SANDINO'S DAUGHTERS 123' Melania Davila, forced into prostitution at tne age ot eighteen, joined the FSLN seven years ago. Her seventeen year-old son died fighting during the attack on Leon, a month before victory. A few months earlier she had borrowed 1,200 cordobas to buy his release from prison. "I just paid back the last 80 cordobas last month" she said, "and my son has been dead for seven months now". Women from all classes reacted to the terrible and widespread repression unleashed by the Somoza regime. This repression was particularly directed against the young who formed the dominant force in the struggle. Political assassinations of even eight, nine, ten year olds were not uncommon. Women wi.*j in the forefront of the fight for the release of political prisoners and in defence of the young. Beginning with supportive tasks they went on to assume positions of leadership of the armed struggle. In August 1978 an FSLN commando occupied the National Palace, took hundreds hostage and later exchanged them for the release of political prisoners, a million dollars and the publication of a manifesto. Dora Maria Tellez, Commander Two of this operation which drew the attention of the world to the ongoing struggle, joined the FSLN at sixteen and was still studying medicine when she went underground in January 1976. In a short story about how she brought her first baby into the world she writes :" Have I completed my mission by aiding his birth? I must say no. Our work will be done when we can give these young ones a new world, a different world. I must be committed to the birth of that new world which like every delivery will be painful and at the same time joyous." Monica Baltodano, Guerrilla Commander, daughter of working class parents who made it to a petti-bourgeois existence, was one of three guerrilla leaders who led the final offensive in the capital. From a pacifist Christian, she became one of the leaders of the armed struggle. Talking about the sexist attitudes of some comrades in the FER (Revolutionary Students' Federation) and in the FSLN, she says : "There were a lot of arguments. Some comrades were open to dealing with sexism while others remained closed .... It's been a long struggle. We won those battles through discussions and by women comrades demonstrating their ability and their resistance." On March 8, Don Perez Vega, a notorious general of the National Guard, was found dead in the house of Nora Astorga. He had been executed by members of the FSLN. Nora had lured him to her house, disarmed and undressed him, then giving the signal for the armed comrades to burst in and overpower him. She undertook this task inspite of being warned of the misconceptions which would follow and of the necessity of separation from her two small children. Today she is Special Attorney General in charge of the prosecution of the more than 7,500 members of the National Guard and other functionaries of the Somoza regime being tried for their crimes in the people's courts. Sister Martha, a Catholic nun in a overshelmingly Catholic country talks of how sections of the church came to support the armed struggle against Somoza: "The problem is that many sections of the Church have betrayed