Word: azcona
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...news blackout is largely the work of Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoya, who took office in early 1986. Honduran officials have always been reluctant to admit that the contras launched attacks from Honduran soil, but Azcona has gone one step further by blocking access to camps on both sides of the border. Honduran soldiers guard the road from Las Trojes to the base inside Nicaragua, and the government has refused to issue passes to reporters. A few daring souls have sneaked into the camp by resorting to subterfuge or bush paths, but usually such ventures involve a grueling and dangerous...
...better part of the past year, hundreds of Sandinista troops have wandered in and out of Honduras, looking for the rebel forces known as contras. And for most of that time, the Honduran military has looked the other way. On Dec. 6, however, Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo shattered that arrangement by ordering his air force to strafe the Nicaraguan positions inside the country. Later that day, Azcona summoned U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs and urgently appealed for U.S. logistical support. President Reagan responded promptly, authorizing an airlift. Last week U.S. troops flying twin- rotor Chinooks and Huey helicopters ferried hundreds...
...surface, the provocative Honduran behavior was a response to a Sandinista attack on Honduran outposts in which three Honduran soldiers were injured and two taken prisoner. Under different circumstances, Azcona might have overlooked the Nicaraguan indiscretion, just as he has ignored more than 60 other Sandinista incursions this year alone. But with the Iran-contra scandal swirling in Washington, the Honduran President was plainly seeking reassurance from the White House. His appeal for U.S. help seemed designed to gauge whether the arms scandal had shaken the Reagan Administration's support for the rebels. More important, it tested U.S. resolve...
...will be administered on a day-to-day basis by the CIA and supervised by the State Department. As if to underscore that point, Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, traveled to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where he met briefly with President Jose Azcona Hoyo and then with several senior contra leaders...
That air of embattlement has gradually spread across the country. After the contra aid package was passed by Congress this summer, President Azcona predicted a "backlash of subversive acts in Honduras." Two weeks later, seven men with machine guns and hand grenades set upon a prominent Nicaraguan exile, wounding two of his guards. Only a few days later, the car of a journalist who had criticized the contras' presence was blown...