ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of opposition by examining additional elements alluded to by Anastasio Somoza Debayle—other nations, religious institutions, and the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, as well as the coalitions that eventually drew much of the disparate opposition together in 1979. On balance foreign elements played a role much more negative than positive for the stumbling government of Somoza, especially after September 1978, when the regime's brutality became widely apparent. Growing administration and congressional awareness of the behavior of the Nicaraguan National Guard, together with growing domestic and external lobbying against further aid to the Somoza government, ultimately brought about the complete termination of all new US aid in the 1979 budget. When students occupied churches to protest government policies and repression in 1970-1972, Monsignor Obando several times endorsed the protesters' position. Protestant groups organized the Evangelistic Committee for the Promotion of Assistance to Development, which promoted numerous community organizations not unlike the Catholic comunidades evangelicas de base.
