Rigoberto López Pérez (May 13, 1929 – September 21, 1956) was a

Nicaraguan 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 ...

poet, artist and composer. He assassinated

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 ...

, the longtime

dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in tim ...

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 ...

. On September 21, 1981, 25 years after his death, the

Sandinista 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 C� ...

government of Nicaragua declared Rigoberto López Pérez a National Hero by means of Decree no. 825.

Early life

López was born and raised in León,

; son of Soledad López and Francisco Pérez. López published his first poem, "Confesión de un Soldado" (Confession of a Soldier), at the age of 17 in 1946. In 1948 he formed part of a 6-member musical group called "Buenos Aires". That same year he learned to play the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

, which he played in the group. López composed music, mostly romantic, including "Claridad" and "Si el vino me hace llorar" which ''Buenos Aires'' released on a radio station called Radio Colonial. Lopéz's musical influences included

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

;

Rubén Darío Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as ''modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...

, a Nicaraguan poet, often referred to as the "Father of Modernism", was a major literary influence to him. Lopéz would often collaborate in publications such as ''"El Cronista"'' and "''El Centroamericano"''. López's girlfriend, Amparo Zelaya Castro, was the sister of Armando Zelaya, a journalist who drove López to the ''Casa del Obrero'' where he later shot Somoza.

Assassination of Somoza

On September 21, 1956, López was able to infiltrate a party in the Club Social de Obreros de León that was attended by President Somoza and shot him in the chest. López was instantly killed in a hail of bullets and Somoza died a few days later in the Panama Canal Zone hospital. Somoza's son,

Luis Somoza Debayle Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle (18 November 1922 – 13 April 1967) was the 26th President of Nicaragua 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 attended Sa ...

, replaced his father as president.

Legacy

In April 1979, at the peak of the Sandinista's Revolutionary War, one of the five FSLN's Regional Commands in control of 24 cities altogether, was named after him. Unluckily, the FSLN's "Rigoberto Lopez Perez" Western Command was captured in full in a safe house in the suburbs of Leon and killed in captivity by dictator Somoza's forces. The cold-blooded massacre of this Command, made up of Oscar Perez Cassar, Roger Deshon, Araceli Perez Darias,

Idania Fernandez Idania de Los Angeles Fernandez Ramirez (July 23, 1952 – April 16, 1979) was a Nicaraguan revolutionary in the Sandinista Front. Childhood and early education The second out of five children, Idania de Los Angeles Fernández Ramírez spent her ...

, Carlos Manuel Jarquin and Edgard Lang Sacasa, enraged the Sandinistas and accelerated the fall of the Somoza regime. After the Sandinista victory in July, Nicaragua's national stadium in Managua, used as a venue for baseball and football as well as concerts and other events, was named after Lopéz, but on November 20, 1998, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the stadium, then-President Arnoldo Alemán issued a decree changing the stadium's name to Estadio Nacional Dennis Martínez. In 2006 a monument dedicated to López was built in his honor in

Managua ) , settlement_type = Capital city , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Nicar ...

. In Italy, in the 1970s, Marcello De Angelis, now parliamentarian of PDL, who then was a songwriter engaged in the political movement

Third Position The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a ...

, wrote a song dedicated to him, whose title is "Il poeta" (The Poet).

References

External links

The will of Rigoberto López Pérez

* ttp://www.travelsongs.com/photos/nicaragua/IMG_0029 Portrait of Pérezbr>Photos of the Rigoberto López Pérez Monument
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopez Perez, Rigoberto 1929 births 1956 deaths People from León, Nicaragua 20th-century Nicaraguan poets Nicaraguan male poets Nicaraguan composers Male composers Nicaraguan musicians Nicaraguan assassins Assassins of presidents Deaths by firearm in Nicaragua People shot dead by law enforcement officers 20th-century composers National Heroines and Heroes of Nicaragua 20th-century male writers 1956 crimes in Nicaragua 1956 murders in North America 1950s murders in Nicaragua 20th-century male musicians