexiones sobre la historia de Nicaragua (León, Nicaragua, 1962)Google Scholar. For Sandinista-centric interpretations see Román, Jaime Wheelock, Imperialismo y dictadura (Managua, 1985)Google Scholar, and Raíces indigenas de la lucha anticolonialista en Nicaragua (Managua, 1985); Centro de Investigatión y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria (CIERA-MIDINRA), Nicaragua: … Y por eso defendemos la frontera (Managua, 1984)Google Scholar; Vargas, Oscar René, La revolutión que inició el proceso, Nicaragua, 1893–1909 (Managua, 1990)Google Scholar, and La intervención norteamericana y sus consecuencias, Nicaragua, 1910–1925 (Managua, 1989). Also read Bermann, Karl, Under the Big Stick (Boston, 1986)Google Scholar. For a more theoretically informed treatment see Vilas, Carlos M., The Sandinista Revolution (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, chaps. 1–2. For more empirically grounded scholarship see Millett, Richard, Guardians of the Dynasty (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Walter, Knut, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, 1936–1956 (Chapel Hill, 1993)Google Scholar; Gould, Jeffrey L., To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912–1979 (Chapel Hill, 1990)Google Scholar.

5 Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

6 On the Somocista state see especially Walter, The Regime of Anastatio Somoza; Gould, To Lead as Equals; Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty; and Clark, Paul Coe Jr, The United States and Somoza, 1933–1956: A Revisionist Look (Westport, 1992)Google Scholar. For a useful bibliographic guide to the late Somoza and Sandinista periods, see Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales (CRIES), ‘La política económica en Nicaragua, 1979–1988’, Cuadernos de pensamiento propio (Managua, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 It is sadly the case the Nicaraguan historiography remains nearly as impoverished and underdeveloped as the country itself. The considerable pre-1979 literature on the civil wars of the 19th century consists mainly of political chronicles and polemics (for a bibliographic guide see Wheelock, Raíces indígenas). The historiographic revolution parallelling the 1979 Sandinista Revolution advanced historical understanding in important ways; at the same time much of this literature tends to shoehorn pre-1930s social struggles into a handful of categories: anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist/nationalist, anti-oligarchic, and anti-capitalist or class (see the Sandinista-oriented works cited above). Little scholarly attention has been paid to struggles and motivations that do not fit neatly into these categories. Important exceptions include Gould's work (cited above and below), Walter, The Regime of Anastatio Somoza, and Hale, Charles, Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987 (Stanford, 1994)Google Scholar.

8 Chamorro, Emiliano, El último caudillo: autobiografía (Managua, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 de la Rocha, Pedro Francisco, ‘Revista política sobre la historia de la revolutión de Nicaragua’ (orig. Granada: Imprenta de la Conception, 1847)Google Scholar, reprinted in Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano, no. 180 (july–Septemper. 1983), p. 25.

10 Gámez, Historia de Nicaragua, pp. 389, 463; Belli, Humberto, ‘Un ensayo de interpretatión sobre las luchas políticas nicaragüenses (de la Independencia hasta la Revolutión Cubana)’, Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano, no. 32 (10–12 1977), pp. 50–1Google Scholar.

11 Quote from Durkheim, Emile, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (London, 1957), p. 72Google Scholar. Landmark critical interventions in state theory include Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Giddens, Anthony, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. II, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge, MA, 1990)Google Scholar, and Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984); and Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power, 2 vols. (Los Angeles, 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1993), esp. vol. II, chap. 3. A more compelling analysis of postcolonial Central American state formation might emerge through a sustained critical dialogue between the analytical frameworks developed in this comparative historical sociology and the considerable body of liberal and dependista-Marxist-oriented political-economic histories of Nicaragua and Central America, including Munro, Dana, The Five Republics of Central America (Oxford, 1918)Google Scholar; Pérez-Brignoli, Héctor, A Brief History of Central America (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Torres-Rivas, Edelberto, History and Society in Central America (Austin, 1993)Google Scholar; Woodward, Ralph Lee, Central America: A Nation Divided (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar, and ‘Central America from Independence to c. 1870’, The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Bethell, Leslie, Vol. III, From Independence to c. 1870 (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar; Dunkerley, James, Power in the Isthmus (London, 1988)Google Scholar; and Williams, Robert G., States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar; and on Nicaragua, , Lanuza, Alberto, Vásquez, Juan Luis, Barahona, Amaru, and Chamorro, Amalia, Economía y sociedad en la construcción del estado en Nicaragua (San José, Costa Rica, 1983)Google Scholar.

12 Munro, Dana G., The Five Republics of Central America (Oxford, 1918)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 9. See also Fernando Jarquín, Jefe Político of Estelí, annual report to Ministerio de Gobernación, 1924, p. 211, in Records of the United States Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Nicaragua, 1910–1929 (hereafter USDS), 817.00/4998; Williams, Whiting in The New York Times, 21 08 1927Google Scholar; Carter, C. B., ‘The Kentucky Feud in Nicaragua,’ The World's Work, no. 54 (07 1927), pp. 312–21Google Scholar; cf. Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, pp. 15–26ff., and Schroeder, Michael J., ‘“To Defend Our Nation's Honor”: Toward a Social and Cultural History of the Sandino Rebellion in Nicaragua, 1927–1934’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1993Google Scholar, chaps. 3–5.

13 Cf. Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, chap. 1.

14 General Data, Northern Area, Western Nicaragua, Dec. 1, 1929, NA127/205/2/16D.

15 Jaime Wheelock's pioneering work was among the first to link the spread of the coffee economy and capitalist production relations to the Matagalpa Indian Uprising of 1881 and other episodes of rural unrest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; see his Imperialismo y dictadura and Raíces indígenas. More recently, Jeffrey Gould has shown that capitalist production relations and land dispossession in the highland coffee zones of Jinotega and Matagalpa had only begun during this period, and were of lesser moment in sparking unrest than forms of labour control, violations of customary rights, and indigenous religiosity; see his ‘“¡ Vana ilusión!” The Highlands Indians and the Myth of Mestiza, Nicaragua’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (08 1993)Google Scholar, and ‘El café, el trabajo, y la comunidad indígena de Matagalpa, 1880–1925’, in Pérez-Brignoli, Héctor and Samper, Mario (eds), Tierra, café, y sociedad (San José, 1994), pp. 279–376Google Scholar.

16 See Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, pp. 8–14; for a comparative treatment of the formation of European states over a 1000-year period see Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (London, 1990), pp. 87–91Google Scholar ff.

17 For relevant literature on the 19th century see Burns, Patriarch and Folk; on 1909–1912 see Vargas, La intervención norteamericana, pp. 38–56, and Bermann, Under the Big Stick, chaps. 8–9; on the contra war consult the staff of the Resource Center of the Americas (formerly Central America Resource Center), 317 17th Ave. SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55414.

18 On this and the following paragraph see MacLeod, Murdo J., Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar; Sherman, William L., Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln, 1979)Google Scholar; Newson, Linda A., Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua (Norman, OK, 1987)Google Scholar; Radell, David R., ‘Historical Geography of Western Nicaragua: The Spheres of Influence of León, Granada, and Managua, 1519–1965,’ unpubl. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1969Google Scholar; Vargas, Germán Romero, Las estructuras sociales de Nicaragua en el siglo XVII (Managua, 1976)Google Scholar; CIERA, Nicaragua; Gould, ‘¡Vana ilusion!’ and ‘El café, el trabajo, y la comunidad indígena.’ On violence as a ‘background condition’ in Latin American cattle frontier regions generally, see Duncan, Silvio R.Baretta, and Markoff, John, ‘Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 20, no. 4 (10 1978)Google Scholar.

19 This becomes especially apparent in the widespread popular support enjoyed by Sandino's rebels. According to the 1920 census, of all departments in Nicaragua, Nueva Segovia and Jinotega had the highest percentage of farmers, cattlemen, and others who owned or rented land (62 % and 63 % respectively), and the lowest percentage of rural wage labourers (28 % and 29 % respectively); in Nueva Segovia, more than 90 % of the population fell into the following four categories: domestic labourers (oficios domésticos), without employment (sin oficios), agriculturists (agricultores), and wage labourers (Jornaleros). Oficina Central del Censo, Censo general de 1920 (Managua, 1920).

20 For instance, the crises of the Honduran state from 1922 to 1924 provoked waves of armed bands of Honduran revolutionaries to move into adjacent areas of the Segovias; the León daily El Centroamericano reported on 19 Feb. 1922 that an armed band of Hondurans under Ramón Romero Rodríguez was near Somotillo; on 1 Apr., that 500 ‘Honduran revolutionaries’ were in San Francisco de Guajiniquilapa; on 12 May, that 200 men under Honduran General Martínez were in Nicaraguan territory north of Ocotal; on 8 July, that several Honduran revolutionary bands were near Somotillo; on 6 Jan. 1924, that 300 Honduran troops were just outside of Somoto; on 8 Feb. 1924, that hundreds of Honduran refugees were in and around Ocotal; similar reports continued until at least early 1933.

21 On borders, frontiers and states see Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, pp. 49–52, 79–90 ff.; on these phenomena in the Segovias see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 3–5, 7.

22 Quotes from Rocha, ‘Sobre la historia de la revolutión de Nicaragua’, pp. 39, 51, 57.

23 Interviews by the author with Luis Arturo Ponce, Ramón Salgado Lobo, and other prominent elderly members of the Liberal and Conservative parties in Ocotal who wish to remain anonymous, Ocotal, Oct. 1990. Lack of evidence prevents a conclusive demonstration that all of these posts were Conservative-controlled from 1912 to 1927, but Conservatives controlled the executive branch and jefaturas politicas from 1912 to 1924 and 1925 to 1927, and this and the evidence presented below makes this a reasonable supposition.

24 From 1911 to 1924 the Conservative-dominated national state and local Conservative caudillos controlled most political posts across the country. In 1924 the Liberal Nationalist Party (a Liberal-Conservative coalition of Conservative presidential candidate Carlos Solórzano and Liberal vice-presidential candidate Juan Bautista Sacasa) won in Nueva Segovia with 82% of the vote, again permitting Emiliano Chamorro and his Conservative allies, via President Solórzano, to appoint their allies to the political posts in the region; see de Elecciones, Consejo Nacional, Informes sobre las elecciones de autoridades supremas, 1924y 1928, República de Nicaragua (Managua, 1929), pp. 17Google Scholar, 37. The evidence indicates that Nueva Segovia Conservatives retained power during the turbulent 1923–1925; Martínez-Solórzano period; e.g., Gustavo Paguaga was Ministro de Gobernación, 1923–1924; Abraham Gutiérrez Lobo was Comandante de Policia in Ocotal in 1924; and José Maria Paguaga was Senator in the National Assembly in 1925; sources detailed below. In Sept. 1926, Emiliano Chamorro appointed Conservative Luis Paguaga Interim President of the Departmental Electoral Council for Nueva Segovia, and in the November 1926 elections for Deputy seats which he supervised, the Conservative candidates Domingo Calero and Abraham Gutiérrez Lobo won with 99% of the votes (808 to six) over the Liberal candidates Camilo López Irías and Adán Maradiaga, an outcome clearly indicating massive electoral fraud; see La Noticia, 30 Sept. and 16 Dec. 1926; figures from 16 Dec. The 1927 municipal elections were cancelled due to the violence and disorder produced by the Conservatives expressly for that purpose; see below. In the elections of 1928, probably the first elections in Nicaraguan history in which outright fraud played an inconsequential role, the Liberal party won handily in the district of Somoto – 58% to 42% – but lost by a small margin in the district of Ocotal – 48% to 52% (Consejo Nacional de Elecciones, p. 55). The latter results were evidently due to the atmosphere of violence and intimidation the Conservatives created in order to retain political control, as detailed below.

25 On 2; Aug. 1927, La Noticia published this historic document of March 1906, noting that ‘now the Paguagas are the most terrible persecutors of Liberalism in Ocotal’.

26 As Senator in the National Assembly in the late 1910s; Jefe Político of Nueva Segovia in the early 1920s; Ministro de Gobernación under Presidents Diego Chamorro and Bartolomé Martínez, 1923–1924; Deputy in the National Assembly for Nueva Segovia, 1925–1928, and again, 1928–1932. El Centroamericano, 8 March 1922, 30 Nov. 1923, 10 Jan. 1924, 1 June 1924; Dennis to Kellogg, Managua, 11 Dec. 1926, USDS 817.00/4355; Consejo Nacional de Elecciones, p. 58.

27 El Centroamericano, 21 and 22 Dec. 1923; La Noticia,30 Sept. and 4 Nov. 1926; USDS 817.00/4355; La Gaceta, 27 Oct. 1924, in USDS 817.00/5030; de Herrera, Celia Guillén, Nueva Segovia (Telpaneca and León, 1945), p. 232Google Scholar.

28 Declarations of Anastacio Hernãndez, Miguel Hernández, and José Eulalio Torres, NAi27/192/5/Hernández, Anastacio, hereafter cited as Hernández File.

29 See fn. 27, above; in Memo to Major Schmidt from L. B. Reagan, Ocotal,; Mar. 1929 (NA 127/220/2) Gutiérrez Lobo is identified as a former civil judge for Nueva Segovia; in 1918 Gutiérrez Lobo was accused of being a Zelayista and Administrador de Rentas during the brief regime of Madriz in 1910; Jeffrey L. Gould, personal communication.

30 Interviews by the author, Ocotal, Oct. 1990.

31 On the latter post, La Tribuna, Managua, 13 March 1929.

32 Hernández File; Testimony of Lizandro Ardon Molina, IES interview no. 032, p. 2 (hereafter cited as IES [interview no.]: [page no.]); José Paul Barahona, IES untitled ms., begins ‘A raíz del derrocamiento del gobierno de Solórzano’, p. 2.

33 La Notícia, 17, 20, 31 Aug. 1927; Nueva Segovia Expedition, V. F. Bleasdale, 21 Aug. 1927, NA127/43A/29.

34 On Ramón Lobo, El Centroamerícano, 7 May 1922; L a Noticia, 25 Aug. 1927. According to one elderly resident of the region, interviewed in the early 1980s and commenting upon the process of land concentration in the early 20th century, ‘Pastor Lovo had made a pact with the devil’, accumulating his wealth through commerce, contraband, and land swindles. CIERA, Nicaragua, pp. 124–6. See also Intelligence information obtained from Abrosia López Alfaro, Somoto, 17 May 1932, NA127/ 202/1/1.3.

35 See Vilas, Carlos, ‘Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua’, Journal of Latin American Studies, no. 24 (05 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also read Whisnant, David, Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua (Chapel Hill, 1995)Google Scholar.

36 El Centroamericano, 8 March 1922; see also Gould, ‘El cafe, el trabajo, y la comunidad indfgena’, and ‘¡Vana ilusión!’.

37 In May 1922 Ramón Lobo brought some of his children and a niece to Granada to enroll them in the schools there; El Centroamericano, 7 May 1922.

38 Private archives in the region might hold some clues concerning the relations among and between leading Conservatives during this period. It is noteworthy that one Marine officer reported that ‘The Paguagas apparently have no social contact with other people in the city and are generally poorly thought of’. Intelligence Report, 8 Oct. 1927, NA127/198/1. This is the only such report encountered, and it would be imprudent to accord it too much weight; as it stands it might be basically accurate, or a political foe's confidential whisperings into a green Marine's ear, or a Paguaga-inspired bid to divert attention.

39 Elected as Deputies to the National Assembly in the elections of 1924 and expelled and replaced by Emiliano Chamorro after Oct. 1925; see Dennis to Kellogg, 11 Dec. 1926, USDS 817.00/4355; on Alejandro Cerda, a general in Moncada's Liberal Army, see NA127/209/2.

40 La Noticia, 15, 28, 31 Aug. 1926; 1, 9, 20 Sept. 1926. On Cabulla see Vallejos, Miguel Jarquín, La muerte de Cabulla (El Viejo, Nicaragua, 1974)Google Scholar.

41 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. 4.

42 Memories of these outrages remained strong into the 1980s; see the interview with Camilo Guillén in Claribel Alegría and Flakoll, D. J., Nicaragua: la revolutión sandinista (Mexico D.F., 1982), pp. 51–4 ff.Google Scholar, and the IES testimonies cited in Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. 4.

43 Ignacio Vargas to Eberhardt, 18 Jan. 1927, USDS 817.00/4592.

44 The major newspapers of the period chronicle this violence, including El Diario Nicaragüense (Granada), La Noticia (Managua) and El Centroamericano (León).

45 They included gangs led by Timoteo Blanco, Juan Alberto Briones, Fidencío Carazo, David and Antonio Cárdenas, Francisco and José Castillo, Leoncio Díaz, Augustín Flores, Clemente Gaitan, Anastacio Hernández, Marcelino Hernández, Antonio Huete, Carlos Lobo, Santos Lobo, Encarnación López, Teodoro López, Simón Mendoza, José Martínez, Filemón Molina, Conceptión Pérez, Tiburcio Polanco, Abelino Rodríguez, Julian Sevilla, Toribio Solórzano, José Eulalio Torres, and Medardo Vallejos; see Hernández File; La Noticia, 10 and 21 Aug., 28 Sept., 5 Oct., 3, 10, and 11 Nov. 1927; Intelligence Reports from Ocotal, June–Dec. 1927, NA127/198/198/1.

46 On the Sandinistas during this period see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 6–8.

47 Somoza, Anastacio, El verdadero Sandino, O el calvario de las Segovias (Managua, 1936)Google Scholar, catalogued 23 murders and mutilations from Aug. to Nov. 1927 in the western Segovias and blamed all on the Sandinistas; most were probably the work of Conservative gangs. Two documented instances in which Somoza laid the blame at the wrong doorstep were the deaths of Marcos López and Claudio Gómez (El verdadero Sandino, p. 67), which eyewitness María Apolonia Muñoz (Hernández File) testified were the work of Anastacio Hernández.

48 Eberhardt to Kellogg, 31 May 1927, USDS 817.00/4879; Eberhardt to Kellogg, 30 June 1927, 817.00/4922; Kellogg to Eberhardt, 13 July 1927, 817.00/4930a; Stimson to Moncada, 14 July 1927, and Stimson to Eberhardt, same date, 817.00/4938.5.

49 La Noticia, 13 Aug. 1927; in late August, J. Ramón Téllez, former Chief of Police in Ocotal, repeated the charge, adding that, ‘The Paguagas, who for all time have been the scourges of Nueva Segovia, are the ones who really run the Department’, La Noticia, 31 Aug. 1927.

50 La Noticia, 16 Nov. 1927; also see La Tribuna, 23 March 1929, in which Anastacio Hernández's father implicated Gustavo Paguaga and Abraham Gutiérrez Lobo in sponsoring his son's violence.

51 Deposition of Miguel Hernández, Hernández File.

52 Rumour cited in Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 29 Oct. 1927, NA127/198/1.

53 La Noticia, 20 July 1927; a similar conclusion was reached by Dodd, Thomas J. Jr, ‘United States in Nicaraguan Politics: Supervised Elections, 1927–1932’, unpubl. Ph D diss., George Washington University, Washington D.C., 1966Google Scholar.

54 Quote from B–2 Report, Managua, 27 Dec. 1927; see also Schmidt, H., Estimate of the Political, Economical, and Civil Situation, 12 02. 1928Google Scholar, NA127/43A/3.

55 R–2 Report, Managua, 29 Oct. 1928, NA127/209/1.

56 Major Pierce, Field Messages No. 3, Ocotal, 10 June, and No. 9, Telpaneca, 18 June 1927, NA127/220/7.

57 La Noticia, 6 July 1927.

58 La Noticia, 21 July 1927.

59 Later that month, in the pre-dawn hours of the day Tellez was scheduled to leave for Managua, his house in Ocotal was attacked by a small group of Conservatives. Unharmed, he journeyed to Managua and in an interview with the press blamed the upsurge in Segovian violence on Anastacio Hernández and Gustavo Paguaga; he was promptly arrested and confined in the National Penitentiary by the Díaz government; soon after, he was deported; see La Noticia, 10 and 31 Aug., 8 and 13 Sept. 1927.

60 La Noticia, 17 Aug., 30 Sept., 30 Oct., 8 and 18 Nov. 1927.

61 La Noticia, 28 Sept., 14 Oct., 8 Nov. 1927.

62 La Noticia, 28 Sept. 1927.

63 List of 47 persons murdered by Anastacio Hernández gang, no date, c. Feb. 1928, Hernández File.

64 La Noticia, 16 Nov. 1927; Díaz and Pichingo were hired by the Liberals, according to this anonymous and detailed account, which corresponds closely to a detailed biography of José León Diaz by US Marine Corps Capt. G. F. Stockes, who wrote: ‘When Anastacio Hernández took the field in August 1927, declaring he was going to kill every Liberal in the Somoto district, it seems that [José León] Diaz was selected by the Liberals to oppose Hernández’ (B-2 Report, 18 July 1929, Managua, NA127/43A/4); Stockes's account conforms in many specifics to the testimony of Pastor Ramírez Majía, IES 094-1-3.

65 Hernández declaration reproduced in full in Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, Appendix C.

66 Hernández was admitted to the National Penitentiary on 30 April 1928; he and Torres were conscripted into the Casual Company of the Guardia Nacional on 10 Oct. 1928, a common practice with Liberal and Conservative ‘bandits’, since, as the Marine officer in charge of the case wrote, ‘there existed no court by which these former bandits could be tried’. It appears that top Marines were especially appalled by the facts of the case and pursued its prosecution vigorously; a handwritten note by General Beadle emphatically ordered that Hernández and Torres be not released without his express written authorisation; Hernádndez File. Significantly, none of Hernández's patrons were convicted of any crime, despite a wealth of evidence against them.

67 La Noticia, 6 Nov. 1927; the Marines reported much the same thing, e.g. Intelligence report, R. W. Peard, Ocotal, 7 Nov. 1927, NA127/43A/3.

68 La Noticia, 8 Nov. 1927.

69 Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 8 Oct. 1927, NA127/198/1.

70 Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 13 Nov. 1927, NA127/198/1.

71 Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 11 Dec. 1927, NA127/197/176.1.

72 On Hondura n politics during this period see Rudolph, James D. (ed.), Honduras: A Country Study (Washington D.C., 1984)Google Scholar, chap. 1; Dunkerley, James, Power in the Isthmus (London, 1988), pp. 66–8Google Scholar; and the works reviewed by Euraque, Dario A., ‘Social, Economic, and Political Aspects of the Cari'as Dictatorship in Honduras: Th e Historiography’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 29, no. 1 (1994)Google Scholar. Fro m 1927 through 1932, Marine-Guardia intelligence reports consistently bemoaned the non cooperation of Honduran authorities along the border; for interesting remarks on the autonomy of Honduran authorities near Potrerillo del Sur during this period see Gilbert, Gregorio Urbano, Junto a Sandino (Santo Domingo, 1979), pp. 27–30Google Scholar.

73 Quote from Repatriation of destitute Nicaraguans in Honduras, Rossell, Ocotal, 18 Aug. 1928, NA 127/220/2. For an example of the latter points, in Nov. 1927 Francisco Albir of Ocotal, who owned substantial landholdings in both Nicaragua and Honduras, reportedly acted as both Alcalde of Ocotal and Honduran Consul there; Weekly Memorandum No. 4, Peard, Ocotal, 20 Nov. 1927, NA127/43A/3.

74 Estelf and La Trinidad Liberal-Conservative gang violence continued until the Nov.1928 elections, by which time most gang leaders and members had been amnestied, imprisoned, or killed; prominent Conservative gang organisers around La Trinidad included Chief of Police Carmen Vflchez, Mayor Gertrudis Mairena, and Juez de Mesta Marcelino Hernandez; relevant Marine-Guardia correspondence and telegrams in NA127/209/5 and /12; prisoner casefiles in NA127/202/16/76. Esteli Conservative violence organised in part by Federico Briones, wealthy merchant and member of the Departmental Electoral Board, and his brother Juan Alberto Briones, former Director of Police in Estelí; NA/127/192/1/ Briones. Conservative gang activity around Darío sponsored in part by J. Arturo Makus, Deputy in the National Assembly after Oct. 1925 and Military Chief and Provost Marshal during the Civil War; NA127/29/6. On Matagalpa, San Ramón, and Limay, NA127/200/D, /202/35, and /209/1 and/2.

75 Some Conservative caudillos and gang members did continue to operate after 1928; see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, pp. 358–67.

76 Since I have not researched the period after 1934 in any detail, the last two words remain conjectural.

77 On action as texts see Ricoeur, Paul, ‘The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text’, and other essays, in Ricoeur, (ed.), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Thompson, John B., ‘Action, Ideology, and the Text’, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar.

78 For classic treatments of the relationship between spectacular violence and politics, see Foucauk, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; and Taussig, Michael, ‘Culture of Terror – Space of Death. Roger Casement' Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 26, no. 3 (07 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Intelligence Report, Ocotal, 15 Oct. 1927, NA127/198/1. The same murders are described in the deposition of Celedonio Martínez, Hernández File.

80 ‘…fue imposible reunir sus cuerpos pues fueron hechoz pedazos’. Deposition of Gerónima López, Hernández File.

81 Little is known of the conditions under which these depositions were produced, other than that most were recorded in Ocotal; it would be useful to know more about the investigators' agendas, in particular, what they allowed to be said and what they insisted be left unsaid. It would not be difficult to imagine numerous reasons why rape might have been on the investigators' list of proscribed topics – most obviously, to avoid having the same charge levelled against the Marines and Guardia.

82 For a compelling look at the relationship between gender culture, sexuality, and political culture among the rural poor in late colonial Mexico, see Stern, Steve J., The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill, 1995)Google Scholar. See also Lavrín, Asunción (ed.), Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln, Neb., 1989)Google Scholar; Martinez-Alier, Verena, Marriage, Class and Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gutiérrez, Ramón, ‘Honor Ideology, Marriage Negotiation, and Class-Gender Domination in New Mexico, 1690–1846’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, 1991). For a stimulating survey of gender struggles in Nicaraguan history and culture, see Whisnant, Rascally Signs in Sacred Places, pp. 383–433 ff. On domestic violence in 1980s Nicaragua see Lancaster, Roger, Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley, 1992)Google Scholar; Lancaster observes that ‘The discourse of violence is itself highly gendered’ (p. 41). The month I spent living and working with a smallholding peasant family in the eastern Segovias in September-October 1990 brought home with special force some of the underlying dynamics of gender relations, inequalities, and violence in the region; my strong sense is that these dynamics had changed little from the 1920s.

83 As Steve Stern observes, ‘Most graphically and tangibly, privileged men affirmed a superior masculinity by taking or abusing the women of men to o weak to protect female relatives and property’. The Secret History oj Gender, p. 167.

84 Deposition of Paula López, Hernádndez File.

85 On the forced conscription campaigns of the Conservatives see Denny, Harold N., Dollars for Bullets (New York, 1929)Google Scholar; Carter, C. B., ‘The Kentucky Feud in Nicaragua’, The World's Work, no. 54 (07 1927), pp. 312–321Google Scholar; The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1927; United States House of Representatives, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives Regarding Conditions in Nicaragua and Mexico (Washington D.C., 1927)Google Scholar.

86 Of the 41 men who comprised the Hernández gang on 9 Sept., there were fourteen López's, five Ruiz's, four Zamora's, three Torres's, two each for Vásquez, Landero, and Cárdenas; on 10 Sept. there were four Pastrana's, three Medina's and Ruiz's, and two Muñoz's Hernández File.

87 Deposition of Placida Osegueda, wife of Francisco Hernández, Hernández File.

88 Depositions of Miguel Hernández, Hernández File.

89 José Paul Barahona, untitled IES ms., begins ‘A rafz del derrocamiento del gobierno de Solorzano…’

90 Angel Martínez Soza, IES 060: i. See also the testimonies of José Flores Gradys (IES 058), Calixto Tercero González (IES 095, 097), Camilo Guillén in Claribel Alegría and Flakoll, D. J., Nicaragua: la revolución sandinista (Mexico D.F., 1982), pp. 51–9 ff.Google Scholar, and Luciano Gutiérrez Herrera (IES 102).

91 The appearance and structure of the ‘declarations’ (both pencilled by the same fast-paced hand) indicates that they were constructed from a protracted dialogue between Marine-Guardia investigators and their prisoners; e.g.: Question: What is your name? Answer: Anastacio Hernández. Declaration reads: ‘My name is Anastacio Hernández.’

92 Under rigorous interrogation it was inevitable that these two contradictory lines would intersect, as they did in the following rather confusing excerpts from Hernández's declaration: ‘…what I did with my soldiers was defend myself from Sandino, I never attacked anyone, I have not signed a single guarantee, the Conservatives needed guarantees so my troops would not bother them and I gave them in this district, all the Conservatives were my soldiers…’ It is clear that this phrasing was imposed by the interrogators. The passage makes more sense if we attempt imaginatively to reconstruct the dialogue from which it was fashioned, e.g.: Q: What were you and your men doing? A: What I did with my soldiers was defend myself from Sandino. Q: What about all those you attacked? A: I never attacked anyone! Q: What about all the guarantees you signed? A: I never signed a single guarantee! Q: Come on, we know you signed guarantees! Look, here are some you signed for Conservatives [scraps of paper placed before the prisoner]. Why did you sign them? A: They needed them so my troops would not bother them. Q: So then you did issue guarantees around Ocotal? A: Yes, I gave them, so what? Q: Who were your soldiers? A: All the Conservatives!….

93 El Centroamericano, 8 June 1924, reported that the Jefe Politico of Nueva Segovia informed the Ministerio de Gobernación that Anastacio Hernández had been captured near Mosonte; the charge was attempted patricide. The editor noted that, ‘Frankly, in these cases we accept the application of the lynch law’. Hernández's father Miguel Hernández told a similar story in his 1928 deposition (Hernández F'k), portions of which were excerpted in La Tribuna (Managua), 23 March 1929. In his annual report to the Ministro de Gobernación for 1924, the Jefe Político of Nueva Segovia reported that Anastacio Hernández had been released from prison by the District Judge (probably Abraham Gutiérrez Lobo) and was currently serving as the District Judge's secretary and employee; Memoria de la gobernacion, 1924, p. 208, in USDS 817.00/4998. The battle Hernández described against José León Díaz in Nov. 1927, in which he was defeated and forced to flee to Honduras, is likewise corroborated by other evidence, including La Noticia, 16 Nov. 1927; G. Stockes, B-2 Report, 18 July 1929, NA127/43A/4; Testimony of Pastor Ramírez Mejía, IES 094.

94 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’;, chap. 4.

95 In late 1927 Medardo Vallejos was described by a Marine lieutenant: 'bandit leader… Mardardo Ballejo…. constantly making raids and depredations on Nicaraguans living near the border… The people voiced anxiety and alarm about the bandit Ballejo.' Patrol Report, Bellinger, Somoto, 7 Nov. 1927, NA127/43A/20.

96 According to one otherwise credible account, Gustavo Paguaga gave Hernández the names of 200 persons to kill, and Hernandez was captured with this list and another on which were written the names of thirty of his victims; La Nolicia, 16 Nov. 1927.

97 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 4–5, 8.

98 Anastacio Zamora, with who m both Torres and Hernandez seem obsessed in these declarations, was reportedly killed by Sandinistas under Juan Pablo Umanzor in April 1929; B-2 Report, 22 April 1929, NAi27/43A/4.

99 Deposition of Julio Maradiaga, Hernández File; Abelino Herrera was later commended for his ‘meritorious services’ to the Marines, and was reportedly on Sandino's ‘death list’ for treason; Recommendation for meritorious services rendered by native, Potter, Ocotal, 24 April 1928, NA127/220/2.

100 For one example of the State Department ‘idiom of’ guarantees', in March 1927 the US Minister in Managua reported that the Otis and Mengel Mahogany Co. on the east coast was ‘making urgent requests for more ample guarantee and better protection’. Eberhardt to Kellogg, 18 March 1927, 817.00/4667; for the British Foreign Office see 817.00/4666.

101 In March 1929, to cite one such instance, Luis Antonio Osorio, owner of the hacienda Oyote near the Honduran border, secured a guarantee from Sandinista general Carlos Salgado; seven months earlier, in Aug. 1928, he had secured a letter from Captain Holmes, USMC, ‘request[ing] that every consideration be shown him and his family and their servants’. Papers found in Osorio's hacienda at Oyote, 16 April 1931, NA 127/209/8.

102 Three examples: From a Marine-Guardia intelligence report: ‘One of the chief sources of revenue for the bandits [Sandinistas] is extortion from wealthy finca owners for ‘protection’ … Benjamin Lou of San Juan has admitted paying for ‘guarantees’ …’ Letter from Sandinista Alejandro Molina to father, Yahí, 10 Dec. 1928: ‘… I had received guarantees for you but when the General [Sandino] found out that Humberto was your business manager he ordered that your properties be molested …’ Letter from Sandinista Colonel P. Sánchez to Luis Frenzel, Jinotega, 12 Dec. 1928: ‘…the guarantee of the machos [Yankees] is worth nothing to us …’ B–2 Reports, 14 and 28 Jan. 1929, NA127/43A/4.

103 Elliptical references in both declarations to a ‘coffee-growers pact’ around Dipilto suggests that material interests in production and trade were intimately bound up with political relations and control of local political offices; regional political battles may have had as much to do with commercial competition and the developing political economy of coffee as with competition over the allocative resources of the state. Unfortunately, the literature on the coffee economy in the western Segovias is slim and exploration of this connection must await further investigation; see CIERA, Nicaragua, chaps. 2–4.

104 Based on numerous interviews conducted by the author in and around Ocotal and Yalí in September and October 1990.

105 For an overview of the history of indigenous communities in the western Segovias see CIERA, Nicaragua, chaps. 1–3; on Mosonte, pp. 60–1 ff.; on the survival of Mosonte's comunidad into the 1950s, Jeffrey Gould, personal communication. That the places mentioned were especially violence-prone is evidenced in part by an analysis of the social geography of rebel activity during Sandino's rebellion; see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. 8. According to the 1920 census, 93 persons lived in Mosonte proper and 1329 resided in its surrounding hamlets; Censo general de 1920, p. 289.

106 On the Conservative vision of the state see Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, pp. 9–22 ff.; on Conservative caudillo politics see Gould, ¡ Vana ilusion! and ‘El café, el trabajo, y la comunidad indígena’.

107 See Gould,; ¡ Vana ilusion!

108 In 1980, Lizandro Ardón Molina, former employee of the San Albino mine and a Liberal during the 1926–27 Civil War, told a story about carting guns to Sandino's forces near Murra in late 1926; ‘But we weren't able to pass directly on the road that passed through Mosonte, because there was an immense [Conservative] garrison there, 30 or 40 soldiers at least, and I'll tell you what – God himself wouldn't have passed through there!’ His trepidation makes more sense in the light of the Hernández violence; IES 032: 7.

109 It is noteworthy that the Liberal Party won by a small margin (102 to 80) in Mosonte in the 1928 presidential elections; Consejo Nacional de Elecciones, p. 37.

110 The name of Fidencio Carazo of San Lucas appears in a fragment of a second declaration by Anastacio Hernández that identifies both allies and victims indiscriminately; Hernández File. San Lucas violence appears in La Gaceta, 18 Aug., 8 and 13 Sept., 30 Nov., and 27 Dec. 1922. La Gaceta notes kindly provided by Jeffrey Gould; a systematic mining of this source would probably reveal much more along these lines.

111 La Gaceta, 8 Sept. 1922; Patrol Report, Bellinger, Somoto, 7 Nov. 1927, NA127/198/1; Somoza, El verdadero Sandino, p. 76. Somoza incorrectly identified Carazo as a Sandinista.

112 GN-2 Reports, 1 Dec. 1930, and 1 Dec. 1931, NA127/43A/29.

113 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. 8.

114 R–2 Report, Ocotal, 15 April 1928, and Patrol Report, Trogler, 21 Sept. 1929, NA127/212/1.

115 This was attested to in part by widespread popular support for local Liberal gangs during the Civil War, and for Sandino's rebels afterward. The IES testimonies reveal both widespread Conservative violence from mid–1926 and deep and widely-shared resentments against local-regional Conservative powerholders; see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 4–5.

116 Consejo Nacional de Elecciones, p. 55; Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, p. 62.

117 Consejo Nacional de Elecciones, 58; La Tribuna, 13 March 1929.

118 Sandino held that Espino Negro, by allowing US troops on Nicaraguan soil, violated Nicaraguan national sovereignty; his principal aim in rebelling, as he articulated it from beginning to end, was to expel US troops. To date the best studies of the rebellion are Selser, Gregorio, Sandino, general de hombres libres, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1959)Google Scholar, and Macaulay, Neill, The Sandino Affair (North Carolina, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’.

119 Somoza, El verdadero Sandino. Sandino was assassinated in Managua in Feb. 1934 by members of Somoza's National Guard.

120 The latter point is a central argument of Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’.

121 Statement of Mr. W. Pfaeffle, formerly Manager of the Javalí Mine, Managua, 2 Aug. 1931, NA127/202/2/9; also described in Somoza, El verdadero Sandino, pp. 249–52.

122 Statement of José Santos Rivera, 10 Oct. 1928, NA127/220/861.

123 Memorandum on the murder of J. C. Mendieta and party, 1–2 Oct. 1928, Parker, 4 Oct. 1928, NA127/220/7/861.

124 Techniques summarised in Somoza, El verdadero Sandino, pp. 279–80; captured Sandinista correspondence (many in original in the National Archives) is replete with references to these methods; see Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. II.

125 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 8–11.

126 Ramírez, Sergio (ed.), Augusto C. Sandino, el pensamiento vivo, 2 vols. (Managua, 1984), vol. 2, p. 203Google Scholar. The first clause became a well known aphorism of Sandino's; the second has tended to be ignored.

127 See Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chap. 6, esp. p. 248.

128 Gould, ¡ Vana ilusidn!, p. 401, notes that the leaders of the 1881 Matagalpa Indian Uprising employed a language of ‘the nation’; while such popular reappropriations during periods of upheaval were probably commoner than the available evidence indicates, Sandino's was the first to make a significant impact at the national level.

129 Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty, chaps. 5–7; Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, pp. 473–84 ff.

130 See Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty; Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza.

131 For earlier treatments see Peralta, Gabriel Aguilera, Dialéctica del terror en Guatemala (San José, 1981)Google Scholar, and Bonner, Raymond, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador (New York, 1984)Google Scholar. For more recent works and guides to further reading see the voluminous publications of America's Watch and Amnesty International, including America's Watch, El Salvador's Decade of Terror (New Haven, 1991)Google Scholar; Amnesty International, Guatemala: The Human Rights Record (London, 1987)Google Scholar, and Honduras: Civilian Authority – Military Power: Human Rights Violations in the 1980s (London, 1988); see also James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus; Jonas, Susanne, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, 1991)Google Scholar; Handy, Jim, Revolution in the Countryside (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar; Carmack, Robert M. (ed.), Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (Norman, OK, 1988)Google Scholar. For a comparative perspective see Huggins, Martha K. (ed.), Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays on Extralegal Violence (Néw York, 1991)Google Scholar; and Poole, Deborah (ed.), Unruly Order: Violence, Power, and Cultural Identity in the High Provinces of Southern Peru (Boulder, 1994)Google Scholar.

132 An exception might be Alvarenga, Ana Patricia, ‘Reshaping the Ethics of Power: A History of Violence in Western Rural El Salvador, 1880–1932’, unpubl. Ph D diss., University of Wisconsin, 1994Google Scholar, which I was unable to review before the completion of this article.

133 Paraphrase of Clausewitz, Carl von, On War (New York, 1968), p. 101Google Scholar.

134 In this sense the Segovias were very different from other regions in Latin America, e.g., Richard Graham's 19th century provincial Brazil, where violence apparently played a very different and far less central role; see his Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, 1990), esp. chap. 3.

135 Much of the rebel organisational infrastructure eroded during the year of peace (Feb. 1933 to Feb. 1934), and after Sandino's assassination on 21 Feb. 1934, all remnants were crushed by the National Guard; Pedrón's band was the last to hold out, until his death in late 1937; see Blandón, Jesús Miguel, Entre Sandinoy Fonseca (Managua, 1981), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; see also Schroeder, ‘To Defend Our Nation's Honor’, chaps. 1, 11.

136 Quote from The New York Times, 16 Feb. 1993; a perusal of recent issues of Barricada, Nuevo Diario and La Prensa amply confirms this assertion; on the complexities of the post–1990 Segovian political landscape see ‘Centroamérica: The Month in Review’, Resource Center of the Americas, Minneapolis.

137 Perhaps the most salient difference between pre-1930 and post-1979 gang violence is a greater degree of separation between local-regional political bosses and the gangs themselves, a ‘democratisation’ of sorts in the use of violence, with local peasant-workers forming gangs largely independent of caudillo control, some in order to pressure the state for land, credits, and other productive resources. See ‘Centroamérica: The Week in Review’, esp. 1988–1994.

138 The literature on the brutality of the Guardia is extensive; see Millet, Guardians of the Dynasty; Walter, The Regime of Anastacio Somoza, pp. 212–6; Joaquín, Chamorro C., Los Somoza: Una estirpe sangrienta (Buenos Aires, 1979), pp. 17–28 ff.Google Scholar ‘Perros’ was the most popular Sandinista term of abuse for the Guardia; e.g., Ascención Iglesias Rivera, IES 065: 3, and Cosme Castro Andino, IES 049: 2. It should be noted that the terms used in the title of this essay to identify the historical movement in the organisation of violence from the Conservatives to the Sandinistas to the Guardia – ‘horse thieves to rebels to dogs’ – are intended to convey as well the fractured nature of historical memory in Nicaragua. ‘Cuatrero’ – the term favoured by one prominent elderly Ocotal Liberal in 1990, and as such, I suspect, representative of a more general pattern – effectively depoliticises Hernández's violence and erases his actual role as a Conservative gang leader and mass murderer (perhaps by 1990, after eleven years of Sandinista rule, the old divisions between Liberals and Conservatives had been sufficiently smoothed over; it should also be noted that when this interview was conducted in 1990 I was only dimly aware of the Hernández case, and hence was ille-quipped to follow up on my informant's remark); the term ‘rebels’ might be considered merely descriptive, lacking any significant political connotations, but this is not the case, since the term contradicts the Somocista portrayal of the Sandinistas as ‘bandits’; and the term ‘dogs’ embodies the Sandinista version of the Nicaraguan past. Historical memories in Nicaragua are as fractured as its politics, a subject that has not received the attention it deserves.

139 Much recent literature evidences a peculiar blind spot on the subject; for instance, Burns's Patriarch and Folk, an otherwise landmark survey of Nicaraguan history up to the mid-19th century, pays scant attention to political violence in shaping power relations between ‘folk’ and ‘patriarch’; a similar silence inhabits CIERA's impressive 1985 agrarian history of the western Segovias, Nicaragua. An important exception here is Jeffrey Gould's work, which pays close empirical attention to the role of violence and coercion in shaping Indian-ladino relations in the Matagalpa and Jinotega highland coffee zones; see his ¡ Vana ilusión ¡ and ‘El cafe, el trabajo, y la comunidad indígena’.