28 JUNE 1979 – This is what I witnessed as I drove over back roads early on the morning of 28 June 1979 to drop a colleague off at the airport. Hundreds of Sandinista fighters and supporters retreated from Managua because, as one of them said, the civilian population was being hammered by government forces’ […]
27 JUNE 1979 — Members of President Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard fire at Sandinista insurgents during heavy fighting along the contested northern highway leading from the capital of Managua to the international airport. As in too many of these conflicts, this war pitted neighbor against neighbor, family against family, brother against brother. While reviewing these […]
GIJON, Spain, 3 July 2009 — Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Javier Bauluz (left) joins Paco Ignazio Taibo II at a news conference announcing details of upcoming events in the city of Gijon, Spain. Bauluz is director of the 13th Encuentro Internacional de Fotoperiodismo, Ciudad Gijon, that runs from 10-19 July this year. Taibo, a world-renowned […]
26 JUNE 1979 — Casualties mount during a surge of fighting between Sandinista rebels and members of the Nicaraguan National Guard. Seen with a towel over his shoulder making pictures of a wounded man is John Hoagland, at that time a freelance photojournalist for the Associated Press (AP). John and I covered part of the […]
25 JUNE 1979 — A tenuous lull in fighting erupts into gunfire between members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) (above) and the National Guard of Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza. The image making and storytelling skills I acquired during this conflict are the foundation of my role today as backpack journalist. As we mark […]
25 JUNE 1979 — Anti-government rebels holding positions behind barricades take a break from the battle against Nicaragua’s Somoza dictatorship. Into these poor “barrios” or slums, journalists like myself ventured each day to document the conflict. And because the vast majority of the foreign press corps had fled the country after the killing of ABC […]