From the Collection: Yale University. Department of Manuscripts and Archives
Published / Created:
1959
Call Number:
MS 650
Container / Volume:
Box 7, folder 713-741
Image Count:
28
Description:
This set of prints documents a visit to Nicaragua that St. George appears to have made in late May or early June of 1959, after a long stay in Cuba earlier that year. On May 30, 1959, Luis Somoza Debayle, who ruled Nicaragua from 1956 to 1963 following the assassination of his father, the dictator Anastasio Somoza García, put down an attempted uprising against the government led by groups who found their inspiration in the Cuban Revolution. Luis's brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, replaced his father as the commander of the United States-trained National Guard, a legacy of the United States' long military occupation of Nicaragua that began with the landing of Marines in 1912 and continued (with a brief reprieve in 1925) through 1933. St. George interviewed both of the Somoza brothers (see especially Prints 1, 2, 16 for closeup images of Luis, and Prints 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19 for images of Anastasio, Jr.). Prints 10, 13, 14, 17 show police and military officials stopping citizens on the streets, some of whom are probably students. Although tiny in number, the student body of Nicaragua's only university in Managua were famously critical of the Somoza regime and were likely to have been the primary subject of these random checks and searches. Print 22 appears to show the processing of a large number of civilians in a police station, including one Catholic priest; it also shows several soldiers inspecting caches of ammunition. Print 24 shows several National Guardsmen questioning a well-dressed woman at the door of a middle-class home. Print 26 shows St. George in the company of an unidentified American, who appears in the role of a journalist in Print 4 but is here shown carrying a rifle and dressed in full military fatigues; several shots also in Print 26 show them drinking from a bottle of rum. Also in these images, National Guardsmen are shown in the act of arresting a small unit of guerrillas who appear with their hands up in a position of surrender. Print 20 provides more complete documentation of the surrender of these men and their subsequent capture by National Guardsmen, including images of the guerrillas posting a white flag of surrender before their safehouse, and various stages of their capture by the National Guard. Print 21 includes close-up images of some of those guerrillas arrested. Prints 3, 4, 5, 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29 document the National Guard column involved in this operation, named "Columna San Jacinto," in Print 25.
