Introduction My government guarantees order, peace, and social stability, despite the fact that outside forces promote disorder by at tacking the tranquility and well-being of the Nicaraguan people. —Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, July 1979
One morning in early March 1979, an excited report from Comandante Francisco Rivera crackled over the guerrillas’ clandestine transmitter, Radio Sandino. Rivera, the top rebel commander in Nicaragua’s rural north, detailed numerous skirmishes against the armed forces of the dictatorship of Gen. Anastasio Somoza, and also a recent raid his young troops had carried out in the city of Estelí. “Various brothels owned by Somocista elements in league with military officers of the National Guard were burned down,” he explained. He emphasized that the destruction of this property was “yet another sign of our willing ness to eradicate prostitution from our country once and for all.”1 At age twenty-five, Rivera was already an experienced leader in the San dinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN), a leftist armed group vying to overthrow the Somo zas, whose family had ruled the country for more than four decades. The regime’s loyal military and police force, the National Guard (Guar dia Nacional, GN), stood accused of committing numerous atrocities 1
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