Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934)
Typed letter signed (‘A.C. Sandino’) to Armando [Dugand] (‘Dugán’), Bonanza, Nicaragua, 25 May 1928
In vernacular Spanish. 1.5 pages, 271 x 210mm, bearing a stamp with the motto ‘PATRIA Y LIBERTAD’. Provenance: Sotheby's, 9 May 1985, lot 378.

A plea for support from a Nicaraguan revolutionary in hiding to a Colombian botanist, dispatched in secret from his guerrilla encampment in a captured gold mine. Sandino writes from ‘La Bonanza’, the location of an American-owned gold mine in northern Nicaragua which he had captured a month prior to writing the present letter. He asks Dugand, a Colombian naturalist, to lend his support to the cause of the Sandinistas: ‘We are suffering very, very much, Señor. Our army is half naked, dead from hunger and cold. Our homes are attacked from the air by aeroplanes without pity for children, old people, and women. […] Señor ... help us with your moral and material influence to drive out this horde of robbers who invade the homeland of my country’.

Augusto César Sandino was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and guerrilla leader, who supported the attempted coup of Nicaraguan Vice-President Juan Bautista Sacasa in 1927. The coup failed when U.S. forces intervened and occupied the country. Sandino became notorious for avoiding capture during the American occupation, which lasted until 1933. During this period, he lived in hiding and led skirmishes against American military outposts and raids on American-owned properties. When Sacasa finally succeeded in his bid for the presidency, he invited Sandino to parley with his National Guard; Sandino agreed, but in February 1934 they instead kidnapped and killed him.