Word: managua
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...threaded her way down the runway last week, laden with 12 American Beauty roses and a promotional contract as Miss Universe, the curtain came crashing down on the regime which for nearly half a century has run the show in her home country. And although the violence emanated from Managua, most eyes looked to Washington as Carter faced his latest test of leadership in foreign police...
...though the country had emerged from a coma. After the 46 years of suffering inflicted by the corrupt Somoza dynasty, a new spirit ruled the land. From the flagpole by the bunker in Managua where exiled Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle had commanded a bloody last stand fluttered the red-and-black banner of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.). Even the sounds were different Gone was the stream of anti-Communist propaganda that had once poured from Somoza's radio station. In its place came round-the-clock broadcasts of revolutionary songs and tributes to General Cesar Augusto...
Somoza's greed eventually cost him the support of Nicaragua's business elite. After the 1972 earthquake that leveled Managua and killed 10,000 of its residents, Somoza began moving into areas that the dynasty had previously left untapped. He set up a company that held a monopoly on supplying paving stones for miles of new roads in the capital. Moreover, Tacho and his cronies made killings by selling land to the government that was used for new developments to replace the residential areas that the quake had destroyed...
Somoza talked of saving Nicaragua from Communism; in fact, he was plundering the country for his own benefit. Among the companies that he controlled was a Mercedes-Benz dealership that sold garbage trucks to Managua's sanitation department. Another firm collected the revenues from the city's parking meters. Such risk-free opportunities, of course, are no longer available to Somoza. But between the assets that he and his mistress brought with them into exile, there could be enough to rebuild his empire all over again, albeit on a lesser scale...
...time the rebel government arrived in Managua last Friday, resistance had evaporated. Hundreds of thousands of cheering Managuans gathered in front of the National Palace to hail the new regime. Secure in victory, they embraced nervous national guardsmen who had been in fear of their lives. "Don't cry, brother," said an elderly guerrilla to a frightened young guardsman; he had threatened to kill himself with a hand grenade if he was not permitted to board an emergency flight out of the country. In the end, he lay down the grenade and fell, sobbing, into his former enemy...