Taking their name from General Sandino, they called themselves Sandinistas and their movement the Sandinista National Liberation Front (known by its Spanish abbreviation FSLN).
The FSLN's founders—Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge, and Silvio Mayorga—were Marxists who had met as university students involved in anti-Somoza activities.
They were inspired by the Cuban Revolution and supported by Castro.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional--FSLN) was formally organized in Nicaragua in 1961.
Founded by José Carlos Fonseca Amador, SilvioMayorga, and Tomás Borge Martínez, the FSLN began in the late 1950s as a group of student activists at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua--UNAN) in Managua.
Borge spent several years in jail, and Fonseca spent several years in exile in Mexico, Cuba, and Costa Rica.
A group from Community United Methodist Church in Columbia, Missouri finished building houses in and dedicated the Colonis SilvioMayorga housing project which was funded by Community United Methodist Church.
A group from Schweitzer United Methodist Church in Springfield, MO were led by Mark and Dorothy Hansen and Schweitzer pastor Bob Casady.
The group worked in the housing project of SilvioMayorga in the Nagarote network.
Pastora organized his group -- which was later to take the official name ADRE -- in the late 1950's, and was the first group to call itself "Sandinistas".
During 1961, another group -- the FSLN -- was formally organised by three Marxist students from Managua, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez and SilvioMayorga.
In a disputed book published under one "Mitrokhin" -- a man alleged to have worked as a Soviet-era, KGB archivist for some 30 years -- it has been asserted that these students were recruits of the KGB.
But it must be said that the coincidence between the government's expectations of the counter reform and those of AID were such that it was unnecessary for AID to have much political visibility.
A Mayorga, a Silvio de Franco and a Pereira [former or current members of Chamorro's economic Cabinet] and even Lacayo himself had and have the same vision as AID, which means that they never had any serious conflicts.
There were occasionally different viewpoints regarding the speed of the counter reform and how to gain greater political viability to carry it out.
But the Sandinista-backed provisional government currently based in the city of Leon is expected to force Mr Urcuyo to resign.
The Sandinistas, named after Nicaraguan resistance leader Augusto Cesar Sandino, was set up in 1962 by Carlos Fonseca Amador, SilvioMayorga and Tomas Borge.
For the last seven years they have waged a civil war against the Somoza government.
The Sandinistas emulated the guerrilla strategies of Castro and Sandino in their struggle to topple the Somozas and implement a socialist revolution” (page 472).
Pezzullo 1993: On July 23 1961 the “Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded by Carlos Fonseca, Tomás Borge, and SilvioMayorga in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Pezzullo 1993: In May 1967 the “Pancasán guerrilla ‘foco’ is organized into three columns: under Carlos Fonseca (HQ group), Tomás Borge (logistical line to Matagalpa), and SilvioMayorga (mountain raiding column)” (page 256).
Index Bo(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-22)
In July 1961 he, together with Carlos Fonseca Amador and SilvioMayorga - all veterans of the student struggle of the 1950s - met in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, to found the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
They drew their inspiration from Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba and from a Nicaraguan folk hero, Gen. Augusto César Sandino, who in 1927 had organized an army of workers and peasants to drive out the U.S. Marines then occupying the country.
In 1994 the Northern League became the largest political faction in the nation on the strength of its federalist message, distance from incumbent corruption, and timely alliance with Silvio Berlusconi, who was elected prime minister that March.
Restoring Democracy In Nicaragua: No U.S. Aid Without Reform(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-22)
Their goal was the overthrow of the regime of the Somoza family, which had ruled Nicaragua since the 1930s, and the creation of a communist state in Nicaragua.
According to former Nicaraguan Central Bank President Silvio de Franco, the Nicaraguan army still serves as a partisan military force for the FSLN and acts like a state within a state.
According to Alfred0 Cesar, Silvio de Franco, and other critics of the Chamom government, of the 225 million in U.S. economic assistance to Nicmgua last-year, between $100 million-and $180 million cannot be accounted for.
Rather, there were staged by individuals or dissatisfied army officers.
It was also during his presidency that university students Carlos Fonseca, Tomas Borge, and SilvioMayorga founded the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) in 1961.
While Luis was President, his younger brother continued at the head of the National Guard.
From FOCO to Insurrection: Sandinista Strategies of Revolution(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-22)
Back in Nicaragua, however, the three Sandinista columns under Fonseca, Borge, and SilvioMayorga were more interested in organizing a viable peasant support network than in provoking firefights with the National Guard.
Peasant informers and the Guard's helicopter mobility led to the destruction of the Mayorga column in August.
The loss of one-third of the organization's strength sent the survivors fleeing first to the cities and then into Cuban or Costa Rican exile when the urban underground collapsed in November.
The question is how to obtain a lasting victory for the masses as a whole.
The FSLN traces its history back to 1962, being created by Carlos Fonseca, SilvioMayorga and Tomas Borge.
Many of its founding members were drawn from the pro Moscow orientated PSN (Nicaraguan Socialist Party), fundamentally because they were dissatisfied with the lack of a serious or combative struggle being waged against the dictatorship.
The protractecd war theory emphasized the guerrilla's need to organize the peasantry and develop a clandestine support structure.
In the Sandinistas' first guerrilla action during this period--a battle with the National Guard at Pancasan in August 1967--35 FSLN combatants were killed, including one of the organization's founders, SilvioMayorga.
Nonetheless, the prolonged-war theory remained the FSLN's guiding doctrine for almost ten years.
The nature of the regime that emerged after the 1979 insurrection can only be understood by examining the politics and strategy of the FSLN from its foundation in 1961.
The three founding members of the FSLN, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge and SilvioMayorga had all been members of the Stalinist Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN).
The three ex-students had already been politically moulded in underground struggle against the Somoza family dictatorship which had been in power since 1936.
Its three founders had been student leftists in the 1950s, who then became communists.
They were Tomas Borge (the only survivor of the original group, and a member of the Sandinista leadership after July 1979), SilvioMayorga (killed in 1967), and the original leader, Carlos Fonseca, who had studied in the USSR.
He published a book in 1958, titled A Nicaraguan in Moscow, in which he claimed that the Soviet Union had freedom of the press and freedom of religion.
So forget the idea that it's just that people might come across the article on the minute or hour that it had a vandalized version.
For example, the FSLN [wikipedia.org] article has an introduction, and then begins "The FSLN was formally organised in 1961 by recent KGB recruits Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez and SilvioMayorga." The rest of the article goes on in that sort of tone.
I don't know how many people in the world think the main purpose of the FSLN was to establish a satellite of the USSR "two days driving time from Harlingen, Texas", but obviously that is what is considered in this article.