Wars, politics & history

Nicaraguan Revolution

1978

The Nicaraguan Revolution was the movement that overthrew the Somoza family dictatorship, which had ruled the country since the 1930s. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, named after the rebel leader Augusto Sandino, fought a guerrilla campaign, and opposition grew after the assassination of the newspaper editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in January 1978. A broad uprising followed, and Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled in July 1979. The Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, then governed and fought the Contras, a rebel force backed by the United States, in a civil war during the 1980s. Elections in 1990 were won by Violeta Chamorro, and Ortega later returned to power in 2007.

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