Óscar Valderrama
Óscar Valderrama | |||||||||||||
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| President of Nicaragua | |||||||||||||
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In office 18 March 1933 – 31 November 1964 Acting: 18 March – 24 July 1933 | |||||||||||||
| Vice President |
Miguel Moreno Hugo Sandoval | ||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Bartolomé Montojo | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Juan Carlos Figueroa | ||||||||||||
| Nicaraguan Minister of War | |||||||||||||
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In office 9 July 1931 – 18 March 1933 | |||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Antonio Westphal | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | |||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||
| Born |
February 1, 1895 Ciudad Antigua, Nicaragua | ||||||||||||
| Died |
October 28, 1972 (aged 77) Managua, Nicaragua | ||||||||||||
| Nationality | Nicaraguan | ||||||||||||
| Alma mater | The Presidio, The Military College of San Francisco | ||||||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholic | ||||||||||||
| Military service | |||||||||||||
| Allegiance |
 Republic of Nicaragua | ||||||||||||
| Branch/service | Civil Guard | ||||||||||||
| Years of service | 1914–1964 | ||||||||||||
| Rank |
 Army general | ||||||||||||
| Commands | Director-General of the Civil Guard | ||||||||||||
Óscar Valderrama (1 February 1895 – 28 October 1972) was a Nicaraguan military leader who served as the President of Nicaragua from 1933 to 1964 and was the commander of the Nicaraguan Civil Guard. He came to power in the 1933 presidential election and established a military dictatorship with the Civil Guard becoming a quasi-personal army of the president. To prevent the rise of Landonism in his country, Valderrama instituted a far-reaching program of modernization, including land reform, investments in infrastructure, education, and healthcare, and increased Nicaraguan control over the Sierran-operated Nicaragua Canal. But during his presidency the Civil Guard became known for extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses, particularly against Marxist-Landonist dissidents. His presidency began the Dictadura Nacional (National Dictatorship) period of Nicaraguan history.
He was born in 1895 to a peasant family and attended the The Presidio, The Military College of San Francisco in the Kingdom of Sierra, as a member of the first group of Nicaraguan cadets sent there, graduating at the top of his class in 1917. It was part of an effort by Sierra to build up a gendarmerie and military force for the fragile Nicaraguan government, becoming known as the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), trained for policing duties, protecting the border, and the state. Valderrama distinguished himself as an extremely competent officer and quickly rose through the ranks of the Civil Guard during the next decade. He stayed out of politics during the Sierran occupation of Nicaragua of the 1920s and focused on eradicating bandit groups that threatened the Sierran-backed Nicaraguan government. During his tenure as commander of the Civil Guard from 1927 to 1931 the rebels were reduced to a band of a few hundred men and the Civil Guard became the most formidable army in Central America. Valderrama's successes led to him being named as the Minister of War by President Bartolomé Montojo in 1931, at which point he organized the assassination of anti-Sierran rebel leader Augusto César Sandino in 1932 and pressured Montojo to resign and appoint him as the acting President in 1933 ahead of an election.
After a "managed" election in 1933 led to his victory, Valderrama consolidated his control over the state and appointed Civil Guard officers to key positions (many of them were also members of the class of 1917, becoming nicknamed the "1917 Mafia"). He launched a sweeping program of reforms meant to modernize Nicaragua and address the weaknesses that have plagued the Nicaraguan government for decades. Land reforms gave more of the land to the peasants, increasing the wealth of the lower class, and changed agricultural practices to increase productivity and create higher profits. This coincided with a demand for Nicaraguan agricultural exports to Sierra during Great War I and led to an economic boom. During the war Nicaragua was officially neutral but allowed the Sierran military to use its territory. In 1941 he negotiated a change to some of the terms of the Estrada–Landon Treaty with Sierran Prime Minister Poncio Salinas, granting Valderrama's government more control over the Nicaragua Canal, with the transit fees from the Canal becoming a significant boost to government revenue. The newfound wealth going into government coffers was invested in improving roads and railways, housing, other utilities, as well as the education and healthcare systems. There was a significant degree of corruption and nepotism in the government, and an authoritarian police state led by the Civil Guard, but Valderrama ran the state as an efficient bureaucratic tyranny and sought out the most talented individuals for important positions. The living standard for Nicaraguans improved drastically between 1933 and the 1950s as Nicaragua became the most economically successful state in Central America. By Great War II and the start of the Cold War, Valderrama became an important Sierran ally in Latin America against the spread of Landonism, allowing the Sierran Crown Armed Forces to use Nicaragua as a base for operations in the region.
Valderrama stepped down from the presidency in 1964 because of health problems, and was succeeded by other Civil Guard officers and members of his Catholic-National Conservative Party. After spending time in semi-retirement, still giving advice to his successors, he died in 1972. The National Dictatorship regime he started would last until the Central American crisis of the 1980s. In modern times he has a mixed but generally positive legacy in his country and in Latin America, being praised for beginning the modernization of Nicaragua, the successful economic reform, and creating an efficient government, while being opposed for his ruthlessness against dissidents, autocratic governance, and staunch opposition to Landonism. The Nationalist Party of Central America considers him a patriotic strongman while the Democratic Socialist Coalition sees him as a proto-derzhavist dictator and Sierran puppet.
Early life
Óscar Valderrama was born on 1 February 1895 in Ciudad Antigua, Nueva Segovia Department, Nicaragua, to a peasant family. As a child and teenager he was athletic but had various health problems, including color blindness. People who knew him during this time described him as being exceptionally intelligent and ambitious from a young age, and he was able to gain an education despite his parents' impoverished background. After Sierra began its occupation of Nicaragua in 1909 to secure its business interests there and stabilize Central America, the new government remained fragile, and in 1911 it began forming a security force, the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), to restore order and defeat various rebel groups in the countryside. In early 1914, Valderrama lied about his color blindness and other problems to sign up for the Civil Guard and was part of the group of officer cadets sent by President Luis Felipe Estrada to train with the Sierran Royal Army at The Presidio, The Military College of San Francisco. In a speech given to the departing class of cadets the president told them to study and learn as much as they could so that they would be able to put their new skills and knowledge to use for improving their country. Valderrama later recalled that those words had an effect on him, and he was determined to change things in Nicaragua.
While he was at The Presidio from 1914 to 1917, he learned to speak fluent English and excelled in athletics as well as academics, taking up judo practice after seeing a Japanese demonstration team at the military college. He was recognized by the other Nicaraguan cadets for standing out, being the highest-performing member of their group academically, and he became friends with several other exceptional cadets that would later have senior positions in his government, including Miguel Moreno and Édgar Castellanos. Valderrama also met many Sierran cadets that would become senior officers in the Sierran Crown Armed Forces during Great War I or the 1940s, as well as cadets from Mexico and other Central American countries around Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan delegation all graduated as infantry officers in August 1917.
Civil Guard officer
Upon the cadets' return to Nicaragua they was commissioned as lieutenants in the Civil Guard. The organization was modeled by the Sierran military advisors on their own Royal Army, but its role and tactics would later be more similar to the Spanish Civil Guard or French National Gendarmerie, primarily used for internal police work against rebel groups, bandits, and cross-border smugglers. At that time Nicaragua had been unstable for decades, accelerating in 1909 after the Sierran administration of Robert Landon and other Anglo-American governments pressured President José Santos Zelaya into resigning for being too assertive and threatening their hegemony in the region. A new government sworn in by the opposition Conservative Party-led National Assembly remained fragile and weak, being unpopular among much of the Nicaraguan public for being associated with Sierran collaboration.
In the midst of this the rural part of the country outside of the major cities like Managua and Bluefields was practically under the control of bandit groups. The first task of the Civil Guard was restoring order and extending government control to the rural areas. Valderrama became an officer in the 1st Infantry Regiment. From 1917 to 1924, they fought in a campaign in southern Nicaragua outside of the capital to remove the rebel presence from the approaches to the capital and allow the construction work on the Nicaragua Canal to continue. This brought the region under the government's control and allowed the Canal to be completed in 1922 with minimal interruption. During these operations Valderrama stood out as a keen military mind, was efficient and ruthless, and excelled in both tactics and strategy in battles against the rebels, which led him to becoming a staff officer in November 1925 at the Directorate-General of the Civil Guard Headquarters. As a commander he personally led his troops on the front line and cared about the living conditions of the soldiers, but demanded high standards of discipline and loyalty, and was willing to give out severe punishment to those that violated military law.
From January 1926 to October 1927 Valderrama, as a lieutenant colonel, took command of a regiment in the highlands of northern Nicaragua and the Pacific-Caribbean coastal regions, bringing the lawless region under control and killing or arresting over 1,100 rebels. His nemesis during this time was Augusto César Sandino, the general leading the rebels. Sandino had fought in the Mexican Revolution and became involved with Landonist, anti-imperialist, and anti-Sierran ideological groups in South Mexico. Afterward the consolidation of the Landonist state in South Mexico he returned to his native Nicaragua to organize a similar event there, with some material support from Seamus Callahan's United Commonwealth. By the end of the northern Nicaragua campaign in mid-1927 Sandino had been forced into hiding in the highlands with his remaining loyalists, while Valderrama was promoted to be the commander of the Nicaraguan Guardia Civil by President Juan Bautista Moncada. Around this time Valderrama became embroiled in politics, when the Liberal Party attempted a coup against the Conservative Moncada administration. The Guardia Civil sided with the president and preserved the government, as he wanted to prevent a collapse into chaos if a coup had been successful. Under Valderrama's leadership the Guard was also reorganized, growing to a strength of 15,000 men in 12 regiments, with most of the regimental commanders and staff positions going to officers that knew him personally, many of whom were his friends from The Presidio class of 1917. A new training regimen was created for enlisted soldiers while officer cadets were sent to train at The Presidio, as he had done. Many of troops were developed a personal loyalty to Valderrama and his allies, seeing them as capable leaders that also looked out for the well-being of the soldiers and the country.
Rise to power
By 1928 the Civil Guard was becoming essentially Valderrama's personal power base. But during this time he, who now held the rank of general, did not want to get directly involved in politics and supported various administrations that came and went, making the Guard loyal to the state and having a sense of Nicaraguan patriotism. Although by this point Valderrama decided he would eventually get involved in the government he wanted to avoid having the military becoming personally loyal to one man rather than the country itself. Between 1930 and 1931 there was an increase in activity by Sandinistas, leading to President Bartolomé Montojo's decision to appoint Valderrama as War Minister in July 1931. After this appointment he and his top general who replaced him as commander of the Civil Guard, Miguel Moreno, worked out a plan to finish off the Sandinista insurgency.
President of Nicaragua
Foreign policy
Later life and legacy
Personal life
Valderrama was married and had five children. After he stepped down from the presidency, he deliberately made sure that members of his family could not be appointed simply because of their relation to him and had to prove their competence before being granted government positions. He and his family were devout Roman Catholics.
Those who knew him remarked that he was almost robotic in his detachment and efficiency at his job, that he was a workaholic who worked long hours to make sure the bureaucratic apparatus of the state was running well and did not take advantage of his office to live in luxury. He did not spend much time at the expansive Presidential Palace in Managua, except for official and ceremonial functions, and instead was usually at the Civil Guard headquarters, where his personal quarters consisted of a small room that was not much more lavish than the regular barracks. His family lived in a small estate outside of the capital.