Guerrillas from Olama and Mollejones

The guerrillas of Olama and Mollejones were founded in May 1959 in Costa Rica on the model of the Cuban Revolution . A politico - military enterprise led by the Juventud Conservadora de Nicaragua under the leadership of the journalist and politician Pedro Joaquín Chamorro , who lived in exile in Costa Rica , was supposed to enforce the constitution of the ruling Somoza clan in Nicaragua and forced to hold free elections. The enterprise failed already after a few days at the beginning of June because the guerrillas were unable to begin militarily operating against the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua in Nicaragua .

Planning and building the guerrilla

Due to the success of the Cuban Revolution, several guerrilla groups from different political camps formed in Nicaragua that were not connected to one another. While left groups, analogous to Cuba, intended to overthrow the government, the Conservative Party of Nicaragua, with the backing of the former President and Caudillo , General Emiliano Chamorro Vargas , intended through guerrilla activity to force Luis Somoza Debayle's government to adhere to the constitution and to be free and neutral Hold elections under surveillance.

In search of allies, Chamorro and Reynaldo Antonio Téfel Vélez (* 1925) apparently flew to Havana in the spring of 1959 to consult with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara . Castro had, however, entrusted the supervision of foreign revolutionaries to Guevara, who explained to the Nicaraguan delegation that another Nicaraguan guerrilla was already being supported. It was the guerrillas of El Chaparral , to which Carlos Fonseca also belonged, but Chamorro and Téfel were not aware of this.

Thereupon the Costa Rican politician José Figueres Ferrer , a declared opponent of the Somozas, declared himself ready to support the guerrillas in San José . The rebels in Punta Llorona near Quepos / Guanacaste were given a training ground and a Curtiss C-46 Commando with a pilot , Captain Rívas Gómez, who had previously served in the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua. Some Costa Rican military officers from the Guardia Civil de Costa Rica, such as Lieutenant Sonny Bonny and Dominican Major Freddy Fernández, also took part in the company. Through the mediation of Figueres, the rebels were given a hodgepodge of old weapons of the company Mauser and Beretta , M1 Garand and Krag-Jørgensen rifles, M3 -Maschinenpistolen and two Johnson - machine guns . They were also given olive green uniforms; apparently used material from US Army stocks.

execution

Curtiss C-46 Commando

Boaco Department in Nicaragua

The overall management of the company was incumbent on Chamorro. The first group of guerrillas consisted of the columns of San Jacinto under the leadership of Comandante Reynaldo Téfel, José Dolores Estrada under the leadership of José Medina Cuadra and Quinta Columna under the leadership of Luís Cardenal. It consisted of 62 men and was flown on May 31, 1959 from Punta Llorona to Mollejones a good 40 km north of Boaco .

Just two hours later, the guerrillas were discovered by the National Guard and attacked by a 50-man patrol that also received air support. The guerrillas withdrew to the Finca Fruta de Pan , where the majority of them surrendered. Chamorro withdrew to the mountains with 15 men, but a few days later had to surrender to a 46 man strong patrol of the Guardia led by Lieutenant Gastón Quintana, because the group was soaked from continuous rain and suffered from diarrhea.

The second group of 51 men was flown from La Llorona to the Olama Valley near Mollejones on June 1st. It consisted of the columns José Figueres and Quatro de Abril under the leadership of Napoleón Ubilla and Ronald Abaunza; Ubilla was also an ex-officer in the Guard. When landing, the machine ran aground on the soft ground. The guerrillas were two North American P-51 Mustang - fighter-bombers of the National Guard fired upon, tracked by a patrol of the Guard and had to for a half hour battle result.

The captured guerrillas were on the Campo de Marte ( Field of Mars ) in Managua before a military court asked and stayed several months in custody, but were released back to the end of December 1959th

Reasons for failure

The guerrillas were neither politically nor militarily prepared for the enterprise. Apart from the practical military inexperience of the guerrillas, there was no military strategy , but also an internal front in the cities that could maintain contact with the guerrillas and operate as urban guerrillas in Cuba . The rebels were also unprepared for the rainy season in the mountains and fell ill with diarrhea from ingesting river water. The rebels received no support from the local farmers ( campesinos ). Apparently, in the area of operations in the Boaco Department, neither storage facilities nor a network of informants had been established.

The Olama and Mollejones guerrillas in Nicaragua, however, were not an isolated incident. In addition to the Juventud Conservadora , other movements, some with Cuban support, tried to establish guerrilla movements in Nicaragua from Honduras :

- The guerrilla of El Chaparral , which was to be set up in June 1959 in the department of El Paraíso with Cuban help in Honduras. It was smashed by the Honduran army when it was still in its early stages.

- Also in June 1959, Chale Haslam founded a guerrilla in the Matagalpa area. He was murdered by an agent smuggled into his group, whereupon the movement disintegrated.

- The Frente Revolucionario Sandino (FRS = Revolutionary Front Sandino ). It was founded in Guadalajara / Mexico in 1959 ; Member was u. a. Edén Pastora . It operated from Honduras until 1963 in the Jalapa (Nicaragua) / Nueva Segovia area . Some of its members joined the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional in 1963 .

- Guerrilla by Julio Alonso Leclaire. Leclaire was a former officer in the Guardia Nacional and had already served in the Caribbean Legion in Costa Rica in 1948 . His guerrillas also operated from Honduras on the Río Coco in 1960 , where they were practically completely wiped out in several skirmishes with the National Guard.

Despite different political backgrounds, all guerrilla groups had completely underestimated the potential of the National Guard and the stability of the Somoza regime. In fact, the regime was ultimately overthrown not by a guerrilla movement based on Guevara's focus theory, but by a popular uprising in 1979 in the Nicaraguan Revolution that Humberto Ortega had conceived as a departure from focus theory.

literature

Roger Mendieta Alfaro: Olama y Mollejones , Managua (Impresiones CARQUI) 1992.
Coronel Francisco Barbosa Miranda: Historia militar de Nicaragua. Antes del siglo XVI al XXI , 2nd edition Managua (Hispamer) 2010. ISBN 978-99924-79-46-9
Robert H. Holden: Armies Without Nations. Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821-1960 , New York 2004.
Frank Niess: The legacy of the Conquista. History of Nicaragua , Cologne (Pahl-Rugenstein) 1987, pp. 352–355. ISBN 3-7609-1058-0 .

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