Word: anastasio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THIS POEM, WRITTEN by a Nicaraguan woman named Christian Santos de Praslin, recently appeared in a Managua newspaper. Its publication dramatizes the fact that revolution in Nicaragua, a country whose people have long been silent under the oppressive dictatorship of President Anastasio Somoza, is alive and flourishing. Freedom of the press is a relatively new development in this Central American nation of 2.5 million--opposition to the 42-year-old Somoza dynasty has only surfaced in print within the last year, in the wake of President Carter's proclamations about human rights...
...years Chamorro had been a relentless critic of Strongman Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza and his family, who have ruled the nation for more than four oppressive decades. His death caused a political earthquake in Nicaragua, and his funeral quickly dissolved into a political event. A crowd swelling to 40,000 followed the coffin from the hospital mortuary to Chamorro's home and then to La Prensa's office. The angry marchers moved on to burn a Somoza-owned textile mill and a commercial blood bank that Chamorro had exposed for selling Nicaraguan blood abroad at a lucrative profit. Some...
...cause to suspect him. Ever since the two were eight-year-old schoolboys, Chamorro and Somoza had been enemies. In those days, Somoza told TIME last week, they fought because Chamorro's family paper "kept attacking my dad, and I couldn't stand for that." Dad was Anastasio the elder, who took over the country in 1936. After his assassination in 1956, his son Luis became Jefe, and after Luis' death in 1967, Tacho succeeded him. Those childish schoolyard battles were merely the start of Chamorro's lifelong crusade to unseat the dynasty he would...
...dictator's oldest son, Luis, immediately assumed the presidency, and Luis's younger brother, Anastasio Somoza II, a West Point graduate, became commander in chief of the National Guard. Luis governed until 1963 when a puppet president succeeded him. It was then the younger Somoza's turn. In 1967 General Somoza installed himself as president, stepping out only long enough in the early '70s to make the necessary manuevers to permit his "re-election" in 1974. Like his father, the current Somoza's base of power rests with the 7500-member National Guard faithfully trained and supplied by the United...
...power struggle continues as Somoza appears intent on keeping Nicaragua in the hands of the family. His 27-year-old son, Major Anastasio Somoza III '73 and Somoza's brother-in-law and ambassador to Washington, Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, are reportedly the designated heirs to the throne. Sources in Nicaragua say that key civilian and military elements within the regime agree with the opposition that such blatant continuation of family rule cannot be allowed...