Word: dirt-poor
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...group of men burst into National Popular Army staff headquarters and gunned down President Marien Ngouabi. A pudgy French-trained army major who survived several previous attempts on his life, Ngouabi, 38, was long a bitter enemy of Zaïre's Mobutu. His tiny (pop. 1.3 million), dirt-poor country has enjoyed Soviet patronage for years, and its airport served in 1975 as a convenient refueling point for Cuban troop planes bound to aid Angola's M.P.L.A. guerrillas. Ngouabi's killing-which Radio Brazzaville laid to "imperialist commandos"-was apparently the work of one Captain Kikadidi...
...upland city of Manizales, coffee capital of Colombia, new-car sales are booming, and supermarkets stock imported pâté de foie gras. In the Mexican highlands, dirt-poor Indian farmers eat meat with their rice and beans. In Guatemala, small planters who 18 months ago could barely afford bicycles splurge on motorcycles, TV sets and modern farm equipment. "I now own a Datsun truck, and my son is studying engineering," says one. "Enough of eating crud with the chickens...
...genuine Okie, Harris was born in one of the nation's most impoverished areas in the Great Depression. His father, a land-poor, dirt-poor migrant farmer, went as far north as Canada to harvest crops. From the age of five, Harris accompanied him. To Harris, a bank was "more than a place to deposit and borrow money; it was almost a kind of religious institution." His father "was a different man, it seemed to me, when he went to the bank. He took his hat off the minute he walked through the door." Whenever Harris and his chums...
...recent months, the dirt-poor peasants of Honduras have invaded farms and blockaded bridges to force the government to fulfill its promises to redistribute the land. June 25 was a memorable day in their campaign. While the army broke up "hunger marches" in various regions, wealthy ranchers, backed by soldiers, stormed a training center for peasant leaders in Juticalpa, the dusty little capital of Olancho province, and killed six people...
...Lucio Cabañas, 37, Mexican guerrilla and folk hero; of wounds suffered in a gun battle with Federates; in the Sierra Madre del Sur above Acapulco. In a seven-year campaign of bank robberies, kidnapings, and slayings, Cabañ⅞as, a Communist, won the sympathy of the dirt-poor marijuana growers of Guerrero state and acquired a mystique reminiscent of Emiliano Zapata...