A few weeks after the Sandinistas’ historic entrance into Managua, Ramírez told me, a meeting was called at a former training school for Somoza’s National Guard. All the Sandinista cadres were present. Over three days, the main task was to decide how to govern Nicaragua, now that it was in their hands. “At that meeting we decided to hand over the leadership of the country to a group of people who would be above the law, infallible and untouchable,” Ramírez said. “The nine F.S.L.N. comandantes were to have authority over the civilian members of the government. We all accepted that. We replaced a single caudillo with a nine-headed one.”