Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle (18 November 1922 – 13 April 1967) was the 26th
President
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* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
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of
Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...
from 21 September 1956 to 1 May 1963.
Somoza Debayle was born in
León. At the age of 14, he and his younger brother
Anastasio
Anastasio is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include:
People with the given name
* Anastasio Alfaro (1865–1951), Costa Rican zoologist, geologist and explorer
* Anastasio Aquino (1792–1833), Salvadoran indigenou ...
attended
Saint Leo College Prep near
Tampa, before transferring to
La Salle Military Academy
La Salle Military Academy was a Catholic school with middle school/junior high school and high school divisions located in Oakdale, New York. It closed in 2001, and the school's extensive campus is now owned by St. John's University, located in ...
on
Long Island. Luis was then educated at
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...
, where he was a member of
Fi Sigma Alfa
Phi Sigma Alpha (), commonly known as La Sigma, is a Puerto Rican fraternities and sororities, Puerto Rican fraternity originally established as the Sigma Delta Alpha Fraternity (Sociedad de Amigos) on October 22, 1928, at the University of Puert ...
Hispanic fraternity. He married Costa Rican
Isabel Urcuyo on 9 June 1947, and they had seven children together.
Following the
assassination of his father,
Anastasio Somoza García
Anastasio Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was the leader of Nicaragua from 1937 until his assassination in 1956. He was only officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 195 ...
, Luis was tapped as acting president, and was elected president in his own right
the following year. His rule was somewhat milder than that of his father. However, civil liberties remained restricted, and corruption remained widespread.
His brother,
Anastasio Somoza Debayle, headed the
National Guard
National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards.
Nat ...
and was the second most powerful man in the country during his older brother's rule. Although Luis declined to run for reelection in 1963, he and Anastasio saw to it that the presidency was held from 1963 onward by politicians loyal to the Somozas. As a result, Luis remained the ''de facto'' leader of Nicaragua until his death in 1967, when he suffered a massive
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...
in
Managua
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at the age of 44.
Luis Somoza was the president of the lower chamber of
National Congress of Nicaragua
The National Congress of Nicaragua ( es, Congreso Nacional) was the legislature of Nicaragua before the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979.https://geographic.org/wfb1982/worldfactbook82natiilli.pdf
The congress was bicameral, and consisted of Cham ...
1950-1953 and 1954-1956,
and the president of the Senate 1965–1966.
Under Luis Somoza's regime, Nicaragua played a key role leading to the creation of the
Central American Common Market
The Central American Integration System ( es, Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, or SICA) has been the economic and political organization of Central American states since 1 February 1993. On 13 December 1991, the ODECA countries (Spa ...
, with the
Alliance for Progress
The Alliance for Progress ( es, Alianza para el Progreso, links=no), initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, ostensibly aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marí ...
backing that common market's creation. During the
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fin ...
, he allowed the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
-trained
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
n rebels to embark from
Puerto Cabezas
Puerto Cabezas (; en, Bragman's Bluff; miq, Bilwi) is a municipality and city in Nicaragua. It is the capital of Miskito nation in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region.
The municipality and the entire region are native American lands. ...
, on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The
Sandinistas
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...
began their struggle against the government in 1961—a struggle that would oust his brother in 1979.
He is entombed at Cementerio Occidental with his father, in the National Guard Mausoleum in Managua, Nicaragua. His wife Isabel moved to
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
, Texas in the early 1990s, and died there in 2014.
See also
*
National Guard (Nicaragua)
The National Guard ( es, link=no, Guardia Nacional, otherwise known as ) was a militia and a gendarmerie created in 1925 during the occupation of Nicaragua by the United States. It became notorious for human rights abuses and corruption under t ...
*
Somoza family
The Somoza family ( es, Familia Somoza) is a former political family that ruled Nicaragua for forty-three years from 1936 to 1979. Their family dictatorship was founded by Anastasio Somoza García and was continued by his two sons Luis Somoza ...
Footnotes
1922 births
1967 deaths
People from León, Nicaragua
Nationalist Liberal Party politicians
Nicaraguan anti-communists
Nicaraguan people of French descent
Nicaraguan people of Galician descent
Nicaraguan Roman Catholics
Opposition to Fidel Castro
People of the Nicaraguan Revolution
Presidents of Nicaragua
Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies (Nicaragua)
Presidents of the Senate (Nicaragua)
Saint Leo College Preparatory School alumni
Saint Leo University alumni
Luis
Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...
Children of national leaders
Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Nicaraguan expatriates in the United States
Burials in Nicaragua
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