Word: managua
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...government reimposed a state of emergency, the crackdown on civil liberties has not produced a significant rise in support for either the contras or the opposition parties. Most Nicaraguans seem to accept things the way they are. "Sure we're Sandinistas," says Maria Berrios, who sells bread in Managua's Eastern Market. "We have to go along with whoever is here...
Nevertheless, each new round of repression confirms for many in Managua and abroad that the Sandinistas are intent on gaining absolute control. "The state of emergency is part of a master plan to get obedience from the population," says Jaime Bengochea of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP). "Our rights never existed except on paper." Critics report that their phones have been tapped, their offices ransacked, their lives threatened. Hundreds of people have been detained, many of them suspected of collaborating with the enemy in contra-infiltrated areas. Like Reagan, many Nicaraguans and outside observers believe that such repressive...
President Reagan once called him the "little dictator who went to Moscow," but when Daniel Ortega strolls around Managua with his two small sons in tow, he looks anything but the strongman. No tassles and epaulets for him, no holster around the waist, no stretch Mercedes. Hatless, in a black T shirt and khakis, Ortega could be any Latin American father except for the security contingent tailing him. Whether by design or by nature, he operates in public like a man of the people. When he travels by car, he is usually behind the wheel, and the car is usually...
...Both father and mother were imprisoned under the first Somoza regime, and Daniel was jailed for his activism at the age of 15. His younger brother Camilo was killed in 1978 during the Nicaraguan revolution, and another brother, Humberto, fought side by side with Daniel until the Sandinistas took Managua...
Ortega derives some of his political popularity from having spent seven years in Somoza's prisons. In 1967, he was captured and jailed for participating in a bank robbery. During his incarceration, Ortega composed poetry. His most famous is called "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion." After years of hunger--and, he claims, torture--he was freed in 1974 when a group of Sandinistas barged into a fancy Managua Christmas party, took a number of guests hostage and successfully demanded that Somoza release ! certain guerrillas, among them Ortega. He was then hustled off to Cuba, where...