Word: chieftain
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Riddled by police raids and command indecision, Fidel Castro's rebels more than ever lacked arms and bombs, but still showed plenty of bombast. In an interview with U.S. newsmen, dyspeptic Havana Rebel Chieftain Dr. Faustino Pérez alibied the "minor setback" in the capital as caused mostly by "delayed public reaction," insisted: "Our units are intact." Broadcasting from the clandestine rebel station, Castro unleashed a farrago of nonsensical victory claims, e.g., "There is no rebel patrol that has not scored a resounding success." He added an unlikely atrocity tale: "In the Sierra Maestra peasants' huts...
...that it killed Adelabu but preserved the lives of the occupants of the car that had crashed with his. Thousands of fanatics ranged the streets, beating up political opponents of the Ibadan People's Party, burning their houses, setting fire to cars parked in the streets. A tribal chieftain and his family were chopped to death because they showed insufficient grief at the passing of Adelabu. "Mammy wagons" (rural buses) that did not carry the traditional green twigs of mourning were overturned and destroyed, and the passengers forced to run for their lives. In ten days the official death...
Articulate Fighter. Arriving with me from outside the territorio de Fidel was a messenger with a Paper-Mate pen, which he gave to Castro. The rebel chieftain regarded it amusedly, unscrewed the cap, took out a typed onionskin message from Fidelistas in Santiago de Cuba and read it, humming and rocking. Castro is a fighter; 16 months ago he invaded Cuba from a yacht. But he is also an articulate man interested in words, manifestoes, books (he treasures a volume of Montesquieu) and the language of ideas...
...Castro sticks to his schedule, the normal round of pre-Easter holy days and holidays will give him a natural assist in closing down the country. The rebel chieftain has long delayed his big move in the hope of winning over enough of organized labor, still officially pro-Batista, to ensure the strike's success. But now he faces another problem: if he postpones the big push again, his Havana network, which must lead the strike, may be fatally weakened by mass arrests and killings...
Capitalism can fall into some unexpected pitfalls in its travels around the world, but none more surprising than in Guinée, French West Africa. Recently, so goes the tale, a wealthy chieftain bought a brand-new car from a local auto dealer, proudly drove it away, filled with his numerous family. A few miles down the road, he skidded into a ditch and overturned. Though no one was badly hurt, the car was wrecked. Wrathfully. the chief returned to the dealer and demanded a new car because, he said, the wrecked one had been bewitched. As an expert witness...