called a national protest strike. Initially projected to last until Somoza

resigns, the strike was instead called o abruptly in less than two weeks,

after workers ignored the employers strike slogan of Dont Leave Your

Homes and instead organized militant street actions.

Sporadic protests continued in cities and towns around western Nicara-

gua in the aftermath of the Chamorro assassination. New forms of popular

struggle took shape, became generalized over the course of the next year, and

came to symbolize the Nicaraguan insurrection: raging street bonfires of

smelly rubber tires, homemade Molotov cocktails and contact bombs, and

cobblestone barricades to protect poor neighborhoods from gn tanks. Hun-

dreds and then thousands of walls sprouted revolutionary slogans, some-

times signed by the fsln-gpp or fsln-tp. In February 1978, an anti-Somoza

uprising organized by none of the three tendencies erupted in the indige-

nous community of Monimb, located in the city of Masaya, only twenty

miles from Managua.

In April a student strike closed Nicaraguas universities and 80 percent of

its public and private high schools. In July crowds of cheering supporters

gathered in several cities to greet members of Los Doce (The Twelve), a San-

Josbased group of pro-fsln businessmen, intellectuals, and religious

leaders, organized by the terceristas. The same month, popular Sandinista

organizations, mostly influenced by the tp, coalesced to form the United

Peoples Movement (Movimiento Pueblo Unido, mpu).

On 22 August 1978, two dozen tercerista guerrillas disguised as National

Guard captured the National Palace in Managua, holding hostage 3,500

politicians and businessmen until Somoza agreed to release all fifty-nine

fsln members in prison. The daring action captured public and media

attention, and the operations Commander Two became an instant legend:

Dora Mara Tellez / twenty years old, / slight and pale / in her boots, her

black beret, / her enemy uniform / a size too large. . . . Dora Maria / young

warrior woman / who caused the tyrants heart / to tremble in rage. As the

school bus carrying fsln guerrillas and freed prisoners passed through

working-class neighborhoods on its way to the airport, tens of thousands of

residents came out to cheer them, some chanting, Down with Somoza and

Somoza to the gallows!

Almost as challenging to the dictatorship was a semispontaneous upris-

ing that erupted in Matagalpa at the end of August, because it represented a

pattern that would be repeated in city after city over the next year. About five

hundred high school students, supported by older residents, took control of

much of the city, fighting the National Guard for five days before their

212 sandinista