Word: managua
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THIS POEM, WRITTEN by a Nicaraguan woman named Christian Santos de Praslin, recently appeared in a Managua newspaper. Its publication dramatizes the fact that revolution in Nicaragua, a country whose people have long been silent under the oppressive dictatorship of President Anastasio Somoza, is alive and flourishing. Freedom of the press is a relatively new development in this Central American nation of 2.5 million--opposition to the 42-year-old Somoza dynasty has only surfaced in print within the last year, in the wake of President Carter's proclamations about human rights...
...high point of this widespread effort has come in response to the January 10 machine-gun slaying of the very popular Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. As news of the murder spread, thousands took to the streets in Managua, burning, looting and angrily chanting "Muera Somoza!" (Die Somoza!). Authorities estimated damages incurred by the rioting at $7 million. In the next few days, a national strike was organized to protest the continued rule of Somoza. The strike lasted 17 days, ending on Feburary 7, during which time three quarters of the country's businesses shut...
...regardless of their popularity, the FSLN can never succeed with a purely military approach. The strength of Somoza's power derives from his control of the 7500-member Guardia National, a combination army and secret police force trained and equipped by the U.S. The campesinosand slum-dwellers of Managua have no weapons to combat this counter-insurgent force; and their collective poverty further weakens their ability to resist...
...RIOTING that followed Chamorro's murder, one of the Managua offices the mobs attacked was Citibank of New York. Lest our true allegiances be forgotten, we should note that the Harvard Business School awarded Somoza with an honorary degree. Furthermore, while beans, corn and other key foodstuffs are in short supply in Nicaragua, significant amounts of the arable land in the nation are owned by U.S. corporations and used for cultivating cash crops, such as coffee, cotton and bananas. Most importantly, America must not forget the conclusion that then Congressman Edward Koch of New York reached last summer after...
...Luis' death in 1967, Tacho succeeded him. Those childish schoolyard battles were merely the start of Chamorro's lifelong crusade to unseat the dynasty he would one day describe as "permanent parasites, stealing and corrupting everything in sight." Chamorro became a student agitator at the University of Managua, followed that with a brief adventure as a guerrilla leader who tried to take on Luis Somoza's Guardia Nacional with a thin band of insurgents. He was sentenced to a nine-year prison term for his abortive rebellion. After serving 18 months, he was released in a general...