Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle (18 November 1922 – 13 April 1967) was the 26th

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...

from 21 September 1956 to 1 May 1963. Somoza Debayle was born in León. At the age of 14, he and his younger brother

Anastasio Anastasio is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: People with the given name * Anastasio Alfaro (1865–1951), Costa Rican zoologist, geologist and explorer * Anastasio Aquino (1792–1833), Salvadoran indigenou ...

attended Saint Leo College Prep near Tampa, before transferring to

La Salle Military Academy La Salle Military Academy was a Catholic school with middle school/junior high school and high school divisions located in Oakdale, New York. It closed in 2001, and the school's extensive campus is now owned by St. John's University, located in ...

on Long Island. Luis was then educated at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

, where he was a member of

Fi Sigma Alfa Phi Sigma Alpha (), commonly known as La Sigma, is a Puerto Rican fraternities and sororities, Puerto Rican fraternity originally established as the Sigma Delta Alpha Fraternity (Sociedad de Amigos) on October 22, 1928, at the University of Puert ...

Hispanic fraternity. He married Costa Rican Isabel Urcuyo on 9 June 1947, and they had seven children together. Following the assassination of his father,

Anastasio Somoza García Anastasio Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was the leader of Nicaragua from 1937 until his assassination in 1956. He was only officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 195 ...

, Luis was tapped as acting president, and was elected president in his own right the following year. His rule was somewhat milder than that of his father. However, civil liberties remained restricted, and corruption remained widespread. His brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, headed the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

and was the second most powerful man in the country during his older brother's rule. Although Luis declined to run for reelection in 1963, he and Anastasio saw to it that the presidency was held from 1963 onward by politicians loyal to the Somozas. As a result, Luis remained the ''de facto'' leader of Nicaragua until his death in 1967, when he suffered a massive

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

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at the age of 44. Luis Somoza was the president of the lower chamber of

National Congress of Nicaragua The National Congress of Nicaragua ( es, Congreso Nacional) was the legislature of Nicaragua before the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979.https://geographic.org/wfb1982/worldfactbook82natiilli.pdf The congress was bicameral, and consisted of Cham ...

1950-1953 and 1954-1956, and the president of the Senate 1965–1966. Under Luis Somoza's regime, Nicaragua played a key role leading to the creation of the

Central American Common Market The Central American Integration System ( es, Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, or SICA) has been the economic and political organization of Central American states since 1 February 1993. On 13 December 1991, the ODECA countries (Spa ...

, with the

Alliance for Progress The Alliance for Progress ( es, Alianza para el Progreso, links=no), initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, ostensibly aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marí ...

backing that common market's creation. During the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fin ...

, he allowed the

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-trained

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n rebels to embark from

Puerto Cabezas Puerto Cabezas (; en, Bragman's Bluff; miq, Bilwi) is a municipality and city in Nicaragua. It is the capital of Miskito nation in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. The municipality and the entire region are native American lands. ...

, on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The

Sandinistas The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...

began their struggle against the government in 1961—a struggle that would oust his brother in 1979. He is entombed at Cementerio Occidental with his father, in the National Guard Mausoleum in Managua, Nicaragua. His wife Isabel moved to

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, Texas in the early 1990s, and died there in 2014.

Footnotes

1922 births 1967 deaths People from León, Nicaragua Nationalist Liberal Party politicians Nicaraguan anti-communists Nicaraguan people of French descent Nicaraguan people of Galician descent Nicaraguan Roman Catholics Opposition to Fidel Castro People of the Nicaraguan Revolution Presidents of Nicaragua Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies (Nicaragua) Presidents of the Senate (Nicaragua) Saint Leo College Preparatory School alumni Saint Leo University alumni

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

Children of national leaders Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Nicaraguan expatriates in the United States Burials in Nicaragua {{Nicaragua-politician-stub

See also

Footnotes