Before the Revolution: Women's Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979

5. The Activism and Legacy of Nicolasa Sevilla

We cannot properly understand the Somocista women’s movement unless we take into account Nicolasa Sevilla’s support for the Somoza regime. This chapter documents the role Sevilla played in the dictatorship. Unlike the Ala, which originated as a means to channel middle-class women’s political participation into “proper” and acceptable expressions, “la Nicolasa ” symbolized the unrestrained manifestation of working-class women’s political passion. The middle-class respectability of the Ala depended on the continuous stereotyping of the Ala’s counterpart: working-class Somocista women activists like Nicolasa Sevilla who were accused, justly or unjustly, of being prostitutes, madams, or both. Given their reputation, women like Nicolasa Sevilla were able to engage in political activities middle-class Somocistas sought to avoid. Whereas the Ala was charged with tactfully gaining women’s support for the Somozas, Sevilla and her followers, both men and women, were given free rein to heckle, torment, humiliate, and attack those who refused to be swayed by “polite” tactics. The distinction between Ala members and Sevilla’s followers, however, was not always clear-cut. Sevilla was sometimes invited to attend Ala functions, as were market women, who made up Sevilla’s female constituency.1 Although there was some overlap between the two groups, the state-sponsored F I V E THE ACTIVISM AND LEGACY OF NICOLASA SEVILLA violent gang politics of Sevilla’s working-class followers served to highlight the pacific nature of the Ala’s activism. Nicolasa Sevilla’s Activism Because she was a woman, one willing to engage personally in violent acts during her early years of political activism, Sevilla was most e¤ective at intimidating other women, particularly those who belonged to the middle and upper classes. The primary targets of Sevilla’s “turbas” (gangs), as they were called by their detractors, were the wives, sisters, and daughters of politicians who opposed Somoza. From the mid-1940s onward, whenever “the wives of [anti-Somocista] ministers protested in public, Nicolasa would make them run.”2 Although there are no claims that she ever killed anyone personally, with her bare hands, rumor has it that Sevilla always carried a gun in her purse and that she was always accompanied by several armed male bodyguards.3 Nicolasa Sevilla’s political life, most of which was centered in the capital , spanned almost the entire Somoza dictatorship. She supported all three Somozas. Imprisoned by the Sandinistas in July 1979, she was held at the Modelo Prison in Tipitapa, just outside Managua. She was released by FSLN Comandante Tomás Borge on October 13, 1980, because of her advanced age (seventy-seven), without having to go before the popular tribunals that other political prisoners faced.4 According to journalist Luis E. Duarte, “Tomás Borge in consultation with the [FSLN’s] National Directorate wanted to demonstrate with the pardon a magnanimous gesture.”5 She left Nicaragua immediately after gaining her freedom and lived with family in the United States until her death more than a decade later. Her daughter Ivonne Solorzano came to Nicaragua to pick her up from jail so that she could be reunited with her children and her many grandchildren.6 Sevilla’s personal life is the subject of great debate. Among Sandinistas , she is remembered as a “former prostitute and intimate friend of Somoza García,” one who caused the jailing and death of many antiSomoza activists.7 Josefa Ortega (pseudonym), a Sandinista woman who knew Sevilla’s son, best summarizes the Sandinista perspective on Sevilla: “Nicolasa was a bad woman.”8 The recollections of Somocistas are more nuanced. Antonia Rodríguez (pseudonym) remembers Sevilla had a child with Liberal attorney and former vice president Enoc Aguado in the 1930s or 1940s.9 After her relationship with Aguado ended, Sevilla “lived with other men,” eventually settling down with Eugenio Solorzano, a retired National Guard captain.10 Solorzano was a founder of the Association of 1 1 4 B E F O R E T H E R E V O L U T I O N Retired Military Oªcers, Workers, and Peasants of Nicaragua (Asociaci ón de Militares Retirados, Obreros, y Campesinos or AMROC) and a high-level administrator of the National District (the city of Managua). His position as director of the National Slaughterhouse, the only slaughterhouse in the country, helped Sevilla come in contact with the people her enemies would later call “thugs”: garbage collectors, street sweepers, slaughterhouse...