Word: anastasio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Promising to "give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to do it," Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza took command of the Nicaraguan National Guard when the U.S. Marines pulled out in 1933, parlayed his talents into dictatorship, a string of coffee plantations and cattle ranches into a $60 million fortune, was killed, at 60, by an assassin in September...
...talk of Nicaragua last week was a poem. Honoring the memory of assassinated Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza-and reminding Nicaraguans that his dynasty continues in his sons-the government newspaper Novedades offered $140 for the best verse of homage to the dead President. The winning entry was 14 lines of flowery verse ("Renowned paladin and cavalier/Glory of America!"). Managua's citizens, by and large, read it glumly, but here and there a face lit up with malicious appreciation. Novedades' editors ran the poem (which was signed with a pen name) for several days-until they, too, noticed that...
...born in Tropea, Italy (real name: Umberto Anastasio), started his career almost as soon as he jumped ship in New York in 1917 to become a dock-walloper on the Brooklyn piers. In 1921 and 1922 he spent 18 months in the death house at Sing Sing for the murder of another longshoreman named George Turrello. The experience taught him the efficacy of wholesale death; when his lawyer got him a new trial, his pals killed off so many witnesses that Al was released. After that he prospered; the waterfront offered, as it still does, wonderful opportunities in pilferage, shakedowns...
...servants at Anastasia's home seemed unmoved at the news (although a maid did set the dogs on reporters), and Al's family decided not to ask the Roman Catholic Church to bury him (another brother, the Rev. Salvatore Anastasio, is a Bronx priest). He was put away quietly in a plain old $900 coffin-although another brother, Joe, got a $6,000 box when he passed on (of natural causes) last year, and $15,000 worth of flowers to boot...
Died. Albert Anastasia (real name: Umberto Anastasio), 55, gangster; by five gangland bullets; in Manhattan (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS...