From Budleigh to Nicaragua: a fascinating Coffee Time Talk
Born
in Lympstone in 1868, Frederick William Fley later moved to Budleigh Salterton
before deciding to cross the Atlantic and settle in a very different
environment. One of his sisters, Florence
Fley bought a house at 14 Frewins. Another, Clara moved from London to Budleigh
after the death of her husband Albert Gray in a horse and carriage accident, renting
a house at 4 Cliff Terrace before buying 31 Greenway. Her son, Henry Harold
Gray would die during WW2 while serving in the Royal Navy. You can read about
him at https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/10/ww2-759-force-z-casualty-chief.html
Frederick William Fley Image credit: www.ancestors.familysearch.org
Frederick William Fley was by no means the
first resident of Budleigh Salterton to seek a new life in the Americas. Matthew
Teed, from a well known Budleigh family, arrived in San Francisco in about 1845,
later moving to Los Angeles where he was elected as a member of the city’s
governing body.
The number of British migrants grew in the later 19th century, reaching a peak in the 1880s, with almost 110,000 people crossing the Atlantic in 1888 alone. Most headed for the United States, but a significant number moved to Central America. At the age of 25, Frederick William Fley and nine other friends set sail for Nicaragua, settling permanently as coffee farmers and marrying Nicaraguan women who gave birth to large families.
A map of Nicaragua showing the coffee-growing region of Matagalpa
Coffee cultivation and processing in Nicaragua has been attributed to German immigrants who settled in the country in the 1850s, and they were soon joined by other Europeans, notably in the mountainous region of Matagalpa, celebrated for coffee growing.
In the city of Matagalpa a field named El Cementerio de los Extranjeros was set aside for the burial of non-Catholic foreigners comprising English, Scots, Italians, Germans, Americans and other nationalities including Chinese. Several of them were pioneers in the establishment of coffee growing in the region.
The grave of Harry James Southwood Trewin, also known as Enrique Trewin. Image credit: www.findagrave.com
Here
for example is the grave of prominent British coffee grower Harry James Southwood Trewin, also known as
Enrique Trewin, born in Plymouth in 1877. He died on 2 May 1950, aged 73.
Matagalpa’s Foreigners’ Club – the Club de Extranjeros de Matagalpa Image credit: Facebook>Frank L Mixter Edes History & Genealogy
Above
is a photo of Matagalpa’s Foreigners’ Club – the Club de Extranjeros de Matagalpa – taken in 1910. Frederick
William Fley is identified as number 18. It would be fascinating to know whether any
others in the photo had come from Budleigh to Nicaragua with him.
Frederick William Fley and Paula Landero with some of their children. Photo courtesy of Jane Gray
Frederick William Fley died in Nicaragua in 1932, aged 64. With his Nicaraguan wife Paula Landero, twelve years his junior, he had at least six daughters and three sons, one of who was namd Federico.
Life in their adopted country for
these immigrant farming families was not as easy as they may have thought,
especially at this time. Between 1927 and 1933 Nicaragua was unsettled by a rebellion
and guerilla war against the influence of the United States led by Augusto
Sandino, a revolutionary who would give his name a generation later to the left-wing
political party of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
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Pedro Altamirano (1870-1937 Image credit: www.sandinorebellion.com
Seen
as a bandit by the Nicaraguan government and its American allies, Sandino was
joined in his rebellion by the fearsome and wily guerilla chief Pedro Altamirano, known as Pedrón. He was notorious
for the gruesome methods that he used to torture and kill his victims as well
as for the extortion that he regularly practised on wealthy landowners.
Pedrón’s fury increased when three of his children were killed in an encounter with American Marines and the Nicaraguan National Guard. ‘I go seeking vengeance for the blood of my children,’ he wrote in a letter of 10 November 1930, demanding a contribution from British coffee plantation owner William Hawkins in Matagalpa.
‘BANDITS' FIENDISH CRUELTY IN NICARAGUA Hideous Fate of British Victims’ was the headline in the London Daily News of 9 September, 1932. The Daily Mail reported that Britain was framing a strong Note to Nicaragua, claiming heavy compensation for the dependents of eleven Britons brutally murdered in Nicaragua since April 1931 while a terrorized government had done nothing to punish the murderers. The most recent murders were those of a certain H. D. L. Cooke and three brothers named Hislop, all managers of fruit farms.
‘Each was tied to a tree and slowly cut to pieces,’
read the report in grim detail. ‘The methods of Sandino's bandits are unequalled
even by Chinese torturers of centuries ago. Victims are tied to trees and have
to listen while the bandits explain and gruesomely illustrate what is going to
happen to them. The murder then begins with the severing of the victim's ears
and nose, then the arms, and finally he is beheaded. Cooke and the Hislops were
all subjected to this wicked torture.’
Anastasio Somoza García (1896-1956)
in 1936. Image credit: Wikipedia
The
Sandino Rebellion came to an end with the leader’s death in 1934. Two years
later, backed
by the United States, Anastasio Somoza García carried out a military coup and established
the Somoza family dictatorship which ruled Nicaragua for 42 years. Pedrón was
assassinated in 1937.
News of such events in Nicaragua shocked the United States and Europe, and must have terrified the Fley family back in Devon. Frederick William’s letters to his sisters in Budleigh make very sad reading.
Two of his children, his eldest son Jesus and his daughter Josephine, found the situation in Nicaragua so intolerable that they fled to neighbouring British Honduras.
Josephine’s troubles did not end there. Her husband was a member of the German Engelhardt family which had settled in Nicaragua, and during WW2 she was interned with her children because of her married name, in spite of her father’s British nationality. After the war she was deported to Germany.
1st Lt Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller with
members of the Guardia Nacional. Image credit: United States Marine Corps;
Wikipedia
Ironically, the involvement of battle-hardened US military personnel in suppressing the Sandino Rebellion was a factor in American successes against Axis forces during WW2.
Lieutenant-General Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller, pictured above, is the most decorated Marine in American history. He was awarded one Distinguished Service Cross and five Navy Crosses, four of the latter for his part in battles with Japanese forces in the Pacific. His first military experiences were gained in Haiti as early as 1919, culminating in a series of successful raids by American Marines and Nicaraguan National Guardsmen on rebel bases between 1930 and 1932.
In spite of the country’s turmoil in the 1930s many members of the Fley family remained in Nicaragua, continuing to make its name in the coffee farming business. The dynasty continued to grow. Two sons, Luis Adan Fley and Francisco Fley, born respectively in 1951 and 1957 to Federico and his Nicaraguan wife Teodora, would play important roles in Nicaragua’s national life.
From the Independent, 13 April 1988
And
yet in spite of marrying into local families, many members of the Fley dynasty
considered themselves as still British, as 82-year-old Federico Fley told the Independent
newspaper in 1988.
If
he were young again and had to do his military service, he wouldn’t fight there
in Nicaragua. ‘I would go and defend England,’ he was reported as saying. According to a document signed by a Mr Potter,
the resident British vice-consul during the 1920s, Federico was a British
citizen. So, by right, he insisted, were his 20 children.
His
88-year-old sister, Lili, had a framed picture of the Queen and the Duke of
Edinburgh hanging in her room.
If
at the time he was interviewed Federico Fley had a hankering to move his family
to the land of his ancestors it may have been because Britain must have seemed
like a haven of peace and stability compared to life in Nicaragua. On 21 September 1956, President Anastasio Somoza
García had been assassinated by the poet Rigoberto López
Pérez
The
rule of the Somoza dictatorship had continued when the late President’s eldest
son Luis Somoza Debayle succeeded him a week later, only to die of a massive heart
attack in 1967 at the age of 44.
Again, the Somoza dynasty had continued in power when Anastasio Somoza García’s youngest son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, head of the National Guard, took over as President.
But in 1961 the Somozas’ grip on power was being seriously challenged by the leftist opposition group of the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front).
In 1972 the city of Managua had been destroyed by a violent earthquake, resulting in between 4,000 and 11,000 deaths, injuring 20,000 and leaving 300,000 people homeless.
It was later claimed that President Anastasio Somoza Debayle and his associates had used foreign aid for their own gain. Opposition to the regime increased quickly among the lower classes and even among members of the upper and middle classes, angry with what was seen as the Somoza family’s corruption.
By 1974 Sandinista guerillas had launched what became the Nicaraguan Revolution. The Somoza government had responded with harsh crackdowns and executions which targeted particularly the country’s peasant classes. Eventually, on 17 July 1979, the President resigned, fleeing first to Miami with what was claimed to be much of Nicaragua’s treasure, and finally to Paraguay. Anastasio Somoza Debayle was assassinated the following year by a seven-strong Sandinista commando team.
Daniel Ortega in 1985. Reuters press photo
From 1979 Nicaragua was
ruled by the Sandinistas, otherwise known as the EPS (Ejército Popular Sandinista) or the SPA (Sandinista Popular Army). Prominent
among its leaders was the politician and future President Daniel Ortega. Opposing
them were US-backed rebels known as the Contras.
Again the tranquil life of the Fley family was under threat, and this time the threat was closer to home. Four centuries earlier, the most famous historical figure of their ancestral homeland, Sir Walter Raleigh, had written in his History of the World ‘the greatest and most grievous calamity that can come to any state is civil war’.
Four of Federico Fley’s sons including Luis Adan and his younger brother Francisco had fought with the Sandinistas against the Somoza dictatorship which they had helped to topple in 1979. After that victory Francisco remained a soldier, as a founding member of the Sandinista People’s Army and a militant in the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, while Luis Adan had returned to El Cua, some 2,000 kilometres north-east of Managua, where he ran a thriving general store.
He continued to take an active interest in politics, soon becoming disenchanted with Daniel Ortega who had become the leading figure in the so-called Junta of National Reconstruction, pursuing a programme of leftist social reform. Banks and industries were nationalised and 20,000 square kilometres (5 million acres) of land were redistributed to around 100,000 families, involving the forced displacement of 10,000 individuals from the indigenous population. Ortega’s administration took a hard line against opposition to such policies.
Luis Adan Fley as Comandante Johnson, sometimes spelt Jhonson
Image
credit: www.expedientepublico.org
In 1981 Luis Adan Fley attended an
anti-Sandinista rally and was twice arrested by police, having been denounced
by a business rival as a rebel supporter. On both occasions his brother Francisco
got him out of jail. Finally, in April that year, hearing rumours that the local army commander had ordered his
death, Luis Adan went into hiding, finally joining the Contras as one of their
best known leaders, using the name Comandante Johnson. The army confiscated his
home, turning it into a barracks.
By late 1986, wrote
Miami journalist Sam Dillon in his 1992 book The Civil War in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had jailed more than 5,000 political
suspects and forced nearly 200,000 people into 145 ‘settlements’, a euphemism
for internment camps.
And yet Luis Adan’s brothers Francisco, Jorge and Enrique Fley remained supportive of the Sandinistas. In October 1987, during a ceasefire, Francisco went in search of Luis Adan, meeting up with him in the mountains of Matagalpa. It was an emotional experience for both brothers, lasting ten days and reported by the world’s media as a tragic example of the way in which the Nicaraguan war had torn families apart.
An article in the Tropic Times newspaper of the US Southern Command,
Panama 18 January 1989
‘Brothers Split in Nicaragua Find
No Peace’, from the Los Angeles Times, was one typical headline, for the
meeting did not help to end the conflict. It failed to prevent the killing of their
brother Enrique in a Contra ambush in January of the following year. His widow, Maribel Rodriguez Mercado, initially
blamed Luis Adan for her husband’s death, but later admitted that she also had
brothers fighting with the Contras.
As for Enrique’s father, Federico Fley, he remained firmly on the side of the Sandinistas.
He was reported as saying he was sure
that Luis Adan had been deceived by the Contra leaders, describing them as ‘a
despicable crowd, motivated by the dollars the Americans give them and not by patriotism’.
Such views of the Contras were rejected by Luis Adan. ‘They’re just peasants,’ he was later quoted, based on memories of the 1987 meeting and exchange of views with Francisco. ‘Farmers who had no other choice but to go to war because of government abuses. You Sandinistas tried to impose a system that went against all our idiosyncrasies as Nicaraguans.’
Many journalists and historians agree with him. ‘By 1983 the Contra War had become a far-ranging peasant insurrection’ wrote Sam Dillon. Contras leaders like Luis Adan were portrayed sympathetically. ‘He wasn’t a thug or a thief; he was neither a mercenary nor a murderer,’ believed Dillon. ‘Like the vast majority of the rural men who’d joined the Contras, he was fighting for a simple vision of good government.’
The 1990 elections in Nicaragua were evidence that not all the population was backing the Sandinistas. Daniel Ortega was defeated by his former ally the newspaper publisher and politician Violeta Barrios de Chamarro who served as president of Nicaragua until 1997. Under an amnesty and with the election of Chamorro as President, Luis Adan returned to civilian life, declaring that the Contras troops would disband.
Daniel Ortega in 2017. Image credit: Wikipedia
Sixteen years later, Ortega was back in power, winning the 2006 Nicaraguan general election. While in opposition he had seemed to moderate his communist ideology in favour of a programme of democratic socialism, even demonstrating his ties to Roman Catholicism. His 2006 election campaign had emphasized peace and reconciliation, and his first two five-year terms as President saw robust economic growth in Nicaragua and a decrease in poverty.
However, Ortega’s victory was accompanied by a steady increase in his control of Nicaragua’s public institutions including the military and the police. By 2019 the organization Human Rights Watch was claiming that he had ‘aggressively dismantled all institutional checks on presidential power’.
Anti-government protests were ruthlessly dealt with, Ortega having declared on 29 September 2018 that political demonstrations were illegal. By 6 February the following year it was reported that 325 people had been killed by security forces as a result of the Nicaraguan government’s repression of protests.
Luis Adan Fley in 2020. Image credit: Wikipedia
In
the 2021 Nicaraguan presidential election Luis Adan Fley was one of the
candidates, representing the opposition Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN).
However on 12 July of that year he confirmed that he had withdrawn his candidacy
and was no longer in Nicaragua.
‘I left the country, I had a lot of pressure and I decided it was better to leave Nicaragua, I went into exile,’ he told the Managua-based newspaper La Prensa. ‘There were threats from the dictatorship to arrest me.’ He had crossed the border into Mexico and was hoping to seek political asylum in the US.
Luis Adan Fley is one of many thousands of Nicaraguans who have been uprooted.
‘The erosion of democracy and violence against protestors
sparked what has become the largest emigration in the country’s modern history,
surpassing that of the Cold War era,’ claims the non-profit Migration Policy
Institute. ‘As of 2020, more than 100,000 Nicaraguans had fled the country,
according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). By 2022,
that number approximately doubled, as Ortega cracked down on opposition
politicians and political dissidents.’
Perhaps Budleigh Salterton should be welcoming him back to the
more settled and peaceful land that his grandfather left in the hope of a
better future.
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