by: Pat Werner, originally published in Nica News 20 (February 1999)

	The Boy Scouts of Nicaragua are now charged with watching over the Coyotepe Fortress. They hold some of their events here, probably the best use for the aging structure. Photo: Tomas Stargardter

On a leisurely drive to Masaya from Managua, looming up on the left of the highway is the old mountaintop fortress, Coyotepe. Many tales have been told about it, usually bloodcurdling stories of torture during the rule of Somoza or the Sandinistas, depending on one's political bent. What is almost never heard about is something that really happened on this hill. One of Nicaragua's national heroes, Benjamín Zeledón, is associated with this place. It is an interesting story with a variety of versions.

One battle was fought there in October 1912. Lasting perhaps one hour, maybe less, it established Zeledón as a national hero and martyr, kept President Adolfo Díaz in power until the 1916 elections, and began the tradition of direct, American involvement in Nicaragua's internal politics.

1909 was a turbulent year in Nicaragua. The regime of José Santos Zelaya, subject to many Conservative uprisings and a poisonous relationship with the Catholic Church, finally tottered and fell when a Conservative "revolution" headed by Juan J. Estrada in Bluefields finally appeared to have the military power to defeat Zelaya. Two mercenaries from the United States contracted by Conservatives to sabotage ships in the harbor had been caught by the authorities and summarily executed. U.S. Marines were sent to the rescue and landed in Bluefields to insure that the revolution would not fizzle out.

Zelaya reportedly consulted with his friend to the north, Dictator Porfirio Díaz of Mexico, who advised him to get on a boat and leave. With the end of the Zelaya regime, a period of instability took hold in Nicaragua that was supposed to end with the naming of mining accountant Adolfo Díaz as president. A member of a shaky Conservative coalition that was supported by only a small minority of Nicaraguans, Díaz did not lead many except his immediate followers and members of his household.

Soon he had a rebellion on his hands when two generals -one Conservative, General Mena, and one Liberal, General Benjamín Zeledón- joined forces at Masaya, formed a rival government, and threatened to march on Managua. Díaz hit the panic button and asked for the Marines to land and save his regime. Mena's forces had commandeered U.S.-owned river steamers and the railroad for strategic reasons, and so the U.S. obliged and sent 3,000 Marines to protect "American lives and property." They marched on Masaya and Granada.

General Mena finally capitulated and agreed to keep his garrison in its barracks in Granada, but Zeledón still had to be disarmed. In 1910, at the age of 31, Zeledón had been Minister of War in the cabinet of Zelaya's presidential appointee José Madriz, earning that post for his fame as a hero in the victorious war with Honduras and El Salvador in 1907. Zeledón -born in San Rafael del Norte, Jinotega- was strongly opposed to the U.S. intervention and was prepared to die in order to defend his country from what he called "foreign despotism."

By 1912 he was the last leading Liberal still in the field who actively desired the immediate toppling of the Díaz government, which he regarded as a puppet of the Americans. Zeledón's hostility toward the Díaz regime, and subsequently toward the U.S. Marines, brought on the confrontation at Coyotepe in October 1912.

Storm the heights

Located on the end of the Masaya Lagoon are two large hills, one called Coyotepe and the other called La Barranca. Before the Marines showed up, Liberal forces fortified both hills. Coyotepe was the more strategic of the two as the main railroad leading from Granada to Managua passes directly under its heights; a few small pieces of artillery on Coyotepe can effectively disrupt traffic since it also overlooks the main road between Masaya and Granada. It was obvious that the Marines would have to take the hill in order to control access to Granada and defeat the rebel coalition of Zeledón and Mena.

Telegrams were exchanged between the U.S. forces and Zeledón: the Marines asked him to leave Coyotepe: he politely refused and told them they would have to fight him. Before dawn on October 4, 1912, Company "C" of the First Battalion, First Provisional Regiment, U.S. Marines, Nicaraguan Expedition, under the command of Colonel Joseph H. Pendleton, assembled at the foot of Coyotepe Hill and made ready their assault.

At first light they started up the hill. They shot their way to the top, and took control of Coyotepe Hill. Zeledón's forces had retreated off the hill as the Marines approached the summit. Irregulars from Conservative forces began combing the area for Zeledón and his men. The next morning near Diriomo, Zeledón ran into a Conservative force and shot it out with them.

He was struck in the spine by a bullet. He was taken by mule or by wagon, according to different versions, to Catarina. The wound had been fatal and he was dead on arrival. Another version has Zeledón being captured in Catarina and taken to Masaya where he was executed on orders from the Marines. The corpse was then paraded through the streets. A young Augusto César Sandino may have witnessed this procession, or perhaps his burial in the cemetery at Catarina. Zeledón lay there, unremarked upon, until Sandinista Comandante Tomás Borge dedicated a large monument in the form of a Winchester rifle to him in 1980.

Charge!

	Looking up at Coyotepe from Masaya, perhaps the same view the Marines had before the call to battle was made. Photo: Tomas Stargardter

Regarding the assault, the only accurate account of the battle and the condition of the hill at the time of the battle is found in an address that Colonel Pendleton gave in 1913 at the dedication of a plaque to honor the dead who took part in that battle. That plaque is mounted on a wall in the Marine barracks in Boston, where the great majority of the men who took part in the assault had come from. Pendleton finally told what happened on the hill outside of Masaya.

Commanded in the field by Captain Fortson, Company "C" had made it part way up the hill before they were detected by a sentry stationed on the summit of Coyotepe, who started waving a sword.

The strategy of the Marines was to have one group of soldiers pin down the defenders with accurate rifle fire as the others climbed the hill. This worked until the Marines reached an open space right under the summit. A machine gun had been placed to cover it, and it was also blocked with barbed wire.

As soon as the Marines made it there, three were shot dead and several others were wounded seriously. A fourth Marine named Durham continued forward and was shot down, but not before he had managed to cut the barbed wire. The Marines then took the summit. The assault on Coyotepe was over. American losses were four killed and several wounded; Nicaraguan losses unknown.

It is also clear from Pendleton's description that the summit of Coyotepe was lined with trenches and that there were no buildings there at that time. This lays waste to versions that have the fortress being built late last century.

Judging from the architecture, it appears that the fortress was built between the two world wars. Though it surely does command the Masaya Highway and old railway line to Granada, it could easily be destroyed by one 500-pound bomb.

In the mid-1960s, the Somoza family had turned the old fortress over to the Boy Scouts, who used it for their annual jamboree. Somoza's National Guard apparently used it briefly during the insurrection against him in 1979 to shell the Masaya. The dungeons below were reportedly used to isolate political prisoners then, and again during the 1980s when the Sandinistas were in power. However, the tales of brutal torture of prisoners during either regime are undocumented, though they lend an aura of intrigue while one walks around inside. In the early years of the Sandinista revolution, the authorities turned Coyotepe over for use by the Association of Sandinista Children, a Nicaraguan version of the Pioneers in Cuba.

By 1988, it was completely abandoned, adorned with spray-painted graffiti, including some elaborately drawn pornographic sketches. It has been returned once again to the Boy Scouts, probably its most effective use. Meanwhile, you can visit the installation and let your imagination run rampant as you walk the underground corridors past the cells in this 20th century dungeon.