Word: cult
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...resting in dried blood, were a charred human brain and a roasted turtle. Other containers held a witch's brew of human hair, a goat's head and chicken parts. After arresting and questioning four suspects, the Mexican police pieced together a horrific tale of a voodoo-practicing cult of drug smugglers who believed that orgies of human sacrifice would win satanic protection for its 2,000-lb.-a-week marijuana-running operation to the U.S. "They felt that all the killing would draw a protective shield around them," observed Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. "It was religious craziness...
Kilroy's captors brought bread and water, assuring him there was no danger. But twelve hours later he was abruptly led outside and executed with a machete slash to the back of his neck. The man who wielded the weapon, according to Mexican police, was the cult's ringleader, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, 26, a lanky, red-haired Cuban American who grew up in Miami. Constanzo, still being sought at week's end, inspired such fervent loyalty among his followers that he was known as El Padrino, the Godfather...
...that Stalin perverted. But a few voices are suggesting, at least by implication, that the history debate is ultimately about the legitimacy of the Soviet state, a state with no validation other than the sacred rightness of the Communist Party and its doctrine of historical inevitability. "We have no cult of Stalin, but we have a cult of the party," says literary critic Igor Zolotussky in the journal Novy Mir. "The party, and the idea it personifies, is always right. Party activists often make mistakes -- but the party, never. What is this but a new form of idolatry...
Little is heard in Cuba of the current changes in Soviet economics and culture, although some news trickles in from the American Radio Marti. Cuban human rights groups, as well as other Cuban citizens fascinated by the cult-like figure Gorbachev, have hailed the Soviet premier's visit with flag-wavings, cheers and motorcades. Gorbachev, it is hoped, will help guide a resistant Cuba into policies of economic "opening" and increased political freedoms...
...Soviets," "Land to the peasants," "Factories to the workers," "Bread to the hungry." Authoritarian leadership and therefore a lack of democracy have led to a certain apathy among the people, to a sort of civil nihilism, a skepticism. And to all this we must add the mistakes of the cult of personality. That's just one part of the problem...