The contents of this Sandino Web Site are result
of many years of research and work that I could not have accomplished
without the help and support of individuals and institutions in
Canada, Nicaragua, France, and the United States. I must first
thank the Department of Political Science and the Faculty of Graduate
Studies at The University of Calgary, whose support during my
graduate student years allowed me the leisure to conduct my research
on Sandino and to write. Funds from The University of Calgary
Research Grants Committee enabled me to travel to Nicaragua to
gather research materials and conduct interviews in the summer
of 1992. Much gratitude is also expressed to the Izaak
Walton Killam Foundation for their support of my doctoral
studies about Latin American revolutionaries. I am especially grateful to Professor Thomas Flanagan
for his challenging comments, for his guidance, for his patience
and encouragement.
I thank the generous staff at the Instituto de Historia de
Nicaragua (formerly the Instituto de Estudios del Sandinismo)
and its Director Margarita Vannini. I must also thank the members
of the Magnetic-Spiritual School of the Universal Commune: Armejio
Muñoz and his colleagues in Managua, and Pedro Sandreas in Miami.
The literature and information they provided me about their school
and about their teachings, and their engaging conversations helped
me better to understand Sandino. I thank the staff at the Hemeroteca
Nacional de Nicaragua and its then Director Cristina Ortega,
for their kind assistance. I am obliged to Vidaluz Meneses, then
Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Central American University
(UCA), for the suggested venues of research. I am also thankful
to my dear colleague Michelle Dospital for the heated discussions
about Sandino and the Sandinistas, for the materials, for challenging
my raw, inexperienced "Miami-boy" research skills, and
for granting me permission to reproduce some of her work on this
web site (See Essays). I am also grateful
to Jorge Eduardo Arellano for his support and for the materials
he chose to share with me. May he be deservingly enjoying lots
of Concha y Toro.
My initial enthusiasm in the study of Augusto Sandino's life and thought was fuelled by
the steady flow of books and materials my brother Rigoberto kept sending me from
Nicaragua. I owe much to my brother and his family for "adopting" me, and for
helping me rediscover parts of Nicaragua when they occasionally thought that I had had
enough exposure to the clouds of dust at the Hemeroteca Nacional.
I must also thank, indirectly, Sergio Ramírez and Alejandro Bendaña,
whose partisan but interesting interpretations of Augusto
Sandino prompted me to keep going.
The portrait pictures and art work on Sandino that appear on this site have been
originally taken, and later modified, from the album Sandino enfrenta al
imperialismo published in 1981 by Editorial Nueva Nicaragua. The picture of
Sandino posing in San Rafael was obtained from Anastasio Somoza's El verdadero Sandino o el calvario de las Segovias.
Sandino's official seal was taken from Pierre Vassière's book: Auguste
César Sandino ou l'envers d'un mythe. The seal of the Magnetic-Spiritualist
School of the Universal Commune appeared in Donald Hodges' The Intellectual
Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Whatever errors this site may still contain are my own.
MNG
Okotoks, Alberta, Canada.
