Hugo Torres was the only guerrilla who participated in the two most important armed actions carried out by the Sandinista Front in the 1970s against the Somocista dynasty, and in one of them, resulted in the release of Daniel Ortega, the same one who imprisoned him until his death on February 12, 2022.
His death in the prison of another dictator only made the legend of the man grow. He was 73 years old and with the same voice and image as him, he denounced that Ortega, his former comrade in arms in the former Sandinista National Liberation Front, would arrest him. He made him look predictable and even more, he said that he would not bend him and he kept firm his convictions and his fight for democracy in Nicaragua. And so it was until his last breath.
Hugo Torres Jiménez was born in Somoto, Madriz, on April 25, 1948. He is the son of a telegraph operator named Cipriano Torres and Isabel Jiménez, who went to live in León when he was five years old.
In León, Hugo Torres was a neighbor of Rigoberto López Pérez, the man who killed Anastasio Somoza García in 1956. At the time, Torres was an eight-year-old boy.
Hugo Torres was passionate about journalism, but he entered to study Law at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN, Managua). While at university, in 1971, he joined the Sandinista Front and would stand out as a guerrilla and later as a military man.
Released Daniel Ortega
The house of José María Castillo, better known as “Chema Castillo”, was in Los Robles, in Managua. That night of December 27, 1974, a commando of 13 Sandinista guerrillas came to take it just after the US ambassador, Turner Shelton, withdrew from the party that was being offered for him.
The guerrillas arrived in two taxis that they had stolen near Las Colinas, and parked in a “V” shape in front of the main entrance to the house of Castillo, a former Somoza official. The guards who guarded the place were surprised to see that the armed guerrillas came down. The shooting started.
All the guards were killed and only one of the guerrillas, Róger Deshon, was shot in the shoulder. The Sandinistas burst into the main room of the house where all the guests were in elegant suits and fine dresses. «This is a political operation. Hands to the head and against the wall! We are from the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Long live Sandino!” shouted Eduardo Contreras, the leader of the guerrillas.
At that moment, “Chema Castillo” ran to look for some weapons that he had in his office and when they saw him running, one of the guerrillas shot him and he died. “In three minutes we took control of the house. My squad took the kitchen and part of the living room,” Hugo Torres himself recalled in 2017, in an interview with the newspaper La Prensa.
The rest of the guests were taken hostage by the Sandinistas and the National Guard immediately surrounded the house and the guerrillas took up a defensive position to prevent them from getting inside.
In the early hours of December 28, the Guard tried to enter through a door that was at the back of the house, but after an exchange of bullets, they gave up, in addition to the fact that the Sandinistas threatened to liquidate the hostages if the Guard did not retire.
valuable operation
Among the hostages was a “big shot”: Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, Somoza’s ambassador in Washington and brother-in-law of the dictator.
The Sandinistas gave the dictator of the time a period of 36 hours to comply with their demands, which were the release of several prisoners, including Daniel Ortega; five million dollars, the dissemination of messages from the Sandinista Front through the media denouncing the harassment of the Somoza dictatorship and a plane that would take them to Cuba together with the released Sandinistas.
At various times, the guards climbed onto the roof of the house to try to enter, but one of the guerrillas was following him inside with a machine gun, listening to where he was moving.
Related news: Bachelet regrets the “death in detention” of retired General Hugo Torres
Monsignor Miguel Obando y Bravo was the mediator between the Sandinistas and Somoza, who finally ended up freeing the prisoners and delivering only one million dollars. The guerrillas were taken by bus to the airport where a plane was waiting for them that took them to Cuba, as they had demanded.
Among the released prisoners was Daniel Ortega, who had been in La Modelo prison since 1967, for the assault on a bank branch. The one who could not be released was Leopoldo Rivas Alfaro, whom the Sandinistas suspected of collaborating with the National Guard, so they did not include him on the list and left him in prison.
the second round
On August 22, 1978, the only one of the 25 guerrillas who had experience in assaults was Hugo Torres. The objective of this second operation was to take over the National Palace. The 25 were divided into two commandos, one led by Hugo Torres and Walter Ferreti, and the other by Edén Pastora and Dora María Téllez, who arrived in trucks painted olive green, disguised in green uniforms, black berets and Garand rifles, pretending to be guards. from the Basic Infantry Training School (EEBI), which was the elite of the National Guard.
The plan was to position themselves at the east and west entrances of the National Palace and enter acting as if they were preparing the arrival of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Once inside, they closed the gates with chains and went to the second floor where the Chamber of Deputies was located.
That day, there were more than 2,000 people in the Palace, which made it very difficult for the guerrillas to control them. However, when they saw that everything was under control, the guerrillas took out their red and black scarves, covered their faces, and Hugo Torres shouted: “Long live Monimbó!”
The National Guard completely surrounded the building and a helicopter fired a burst of bullets at the roof. The guerrillas made one of the hostages communicate with Monsignor Miguel Obando y Bravo, who again would serve as mediator in this assault.
The Archbishop of Managua arrived at the Palace at three in the afternoon together with the Bishop of León, Manuel Salazar Espinoza, and that of Granada, Leovigildo López Fitoria. The Sandinistas asked for the release of another group of prisoners, three million dollars, the dissemination of messages against the Somoza regime in the media, and a plane that would take them to Cuba.
They were almost the same demands that they made when they attacked the house of “Chema Castillo”, and Somoza gave in again, but this time he only handed over half a million dollars. In this exchange, the rebels did include Leopoldo Rivas Alfaro, so that he would be released.
Almost a year later, the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza, and Hugo Torres was promoted to Brigade Commander in the Sandinista Popular Army and later promoted to Brigadier General in the National Army. In 1998, he went into retirement.
died in prison
After the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Hugo Torres developed a stage as a writer. He wrote poems for a magazine called Poesía Libre and many years later, in 2003, he published his memoirs entitled “Rumbo norte: historia de un survivor”. In 2017, he published a new book called «Coplas y algunos poemas infiltrados».
Before going into retirement in the Army, Hugo Torres broke with the Sandinista Front in 1995, and was part of the dissidents who founded the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), of which he was its vice president at the time of his death.
Hugo Torres was imprisoned for the dictatorship of his former comrade in arms, Daniel Ortega, on June 13, 2021. “I am 73 years old, I never thought that at this stage of my life I would be fighting against a new dictatorship,” he said in the video released after his kidnapping. “46 years ago I risked my life to get Daniel Ortega and other political prisoners out of jail,” he stressed.
Torres was taken to the cells of the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ) where he remained until December when he was taken to the Carlos Roberto Huembes hospital, and later died on February 12, 2022.
By: United Voices
