Death at the Cross Roads (Cont'd)

Death at the Cross Roads (Cont'd)

Not long before the evil midnight when a company of Nicaraguan National Guardsmen murdered their country's most famed character, Augusto Cesar Sandino (TIME, March 5), Sandino had said: "There are now three powers in Nicaragua: President Sacasa, the Guardia and myself." Though he was dead Sandino was last week still one of Nicaragua's three powers, but the order of importance had changed.

The. Guardia had moved up to first. Its commander. General Anastacio Somoza, had undermined President Juan Bautista Sacasa's prestige by the simple device of depositing a big arms shipment from the U. S. in his own warehouse instead of the Government's. By last week he had cornered most of the guns in Nicaragua and he needed them, for nearly everybody believed that it was he who had ordered the murder of Sandino.

President Sacasa had completely lost face by his failure to catch Sandino's murderers. A grave, honest gentleman, graduate of Columbia University, he was made for peace. Last week Nicaraguans rumored that he was "actually the prisoner of General Somoza," that his personal bodyguard took orders from Somoza.

Sandino's memory was still the most combustible thing in Nicaragua. To fill the great little man's boots, a swart, chunky dentist named Pedro Jose Zepeda popped up in Mexico City last week and announced that he had the papers that entitled him to leadership of Sandino's followers. Cried he: "I have ten generals and 1,500 armed men ready to take the field at the order of President Sacasa against the dictatorship now in control of the country [Somoza]."

Of the mystery-shrouded facts of Sandino's last hour, Dentist Zepeda, good friend and foreign representative of Sandino, seemed to have inside knowledge: ". . . His automobile was halted by a group of 25 guardsmen led by Lieut. Antonio Lopez. 'I have orders to shoot you,' Lopez said. 'Why?' asked Sandino. 'I am sure there must be some mistake. Telephone General Somoza and see if there is not a mistake.' The lieutenant telephoned Somoza. He returned and told Sandino that he was to be shot in accordance with superior orders. Sandino, Estrada and Umanzor [his two favorite generals] were then taken to a place where a grave had been dug some days before. They were tortured in an effort to make them confess that they were planning a revolution and, when they naturally refused to confess a thing of which they were not guilty, they were murdered by a volley of machine gun bullets. . . . Shortly afterward, another group of guardsmen attacked the home of Sofonias Salvatierra, Minister of Agriculture, and killed Socrates Sandino, Augusta's brother, two men and a ten-year-old boy."

Then Dentist Zepeda set a match to Nicaragua's prime emotion: suspicion of the U. S., of which Sandino was hero and symbol. "I am suspicious," said Zepeda, "of the fact that the U. S. Minister to Nicaragua Arthur Bliss Lane had luncheon with General Somoza only a few hours before Sandino was assassinated by Somoza's National Guardsmen." Well-known is the fact that Somoza has potent friends among the U. S. citizens in Nicaragua, as has President Sacasa.

While Zepeda lingered in Mexico City, Nicaraguan National Guardsmen prowled about Sandino's back-country stronghold on the Rio Coco last week, killed eight Sandinistas, captured six and a quantity of precious ammunition. Meanwhile a Col. Camilo Gonzalez, formerly of Nicaragua's National Guard, was landed last week at Manhattan's Ellis Island from the S. S. Santa Ana. A Costa Rican newshawk had somehow gotten and published a story that Gonzalez had bragged of killing Sandino on ''direct written orders from General Somoza."

"When Sandino stood before the squad, he remarked, 'I knew this would happen to me.' My companion in carrying out the executions was Captain Lisandro Delgadillo. I do not repent, but I would like to be forgotten."

Tall, impetuous Captain Gonzalez flatly denied the Costa Rican's story. He was held at Ellis Island for a day, then released on parole.

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