Editing Anastasio Somoza Debayle (section)

==Fall==
{{main|Nicaraguan Revolution}}

In 1975 Somoza Debayle launched a campaign to crush the Sandinistas; individuals suspected of supporting the Front were targeted. The Front, named after [[Augusto César Sandino]] (a Nicaraguan rebel leader in the 1920s), began its guerrilla war against the Somozas in 1963. It received funds from the [[Soviet Union]] and [[Cuba]] under [[Fidel Castro]]. Support for the Sandinistas ballooned after the earthquake, especially when U.S. President [[Jimmy Carter]] withdrew American support for the regime for human rights reasons, including the televised murder of American journalist [[Bill Stewart (journalist)|Bill Stewart]] by government soldiers.
At this point, the opposition to the Somozas included not only Sandinistas, but other prominent figures such as publisher [[Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal|Pedro Chamorro]] (assassinated on January 10, 1978).

Because of Somoza's status, most of his family members were forced to flee into [[Honduras]], [[Guatemala]], and the United States. It is uncertain where the surviving Somozas live; they changed their names to protect their own lives.

On July 17, 1979, Somoza resigned from the presidency and fled to Miami in a converted [[Curtiss C-46 Commando|Curtiss C-46]]. He took with him the caskets of his father and brother and, it is claimed, much of Nicaragua's national treasure.<ref name="David Kunzle 1995 4">{{cite book|author =David Kunzle|title=The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lSDgTC6JXI0C|year=1995|publisher=University of California Press|page=4|isbn=9780520081925}}</ref> 
The country was left with $1.6 billion in [[foreign debt]], the highest in Central America.<ref name="John Byrne, Leigh Glover, Cecilia Martinez 2009 43">{{cite book|author1=John Byrne |author2=Leigh Glover |author3=Cecilia Martinez |title=Environmental Justice: Discourses in International Political Economy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d6EJpqeeteAC|year=2009|publisher=Transaction Publishers|page=43|isbn=9781412822657 }}</ref> After Somoza had fled, the Sandinistas found less than $2 million in the national treasury.<ref name="John Pilger 2001 498">{{cite book|author =John Pilger|title=Heroes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dcL6w-VmjWwC|year=2001|publisher=Vintage Press|page=498|isbn=9780896086661}}</ref>

Denied asylum in the U.S. by President Carter, Somoza later took refuge in [[Paraguay]], then under the rule of [[Alfredo Stroessner]]. He bought a ranch and a gated house at Avenida España no. 433 in [[Asunción]], the capital. The president of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Deputies, [[Francisco Urcuyo]], took over as acting president, but lasted only a day before peacefully handing Managua to the Sandinistas.