Word: chamorros
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...peace with the Sandinistas, Lacayo has dealt with them very gingerly, opening him up to another set of criticisms and splintering the 14- party coalition that supported Chamorro's candidacy. Francisco Mayorga, who served as Central Bank president, resigned last October after stormy clashes with Lacayo. Says he: "Antonio can't make any decision without the acquiescence of the Sandinistas...
...brashest critic of the administration's soft policy on the Sandinistas is its own Vice President. Godoy remains outraged that General Ortega held on to his army post and has repeatedly called Chamorro and Lacayo "prisoners of the military." Lacayo pounces on such overheated rhetoric. "How much accommodation with the Sandinistas is too much?" he asks. "If we're too generous, that's better than not being generous enough. The gains we've made by negotiating with the Sandinistas are enormous. For a start, we're not killing each other anymore...
Whatever the shortcomings of the Chamorro government, they pale in comparison with the Sandinistas' shameless pillaging of the country during the two months between their electoral defeat and the day Violeta Barrios de Chamorro took the helm. Nicaraguans refer to those rapacious weeks as "la pinata," after the papier-mache animals that children whack with a stick so they can plunder the candy stuffed inside...
...poor, and we'll be satisfied to die poor," had a last-minute change of heart. In April the President's office ordered the withdrawal of $3.6 million in U.S. currency from the Central Bank, plus the equivalent of $5 million more in Nicaraguan cordobas. Francisco Mayorga, who, as Chamorro's first Central Bank president, inherited the mess that the Sandinistas left behind, estimates that a total of $24 million was looted from the bank...
State-owned enterprises became private overnight, with former Sandinista Cabinet ministers and army officers listed as executives. Chamorro's government is attempting to evict Ortega and a handful of other Sandinista squatters from their mansions. But for the most part, it has decided to ignore "la pinata." Says Antonio Lacayo, Chamorro's right-hand man: "In this country, political reality has more weight than...