Managua, July 23 (RHC)-- On July 23, 1961 -- 60 years ago -- the FSLN was founded in Nicaragua.  The Frente Sandinista de la Liberacion Nacional fought and won a guerrilla war against the Somoza dynasty and soon became a fundamental organization in the history of Nicaragua and a reference for Latin America.

Observers say that the Sandinista National Liberation Front brought together all the hopes of a region in the midst of the Somoza regime.  At that time, Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle had been in power since 1956, after the death of his father, the dictator Anastasio Somoza García, following an attempt on his life.

Inspired by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the FSLN was founded as a political-military organization to fight, with arms, against the Somoza dictatorship.  Influenced by the struggle of Augusto César Sandino, who fought the U.S. invasion of Nicaragua (1926-1933), prepared in rural and urban areas to confront the dictatorship, which received full political and military support from Washington.

The goal was to achieve freedom, which was won on July 19, 1979, which passed to posterity as the Day of the Sandinista Popular Revolution.   Almost half a century one family (Somoza) had control of power in Managua.  But everything changed with the arrival of the Sandinista Front, which however, lost the elections in 1990.

It took 17 years for the group to return to take the reigns of government, this time through democratic means.