Augusto Sandino

1912-33 20-year occupation fighting guerrillas of Augusto Sandino The Mexican Rcvolution taught American policy makers that Latin American economic nationalism was a force to be reckoned with. The hit-and-run guerrilla war tactics of Augusto Sandino, who between 1927 and 1933 fought the U.S. Marines in Nicaragua to a draw, further taught them that political nationalism was an equally powerful force and that attempts to counter it with increased militarism would only lead to a deterioration of American influence. U.S. troops had been in and out of Nicaragua a number of times since the late nineteenth century. In 1916 Calvin Coolidge, who despite his charisma deficit fancied himself a robust expansionist in the Theodore Roosevelt mold, once again dispatched an expedition, this time to quell a budding civil war but also to sequester the kind of revolutionary nationalism that was spreading throughout Mexico. His actions backfired.
Despite overwhelming asymmetrical firepower, including advances in aerial warfare, Nicaragua proved to be the United States's first third-world quagmire. Sandino harassed the Americans not just with attack-and-retreat guerrilla tactics that inflicted a deadly toll but with ideas. As head of a self-styled Defending Army of Nicaraguan National Sovereignty, the rebel leader̵who took as his official seal an image of a peasant with a raised machete about to decapitate a captured marine—tapped into widespread Latin American resentment. His brand of patriotism esteemed the dark-skinned, impoverished peasant culture that prevailed throughout Mesoamerica md much of South America, while vilifying not only Yankees but their well-heeled local allies, or, as Sandino called them, vendepatrias—country sellers. "Pro-Nicaraguan committees" sprang up throughout Latin America, with Sandino's David-against-Goliath struggle coming to embody a century of aggression and arrogance. Manifestos, grassroots meetings, editorials, and ever larger street protests denounced Washington's war in Nicaragua. Newspapers published regular articles on the crisis and ran photographs provided by Sandino of captured, executed, and mutilated marines, contributing to a sense of U.S. vulnerability. His appeal extended to the United States, where he coordinned his public relations campaign with the activities of the All-American Anti-Imperialist League, sending his brother Socrates on a national speaking tour. In Europe, a Mexican delegate to the 1929 International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism waved a tattered American flag captured by Sandino's troops to a loud round of cheers and applause. Even London, then in the process of spreading its control over much of the Middle East, took great pleasure re in condemning America's actions as "frankly imperialistic."
Tensions came to a head at the Sixth Pan-American Conference, held in Havana in early 1928. By the time of the meeting, panAmericanism, the idea that the American republics shared common ideals and political interests, was in effect moribund. But it was trotted out every few years in an international forum where Latin American delegates mostly submitted to Washington's directives while silently seething about the latest violation of national sovereignty—in Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, take your pick. Proceedings in Havana moved according to script. The closing ceremony was not intended for debate, yet El Salvador raised the issue of Washington's military interventions, opening the floodgates of criticism. The gallery audience applauded each recounting of old and new grievances and hissed at the tepid defense of US. policy offered by its envoy. This court rebellion took place in the shadow of Sandino's war, which on the eve of the conference had scored a number of impressive victories. The rebel was not directly mentioned, although one Latin American daily after another read the diplomacy in light of the fighting in Nicaragua.

Empire's Workshop, Greg Grandin