After a bloody insurrection that killed tens of thousands, the Sandinista National Liberation Front swept into Managua to jubilant crowds, one day after Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled to Miami. The victory ended more than four decades of Somoza family rule and installed a leftist junta led by figures including Daniel Ortega, setting the stage for a new civil war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels through the 1980s.
The Somoza family had ruled Nicaragua since 1936, running the country as a personal fiefdom and amassing vast wealth while much of the population remained in poverty. Opposition simmered for decades but exploded into open insurrection in the late 1970s, fueled by outrage over the 1978 assassination of newspaper editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and the regime's brutal response to growing unrest.
By mid-1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) controlled most of the country outside the capital, and the United States — Somoza's longtime patron — had withdrawn its support as the violence and human rights abuses became untenable. Somoza fled to Miami on July 17, 1979, taking much of the national treasury with him, and was assassinated in Paraguay the following year.
On July 19, jubilant Sandinista columns entered Managua as crowds waved red-and-black flags. A five-member junta including Daniel Ortega and novelist Sergio Ramírez took power, promising land reform and literacy campaigns. But the euphoria proved short-lived: within a few years the U.S. was funding Contra rebels against the new Sandinista government, plunging Nicaragua into another decade of war that killed tens of thousands more.
Key people: Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Daniel Ortega