Luis Anastasio Somoza Debayle (18 November 1922 – 13 April 1967) was the 50th

President of Nicaragua The co-presidents of Nicaragua (), officially known as the presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua (), are the heads of state and head of government, government of Nicaragua. The office was created in the Constitution of 1854. From 1825 until ...

from 1957 until his resignation in 1963. He succeeded to the presidency following the death of his father,

Anastasio Somoza García Anastasio Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was the leader of Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956. He was officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 unt ...

. The

Somoza family The Somoza family () is a political family which ruled Nicaragua under a dictatorship over a period of forty-three years, from 1936 to 1979. Founder, Anastasio Somoza García – who served as the President of Nicaragua from 1937 until 1956 – ...

was the most powerful family in the country at that time. Somoza Debayle was born in León on 18 November 1922. In 1936 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 indigenous ...

attended Saint Leo College Prep near

Tampa Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...

, before transferring to

La Salle Military Academy La Salle Military Academy, later known as La Salle Center, was a Roman Catholic, 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 w ...

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

. Luis was then educated at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...

, where he was a member of

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

Hispanic fraternity. He married Costa Rican

Isabel Urcuyo Rosa María Isabel Urcuyo Rodríguez de Somoza (31 July 1924 – 30 August 2014) was a Costa Rican-born diplomat and the First Lady of Nicaragua from 1957 to 1963 as the wife of President Luis Somoza Debayle. Biography Rosa María Isabel Urcuyo ...

on 9 June 1947, and they had seven children together. Following the

assassination Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...

of his father,

, 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 Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza Debayle (; 5 December 1925 – 17 September 1980) was a Nicaraguan politician who served as the 53rd President of Nicaragua from 1967 to 1972 and again from 1974 to 1979. As head of the National Guard (Nicaragu ...

, 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. ...

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 Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

Managua Managua () is the capital city, capital and largest city of Nicaragua, and one of the List of largest cities in Central America, largest cities in Central America. Located on the shores of Lake Managua, the city had an estimated population of 1, ...

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

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourb ...

National Congress of Nicaragua The National Congress of Nicaragua () was the legislature of Nicaragua before the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979. The congress was bicameral, and consisted of Chamber of Deputies () and Senate (). The Chamber of Deputies had 42 members (in 1968 ...

1953-1954 and 1955-1956, and the president of the Senate from 1965 to 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 (, or SICA) has been the economic and political organization of Central American states since 1 February 1993. On 13 December 1991, the ODECA countries (Spanish: ''Organización de Estados Centroamericano ...

, with the

Alliance for Progress The Alliance for Progress () was an initiative launched by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, that aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marín of Puerto Rico was a close ...

backing that common market's creation. During the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...

, he allowed the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

-trained

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

n rebels to embark from

Puerto Cabezas Puerto Cabezas (; also known as Bragman's Bluff in English language, English, or Bilwi in Miskito language, Miskito) is a municipality and city in Nicaragua. It is the capital of Miskito people, Miskito nation in the North Caribbean Coast Autonom ...

, on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The

Sandinistas The Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistan ...

began their struggle against the government in 1961 – a struggle that would oust his brother in 1979.

Death

He died at home on April 13, 1967, due to a heart attack. That place is now the Ministry of Defense. He is entombed at Cementerio Occidental with his father, in the National Guard Mausoleum in Managua, Nicaragua. His wife Isabel moved to

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, 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 20th-century 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 presidents of Nicaragua Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Nicaraguan expatriates in the United States {{Nicaragua-politician-stub

Death

See also

Footnotes