Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution

12. The Palace at Last!

12 | The Palace at Last! After reaching a general agreement in Havana, the unification of the three Sandinista factions was signed on March 7, 1979, in Panama City at the apartment of William and Mercedes Graham in the El Cangrejo neighborhood. The circumstances surrounding the armed struggle made collaboration necessary, but Fidel Castro ’s mere presence as the agreement’s sponsor made it irresistible. The weight of his influence was also a key factor in the acceptance by the Third Way Tendency of a balanced combination in the fsln’s National Directorate—three members from each of the three factions, independent from the influence of each. The Third Way already had to negotiate its own unification in January that same year. It was in a meeting we called the ‘‘Little Congress,’’ which took place on the Río Hacha Military Base in Panama under Torrijos’s watchful eye. Delegates from all of the fronts arrived from Nicaragua. Most of the differences between Edén Pastora’s Southern Front and the Internal Front led by ‘‘Gordo Pín’’ had been aired out after they had been shut in together for days. Under pressure from the Costa Rican government, Edén had been named leader of the Sandinista Army. It was a position that did not actually exist; nevertheless, the leaders of the Internal Front rejected it, even as just a title. The day that the agreements between the three factions were signed, Humberto asked me to have a talk with Henry Ruiz (‘‘Modesto ’’). I did not know him at the time. We met at William’s and 174 | CHAPTER 12 Mercedes’s apartment in Panama. I was supposed to quell Henry’s concerns about the Group of Twelve, and about me in particular, but the truth is that I did not find any. From the outset, I learned to accept him as enigmatic and reserved, veils that mask his great frankness. He also said something on that occasion. I do not know if it was improvised or if he had planned to say it ahead of time: ‘‘The bad thing about alliances is not with whom they are made but behind whose back you make them.’’ Years later, he would join the list of villains, just as I had, after he dared defy Daniel in the elections for fsln general secretary in the Extraordinary Congress in 1994. That was also when I was blacklisted, for, among other things, supporting his candidacy. I visit him occasionally at his home in the Los Robles neighborhood, which always looks darker and emptier, with no bodyguards at the door anymore, and in the hands of one solitary maid. I cannot stop asking myself what he does to survive, distanced from the businesses run by so many of his former comrades in arms. More than anyone else, he symbolizes the revolution that did not happen. Just a few days after the unification agreement had been reached, the members of the fsln’s National Directorate moved to San José. We later reenacted the signing in the offices of Istmo Films. The photo where they are shown with their hands raised was taken there, and everyone appears dressed from the period with mustaches, berets, and dark glasses. It includes Humberto Ortega, Daniel Ortega, Víctor Tirado, Tomás Borge, Jaime Wheelock, and Henry Ruiz. A group of friends, writers, and filmmakers, among them Carmen Naranjo , Antonio Iglesias, Samuel Rovinski, and Óscar Castillo, had founded Istmo Films with a loan from the Bank of Costa Rica. The last film made was ¡Viva Sandino!, a feature-length documentary about the Southern Front that had to be corrected several times in the editing process because Humberto and Daniel thought that Edén Pastora appeared too frequently. After an agreement had been reached, unification still remained subject to conflicts. Once the fsln’s National Directorate had been created, the members of the Government Junta had to be chosen. I still remember a radio conversation between Jaime Wheelock (‘‘Trópico’’), who was in Tegucigalpa at the time, and Humberto Ortega (‘‘Palo Alto’’), who was speaking there beside me. Jaime was complaining about the unilateral decision of including Daniel in the Government Junta since, in their pre- THE PALACE AT LAST! | 175 vious agreement, all the members of the National Directorate were supposed to be separate from the government. The fsln, in its entirety...