Act in commemoration of the 87th Anniversary of the transit to immortality
of the General of Free Women and Men, Augusto C. Sandino
February 21st 2021
Address by Daniel
Beloved Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, beloved families, who, full of glory and vigor, as Darío wrote so well, continue striving, continue working for the welfare of all the Nicaraguan People, continue working, continue striving, for the stability, for the security of all Nicaraguans.
Today we are commemorating the 87th Anniversary, when our General Sandino was cowardly assassinated, as traitors and quislings usually do. He, along with General Estrada and General Umanzor, the three of them had been at a dinner offered to them by President Sacasa. Then, later along this Avenue that now bears the name of Sandino, but which then bore the name of Roosevelt, the main Avenue of Nicaragua at that time bore the name of Roosevelt, something which shows the servile attitude of those who had been governing Nicaragua, serving United States expansionism, in the service of United States Imperialism.
And really, General Sandino came to that dinner when the Peace Accords were practically over. Of course, he signed the Peace Accords, and that was the condition he had set, when the Yankee troops would have withdrawn from Nicaragua. And the Yankee troops tried, in every way, they tried to defeat the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty in the mountains of Las Segovias.
And there the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty, as our General Sandino had christened it, knew how to defend Nicaragua, knew how to confront much better armed forces, much better equipped with modern weapons, much better organized, much better supplied.... He knew how to confront them!
And the peasants, miners, workers, producers, traders and students who joined the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty, knew how to fight the battle, against a gigantic, enormous enemy, who sent more troops every day when they saw that they could not defeat General Sandino and his Army in Defense of National Sovereignty.
In the end, they had no choice but to withdraw, they had to withdraw the Yankee troops, they had to withdraw the Yankee Air Force, which was used here in that war to bomb villages, to bomb communities. They had to withdraw without having achieved their objective, which was to defeat the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty. They did not fulfill the task given to them in Washington. They could not! They could not!
And then with the Yankee troops withdrawn from our country, our General said in different interviews: Well, now this Peace Process is about fighting a more difficult battle than the one we were fighting when the Yankee troops were here, because now we are facing an enemy that the People cannot see.
The Yankee troops were there, committing atrocities, crimes of all kinds; including during the Managua earthquake, which they took advantage of to repress the people who were seeking ways to save themselves, to survive in the midst of that earthquake in 1931. And the US forces repressed, murdered Nicaraguans, because they felt that they were law and order in the World, never mind in Nicaragua where they had political parties and governments here that totally obeyed what they said, and fought among themselves to be servants of the Yankees' domain. They had no shame.
We already know the history, but history cannot be forgotten, it should not be forgotten, precisely because unfortunately those histories repeat themselves. And they'll repeat themselves as long as we have imperialist powers in the world, and above all we have that great imperialist power which is the United States of America, which claims to be the country, the nation which most respects human rights, the nation, the purest and cleanest country on the planet.
It is so pure and so clean that it claimed the right, in competition with Hitler, because there was a race at that time between Hitler's Germany and the European Powers, and the United States which itself was not in any of the theaters of the war, to develop the atomic bomb, to see who would develop the atomic bomb first, either Hitler or the Western countries, the Western powers.
But, of course, the Western powers were in enormous difficulties, Hitler had practically occupied Europe, he had subdued Europe, he was bombing England every day, and meanwhile Hitler was rushing to work with his scientists who had exterminated millions of Human Beings, among them millions of men, women and children of Israel.
Israelites who were scattered all over Europe, he hunted them down and put them in concentration camps and there in the concentration camps he murdered them. He invented gas chambers there to asphyxiate them; in other words, children whose only crime was to have been born to Jewish families. More than 6 million were exterminated in that cowardly and brutal way. This is how imperialists like Hitler speak and behave. Hitler is the greatest expression of the barbarism of Western imperialism.
But there was the race then and the Yankee empire managed to beat Hitler, and managed, with help too from scientists who undermined the Germans, to build the famous atomic bomb, given that when they were disputing who would build the atomic bomb there was no doubt that if Hitler built it first he would drop it on those European countries still resisting him, and would drop it on Russia which was the main battle front, as President Roosevelt himself acknowledged, to contain and defeat fascism.
If the United States succeeded in building the bomb it was presumed not so as to drop it, but rather to have an instrument that would allow them to contribute, without dropping the bombs, to the defeat of Nazism. But they could not resist the desire to make a demonstration so typical of imperialists and they did drop the atomic bombs they had managed to build, dropping them on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Two cities that were far away from the war fronts, two cities where there were no major strategic concentrations of the Japanese Army; they were not military targets. Simply, in an act of barbarism, they decided to test the atomic bombs, without even exposing themselves to the risk of going to a combat zone where the planes might be shot down, and so they dropped them on two cities, in a single blow.
If in the Twin Towers, in that act of terror, of barbarism, which we condemned at the time and continue to condemn, thousands of Americans were killed, more than 11,000 Americans and some Latino people, then in those two cities 250,000 citizens were killed, elderly, adults, young people, children. There are still survivors there who were children then and who grew up in the middle of the radiation and with the effects of the radiation and their bodies are totally damaged, affected, disfigured.
Where are the barbarians, where are the terrorists? They are in Washington! They are in Washington! The barbarians, the terrorists are in Washington! And we already know the long history of the United States, which we are not going to repeat here today, of their aggression throughout the World.
We have received a letter from our brother Nicolas Maduro, an extraordinary letter, a letter where he addresses the peoples of the world and where he denounces the barbarism that has been committed and continues to be committed against the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
And it is not just Venezuela's government, its President, making this denunciation, but he does so documenting it with the data they have, and above all with the data they had the opportunity to present to a delegate of that United Nations agency in Geneva, who was delegated to visit and really to see whether or not the notorious "sanctions" truly do or do not affect the Venezuelan People.
And the report prepared by that United Nations delegate is really painful, how a blockade as brutal as the blockade against Cuba, is also accompanied by the looting, the theft of thousands of billions from the Venezuelan people that are being stolen by the great powers, they are keeping funds that were deposited in those countries given Venezuela's wealth, and now they are keeping the funds, they are keeping the companies, they are keeping the businesses; that is, they are looters, here we would say, it's not that they're thieves, not thieves.... They are gangsters! More gangster-like than Al Capone! And they do all this in the name of Liberty, and in the name of Justice.
And from this square, here where our brother the Eternal Comandante Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías expressed his Solidarity, his Love for Sandino and for the Nicaraguan People, just as Nicolas has done, we say to you Venezuelan sisters and brothers, we say to you Nicolas, brother, comrade, and we say to Chávez who accompanies us in these battles, and we say to Bolívar advancing with his sword, that the People of Nicaragua remains firm and will remain firm in its accompaniment, in its Solidarity with the People and Government of Venezuela. And that we will not cease to clamor, as we do in every conference that takes place, clamoring and demanding an end to the sanctions against Venezuela and the sanctions against the brother People of Cuba, the People of Fidel, the People of Raul, our other great brother, brothers whom we hold in immense affection and who have immense love for Nicaragua and its People, cease.
And we say to our brother Miguel Díaz-Canel who today leads the government of Cuba and our brother Miguel Díaz-Canel even had the experience of being in Nicaragua at the time of the war imposed on us by the Yankees, he was there in the mountains, alongside the Nicaraguan People fighting, struggling, giving Solidarity, we say to Miguel: Miguel, brother, we are with you, we are with Cuba, we are with its Youth, we are with its People.
We cannot stop being consistent with our principles, that is how we have always been, consistent with our principles. This is a small People, yes, in population, small in its territory, but it is a People with a history that fills us with pride, it is a People that has fights its battles, never bowing its head in the face of the conquistadores when they came from Spain with the Cross and the Sword.
It never bowed its head before the Yankee empire, before the varied aggression and interventions, since the expansionism with Walker, and there was Andrés throwing his stone at the invaders.
He never bowed his head or knelt when faced with the invading troops, as powerful as they were, when they landed in Corinto after having overthrown Zelaya. And Zeledón stood firm with his troops, and said, just like Sandino, that he would not surrender, that he would not sell out, that he would not accept what the Yankee troops and the Yankee colonels offered him in exchange, who told him that if he surrendered they would recognize this and that, that they would recognize the land he owned. And he said: No!
And he said it in a letter to his wife, to his children, to his family, that day, his birthday, the day of his birthday, and he wrote it, he managed to get the letter to his family and he wrote that he knew the family's grief, at the knowledge of his willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, but that he could not cover either his family, or his country, or his people, with shame by surrendering to the Yankees. And there Zeledón fell, he gave his life, he gave his blood for the Sovereignty of the nation. That is what it means to be Nicaraguan, to be a patriot, to be worthy, to have dignity.
Just like Sandino and his Army in Defense of National Sovereignty, and that day, February 21, 1934, when after dinner they captured the General, with Estrada and Umanzor, and took them away somewhere and cowardly shot them, simultaneously, troops organized by the Yankees and on Somoza's orders, attacked the house of Minister Sofonías Salvatierra, which was the house where they, Sandino, his Generals and Colonels, were staying.
And there were two of Sandino's Colonels there, one of whom was Sandino's brother; in other words, the blood of one of Sandino's brothers was also spilled there. When they were attacked, they resisted and in the combat Colonel Sócrates Sandino fell. And Colonel Santos Lopez resisted and fought together with Socrates, who lies here in this mausoleum. And Colonel Santos López fought, was wounded in the leg, but managed to escape, from that house, there near El Calvario, he managed to escape, imagine that, Colonel Santos López was very subtle, because he managed to escape, reach Honduras and later, after some time, he reached our sister country Cuba.
Because of course, you see, that was 1934, and the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959. So 34, 44, 54, 59, and only then did Colonel Santos Lopez arrive in Cuba. In the meantime, he lived clandestinely, while other followers of Sandino, like Colonel Santos López himself, also continued to fight on and he was the link with Sandino who met the new generation led by our brother Carlos Fonseca, that spiritual chief who defeated death.
He met with Carlos, and there, from that fusion of the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty, with Carlos Fonseca and other brothers, Tomas, Silvio Mayorga, Jorge Navarro, from there, from that historic meeting, the Sandinista National Liberation Front was born.
So then, this long struggle in which those same forces are present, the patriotic forces of Nicaragua, the patriotic forces of Latin America and the Caribbean, the world's dignified patriotic forces against the imperialist forces wanting to dominate the Peoples of the world. That battle goes on.
How much we need at this time to reach an understanding, an agreement, a ceasefire to all types of aggression, among all the nations of the World. Why? Because these times we are going through are times of profound change, with this plague, this virus that is eating away at the foundations of capitalism, at the foundations of oligarchic interests of the World, although some of them are making enormous profits, others are suffering tremendous losses.
Millions of human beings are unemployed in the United States, millions of human beings are unemployed in Europe, millions of human beings are unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean, the same in Asia, in the whole World. This pandemic is causing irreversible damage, costs that cannot be recovered, because what is lost, is lost.
However powerful they may be, even very big companies have had to close. And while it is true that they generated employment, this allowed them to have workers so as to accumulate more wealth every day, alongside millions of poor people in their own countries and around the world.
This is a situation that merits a global agreement like the one taken in World War II. In World War II, despite the enormous contradictions the United States and the Europeans had with the Soviet Union, with Russia, they had no choice but to abandon their hegemonic attitude, to abandon their radical attitude, and to seek a great alliance. And they formed a great alliance in the world to be able to confront Nazism, which was advancing in an overwhelming way, and the United States knew that if Nazism was not stopped and defeated in Europe, it would then take over the United States, and become the owner of the United States of America.
That is why, in spite of the war waged against the October Revolution by the European countries and the United States when the October Revolution triumphed, Stalin, who was Russia's leader, did not hesitate, because he was an intelligent person, because he had wisdom transcending the deep contradictions and clashes they had, he did not hesitate to accept the Alliance.
The Alliance came about and the United States knew this Alliance was a matter of life and death for them, because as Roosevelt said, the great battle, the great decisive force for defeating Nazism was in Russia. Roosevelt recognized this and that is why they had to ally themselves. And, you see, they became allies and Nazism was defeated. A black stain on this, or a white stain if you like, since the term "black" is totally racist, a white stain on the United States was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
No one can forget, and it is good to remember during these times when we all have to unite globally, we cannot forget that incredible but factual historic photo, there in Yalta, there they were in that historic meeting, affirming peace just as the war was already ending. Who was there? Roosevelt for the United States, Churchill for Britain, and Stalin for Russia.
The Europeans should not forget and let the United States not forget, that on this planet not one person is superfluous and that is why it is important to meet, to dialogue, to reach agreements, to set aside hegemonistic attitudes. they should recall how at that moment in history when the security of the Planet was at very grave risk, this great unity took place.
And now this too is a moment in which the Planet is at great and enormous risk, because the number of deaths caused by the pandemic is already in the millions, just as millions who perished in both the First War and the Second World War. And it is not the case that any one power has the capacity to solve this problem on its own.
So, naturally, what is the weapon at this time, facing this enemy, this enemy that is everywhere, that is in the house of the poor and in the house of the rich, that is in the most impoverished areas of Asia, Africa, Latin America and but also in developed countries, this virus that even tycoons don't escape, that no one escapes?
What, then, is the weapon we have? The weapon we have, which we proclaim, and I note, those who have most economic power in the world also proclaim, is to face it united, and, in addition to the measures of distancing, of washing hands, of wearing masks, the measure that is really going to give protection, as has happened in all epidemics, is vaccination.
You see, still at this time there is the smallpox vaccine, and there are countries where no one is allowed to enter unless they have had the smallpox vaccine. And how long ago now was the notorious smallpox pandemic, which caused millions of deaths?
That is the weapon, vaccination, but the vaccines are in the hands of the powerful countries. Of course, it is big business for the vaccine manufacturing companies, since they can put any price they like on the vaccines.
Global health organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization have been clear, because vaccines are already circulating, vaccines are already being given and priority is being given above all to doctors, nurses, people who have diseases that make them very vulnerable if they are attacked by the virus, no matter how old the person may be.
If the person suffers from kidney disease and has to undergo dialysis three times a week, that person must be vaccinated, no matter how old they are. Why? Because if they are attacked by the virus, they are at very high risk of not surviving a virus attack. People who suffer from diabetes, who suffer from blood pressure, also, no matter what their age. That is to say, in this sense we have to act with a spirit of justice and solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In what way? By applying the vaccine.
And this goes for the countries... Which are the most vulnerable countries? Developing countries, for all the well known reasons caused by the model of savage capitalism. Most infant mortality is in developing countries; most hunger is in developing countries; catastrophes provoked by Nature cause most damage in developing countries. Put another way, developing countries have to depend on aid of some kind from international organizations in order to face famine.
Of course, a rich country, even a developed country, such as the United States, can suffer from a terrible snowfall. There are already more than 50 or more people dead, I do not know if there may be 60 already, and large areas of the country are paralyzed. Of course we sympathize with all the families that are being affected, we sympathize with those people, but after all, the rich countries have more resources and better resources to be able to cope without the need for outside help.
The Europeans are the same, to address unemployment they are able to pay thousands and thousands of millions; in the United States too, they print money and pay thousands and millions so that they give to each unemployed citizen an amount of money for them to survive until the pandemic passes and the country's economy can get back to normal again.
And with the vaccine, as I was saying to you, the same thing happens, because the big producers of the Vaccine are in the developed countries. Two big countries are part of the BRICS Group, where Russia, Brazil, China, India and South Africa are the five, some of these countries are also producing vaccines, Russia, China and India.
Well, we are making efforts, we have discovered very good willingness from the Russian Federation, from India to make the vaccine available to us, and also via the WHO we have available the vaccines manufactured in European countries. But the problem is, as the WHO itself says, they cannot guarantee that the vaccines will arrive quickly. Why? Because first they are being applied in developed countries that have more money to buy, and they are fighting among themselves over the purchase of the vaccine.
And even if a country had already signed a contract for the vaccine, a developed country, contradictions are arising. A country may have already signed a contract for the vaccine, but suddenly another developed country offered more money to the company and then told the other that it will have to wait, because the company has already sold to the country which offered more money. In other words, there is always contamination from the poison of profit, in a struggle where attitudes of this kind should not play a part.
We have funds available to be able to buy these vaccines, but for now we have to wait for the conditions to come about enabling countries like ours to have access to the vaccines, and we are sure that the time will come when we will have access to the vaccines.
It is clear that the vaccines are the weapon that will help to neutralize and contain, but, as I said, in the current situation, the developed Countries must become aware that they cannot continue to behave as they have done throughout this pandemic, with hegemonistic attitudes that put at risk treaties to do with the development of atomic weapons.
One is dealing with the world security! So, these are times when they need to reflect, they need to learn the lesson they learned when they had to work hand in hand with the Russian people and with Stalin, who were their enemies, most obviously people like Churchill, enemies of Socialist Russia, Communist Russia, the Russia of the October Revolution and Lenin, and the Russia that faced the world war under Stalin. But then they played down their deep contradictions, put them to one side, leaving them for later.
That is what the world powers have to do now, to look for points of agreement so that we can save humanity, because this is not a question of helping out the most impoverished countries... No! Because the problem is a global problem and if they want to save themselves, they have to think about saving these countries as well, otherwise the virus will just circulate from one place to another, moving and shifting.
Beloved brothers and sisters, beloved comrades, on this day when we pay homage to our General Sandino, General Estrada, General Umanzor, Colonel Sócrates Sandino we can affirm, and assure you, that they are present with us and fill us with strength, their Spirit accompanies us, giving us vitality, more energy to continue the struggle for Peace.
Let us not forget that our General fell in the struggle for Peace, and we will continue to strive at all costs for Peace, for understanding among Nicaragua's families, for unity among Nicaragua's families, and of course we cannot accept, from any point of view, those who offer themselves, looking to the Empire to come and dominate Nicaragua. That is no longer possible.
There is a consciousness in our country shown in its daily work, given that this country is an exception, because throughout the pandemic this People has not stopped working, throughout this pandemic this People has not stopped building, throughout the pandemic our young people have not stopped studying, throughout the pandemic culture, sport, have flourished, businesses have multiplied.
This is a People, as Darío put it so well, full of Vigor and Glory, and that is what it is made for, what Nicaragua is made for, Nicaragua was born for Freedom, for Freedom, for Freedom!
Sandino lives on, the Struggle goes on!
A Free Nation or Death!
Remarks by Rosario, Vice President of Nicaragua, after the Ceremony in
Commemoration of the 87th Anniversary of the Transit to Immortality
of the General of Free Men and Women Augusto C. Sandino
February 22nd, 2021
Good Evening to our beloved People, to our families, beloved families of this blessed nation, of this nation, increasingly filled with Faith. If anything defines our nationality, our Nicaraguan identity, it is our faith in God. Our faith is our strength, and our strength is the Love with which we go forward with dignity, this is a worthy People, of liberty, and fraternity. We are a People of dignity that compels admiration, amazement to so many Peoples of the World.
There is prodigious force in this Nicaragua of ours, and, for me, it is the force of faith and that belief is nested in all of us, that by imploring, invoking, connecting with transcendence, with God, we can face, as we have faced, all the difficult circumstances, and which we have overcome .
And so we go on, full of faith, full of strength, full of spirit, full of this special Nicaraguan culture, which is deeply spiritual and which calls on us every day to realize, to take note, to perceive that Life is a river, living waters, rivers of living waters, that situations change, circumstances, but the heart does not change, the heart grows by appropriating every day more and more miracles, goodness, more and more of what we have, this heritage which is a heroic legacy, this heritage of a special culture of great strengths, one that makes us all feel proud.
Furthermore, when the Comandante spoke of how we have never bowed our heads, as Nicaraguan People, from so many ancestral roots, roots that have defined us throughout our history, and we have never bowed our heads. And that is a great truth that makes us feel as great as we are but in all humility too, because that strength to know how to stand firm, never to kneel, that strength is divine, that strength comes from providence, it comes to us from God. To feel blessed, to feel capable and to prosper, feeling victorious, is part of that strength.
We do not do so, we do not feel this way because we are arrogant or because we think we are superior.... No ! We know that all human beings can appropriate this light that providence, the universe, gives us, and that it is a light to look inside ourselves, proposing every day the necessary changes to be better. This is also the essence of the human heart, humble and convinced that what's real is full of wonder. The wonderful is what is real, and that wonder, those wonders that God has poured on a striving People, that is what is real, and it is wonderful.
Here we are commemorating that brave General, and telling ourselves we are all that brave, and worthy of heart, with that capacity to fight, convinced that the paths of God are the paths of the Nicaraguan People, the People of God. Striving to overcome poverty with Love, striving, summoning us to fraternal union and to the experience of Love, which allows us to understand that our neighbor has equal rights to those that each one of us has.
And that the right of all women, men, young people, children, is to live in the best possible conditions, is to work with dignity, and is to advance feeling that all of us are doing well. Because our greatest blessing is this transcendent and extraordinary human condition that characterizes us Nicaraguans. That extraordinary human and spiritual condition that enable Sandino, and the Army in Defense of Nicaragua's Sovereignty stand out and illuminate the World.
Thank you, compañer@s, and the commitment is the same, invariable, to move ahead, to work, and to propose ourselves to reach the best for all: Liberty, Dignity, Fraternity, Prosperity. Thank you, compañer@s.