Jorge Salazar

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Jorge Salazar Argüello (1939-1980), a Nicaraguan coffee grower and popular leader of UPANIC (Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua - Unión de Productores Agropecuarios de Nicaragua), seemed poised to become the leader of the opposition to the Sandinista government, until his death at the hands of State Security forces.

Jorge Salazar was born in 1939, to Leopoldo Salazar and Esmeralda Argüello; he also had two sisters. His father Leo, a captain in the National Guard, retired in 1941, and Jorge grew up on his family's coffee farm at Santa María de Ostuma.^[1] He married Lucía Amada Cardenal Caldera, with whom he had four children.

Before the fall of Somoza, Salazar had organized coffee farmers in Matagalpa and northern Zelaya into a cooperative, which stymied Sandinista efforts to absorb them into FSLN-sponsored organizations. As the most charismatic leader in the opposition, a wider audience began to rally around him. By mid-1980, however, he had become convinced that only armed revolt could remove the Sandinistas. He believed that he was in contact with dissident army officers who would help him overthrow the leadership. On November 17, 1980, State Security agents confronted the unarmed Salazar and shot him.

After his death, his widow, Lucía Cardenal de Salazar, would go into exile, becoming a member of the political directorate of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) on December 8, 1982. Later that month^[2], the FDN formed Task Force Jorge Salazar, which would grow into the rebels' largest and most famous unit.

In post-Sandinista Nicaragua, his wife has served as Nicaragua's consul general in Miami^[3], while his son Jorge has been Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, and his daughter Lucía has been Minister of Tourism^[4].

[edit] References

Christian, Shirley. Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family, Vintage Books, 1986. ISBN 0-394-74457-8