Arce Castaño, Bayardo (1949–)

Bayardo Arce Castaño (b. 21 March 1949), Nicaraguan leader and member of the Sandinista National Directorate. Arce was born in Managua. His father's career as a journalist led him to become a reporter for La Prensa while a student at the National Autonomous University in León. He came into contact with the Sandinista National Liberation Front through his work at the newspaper and joined the Student Revolutionary Front in 1969. Arce was responsible for rural logistical support in the northern highlands from 1974 to 1976. He belonged to the Prolonged Popular War faction of the Sandinistas. Tomás Borge chose Arce to be his representative on the unified Sandinista National Directorate in March 1979.

After the fall of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, Arce became head of the Sandinista political commission. He greatly influenced the September 1979 meeting of the Sandinista leadership that set forth its short-term strategies in the "Seventy-Two-Hour Document." In May 1980 he became president of the Council of State. As a leading radical theorist, Arce gave a speech in 1984 rejecting the need for elections and endorsing a one-party state. He organized the Sandinista presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1990. In 1993 Arce became president of the editorial council of the newspaper Barricada. After the Sandinistas won the presidential election in 2006, Arce was named presidential advisor on economic and financial affairs.

See alsoNicaragua, Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gabriele Invernizzi et al., Sandinistas: Entrevistas a Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Jaime Wheelock Román y Bayardo Arce Castaño (1986).

Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Aguirre Solís, Danilo. Historia, institucionalidad democrática y libertad de prensa en Nicaragua. Managua: Fondo Editorial CIRA, 2001.

                                          Mark Everingham