Word: guardsmen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While efforts to find a diplomatic solution continued, Nicaragua was a country in agony. Thousands have died in the fierce fighting between Somoza and the Sandinistas. Though they outnumber the guerrillas by about 4 to 1 and have a vast edge in weaponry, Somoza's 12,000 national guardsmen have been severely strained by the extent of the fighting, which has involved virtually every city and town in the country. To retain control of his capital, Somoza pulled in troops from the countryside, thereby allowing Leon and parts of Matagalpa, Esteli and Masaya to fall into rebel hands...
Somoza has been able to stay in power because his guardsmen remain loyal...
...violence touched off a mass exodus of foreign nationals. Somoza permitted a U.S. Air Force transport plane to land at the airstrip near his seaside villa at Montelimar, 40 miles from the capital, and provided an escort of national guardsmen, reinforced by armed U.S. Marines, to protect fleeing Americans. By week's end about 290 American citizens had departed on four evacuation flights...
...Managuans turned to looting. People were seen carrying away sides of beef, cases of rum, huge bags of coffee and flour. "We will exchange what we have for what we need later," one woman looter ex plained. "We had nothing before." Swigging bottles of stolen beer, Somoza's guardsmen tried to direct the looters toward stores owned by opponents of the regime. Other shopkeepers simply threw their doors open to the pillagers, hoping that they could at least dissuade the mobs from destroying expensive equipment. Said a poultry dealer after the pillagers stole more than 42,000 chickens...
...uprising, Somoza maintained, "was the work of Cuba and Panama," which he claimed had armed and trained the guerrillas. To prove the point, Somoza brandished the identification papers of three Panamanians, including a former Deputy Minister of Health, who was said to have been slain last week by national guardsmen near the Costa Rican border...