In the fall of 1978 Nicaragua was coming apart. The Somoza family had run the country as a dictatorship for more than forty years, and the Sandinistas, a Marxist guerrilla movement, were closing in. Onofre Gutierrez was a senior in high school whose family was already in Washington. He flew back to Managua with his father for one errand, a new passport, and walked into a meeting of the opposition Conservative Party instead.
The party had drafted a letter asking Somoza to step down to avoid bloodshed. Someone had to carry it to the radio stations, and everyone in the room knew what would follow. His father volunteered. By the third station, word was already out. They drove to the airport and took the last flight to Costa Rica, and his father told him to sit at the back of the airplane, apart, in case the National Guard came aboard.
The next morning the flight home stopped in Managua. Gutierrez tells Jenny Beth Martin what he said to himself as the engines came up and he looked out the window at his country. The Sandinistas took the capital the following July. He has not been back.
In this clip:
• Why he returned to Nicaragua in October 1978
• The letter asking a dictator to step down
• Three radio stations and a drive to the airport
• Father and son, seated apart
• What he told himself at the window
Watch the full Surviving Communism interview at jennybethshow.com, and like and subscribe so these conversations reach more people. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — Did he know what he was leaving behind?
00:28 — October 1978: back to Nicaragua for a passport
01:18 — The letter asking Somoza to step down
02:36 — Three radio stations
03:21 — The last flight to Costa Rica, seated apart
03:42 — "This is the last time I'm going to see my country"
04:35 — Somoza, the Sandinistas, and a new life
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