# Nicaraguan Revolution Reaches Honduras (1979)

URL: https://allhistories.com/honduras/timeline/1979-nicaraguan-revolution-reaches-honduras
Location: Danlí, El Paraíso, Honduras
Themes: battle

Throughout 1978 and 1979 the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) waged an increasingly popular insurrection against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua. Honduras's military government, which had close ties to Somoza, watched with alarm, while thousands of Nicaraguan civilians fled the fighting into the southern Honduran departments of Choluteca and El Paraíso. On 17 July 1979 Somoza fled the country, and on 19 July the Sandinistas entered Managua. In the following weeks thousands of members of Somoza's defeated National Guard escaped across the border into Honduras, along with their families and supporters. Some of them soon began organising armed bands along the frontier, carrying out raids into Nicaragua; in 1980 a group known as the 15th of September Legion was formed, a forerunner of the Contra movement. The revolution transformed Honduras's strategic position. As the United States came to regard Sandinista Nicaragua as a Soviet and Cuban ally, Honduras became the base for the anti-Sandinista Contras, a recipient of massive US military aid, and a front-line state in the Central American conflicts of the 1980s. At this point in the timeline (19 July 1979), the Military Government Junta were Military Junta (Policarpo Paz García, Domingo Álvarez Cruz and Amílcar Zelaya Rodríguez) (7 August 1978 – 25 July 1980).

## Why it matters
The Nicaraguan revolution turned Honduras into the main rear base of the Contra war and a key US ally in Central America.

Ruler at the Time: [Military Junta (Policarpo Paz García, Domingo Álvarez Cruz and Amílcar Zelaya Rodríguez)](https://allhistories.com/honduras/rulers/military-junta-1978)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Nicaraguan Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Revolution)
- [Wikipedia — Contras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Sandinista](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Sandinista)
- [Wikipedia — Military Rule and The Football War (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Honduras_(1932%E2%80%931982))