Word: guardia
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...against a neighbor. Tacho could also thank the U.S. for the best army in Central America. After the U.S. Marines moved into Nicaragua to protect U.S. interests in the Coolidge administration, they reorganized and trained Nicaragua's army. Before the Marines pulled out in 1933, the crack new Guardia National was the country's police force as well as its army...
Thanks to the Guardia, Somoza can boast: "I know every man in Nicaragua and what he represents." Thanks also to the Guardia, for twelve years he has owned and operated his little country (pop. 1,108,800), with its tiny upper class and sandaled proletariat...
Unlike Dominican Dictator Trujillo, Tacho kills a man only as a last resort. A spell in jail usually brings an enemy around. If jail fails, the Guardia has a little electric device known as la maquinita. A wire is wrapped around the prisoner's scrotum, and if he is stubborn, the current is turned on. There are Nicaraguan exiles in Guatemala who cry in their sleep about the Little Machine. "Oh, hell," snorts Tacho, "that damned thing isn't so bad. I've tried it myself-on my hand...
...chintz-covered chair. Scowling across the parlor of his Managua, hilltop mansion, Nicaragua's Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza grumbled: "I did everything I could to prevent what is coming, but there's no way to keep the peace in Central America. For years Nicaragua's Guardia National has stood like a Chinese wall in Central America, stopping trouble from going north and south. God knows I'm a patient man, but there is nothing I can do now. The fireworks may start any time-maybe tomorrow...
...last week Tacho swore he would not be flanked again. "You think I'm going to let them put me between two fires? No! The battle for Managua will be fought right over there in Tegucigalpa. When the first Legionnaire pokes his nose in, the Guardia will be there...