Word: managua
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...Nicaragua and Honduras, there is fearful talk of a war breaking out between the two neighbors. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista government has declared five provinces bordering Honduras "military emergency zones." The regime is advising citizens to stockpile rice and other foods, while the papers in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua are filled with stories about alleged CIA plots. In Honduras, airfields are being built close to the border and soldiers gather in bars in the capital city of Tegucigalpa to talk strategy. The mood was perhaps best captured by a priest during Mass at the Church of St. Nicholas...
Nicaragua's war jitters are being fueled by the country's increasingly edgy, leftist Sandinista regime. Managua, however, has received a boost from a U.S. covert operation that began modestly enough as an effort to cut off the arms flowing through Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, but that now appears to have grown into an attempt to topple the Sandinista government. As a result, the border between Honduras and Nicaragua has suddenly become a tinderbox where a few skirmishes could easily erupt into a full-scale shooting war. Even if war does not break out, critics...
Until the U.S. came along, the contras could hardly be considered a threat to Managua. In the years following Somoza's downfall, small bands of former National Guardsmen operated along the Honduran border, making hit-and-run attacks inside Nicaragua. The Somocistas, as they were known, were demoralized and poorly organized. The U.S. set about forcing the various factions to unite under a central command, while the CIA began recruiting students, farmers and other civilians to beef up the force. Then, early this year, the Fuerza Democratica Nicaragiiense (F.D.N.) was established to serve as a respectable political front group...
...Sandinistas have helped the insurgency with their heavyhanded campaigns against the Miskito Indians and campesinos (peasant farmers). Suspecting separatist sentiments among the country's 100,000 Miskitos, most of whom live in the northeast region, Managua ordered the Indian towns burned and the villagers interned, but the measures only drove more Miskitos over to the contras. The campesinos are disgruntled by the Sandinistas' attempts to force them into communal farming; as a result, many of the 1,500 F.D.N. troops operating in the north-central section of Nicaragua are peasant farmers. Once recruited, they undergo a five-week...
...improvements. The literacy rate has risen from 50% to 87%. Thousands of campesinos have received title to confiscated farm land. But an increasing number of Nicaraguans are beginning to compare the Sandinistas to Somoza. Says a plump, fortyish food vendor, standing in her tin-and plastic-sided stall in Managua's Mercado Oriental: "This is the worst we have ever had it. Everyone is waiting for Edén Pastora." They may have to wait a while. But the spreading disillusionment should put the Sandinistas on notice that political legitimacy does not come from just overthrowing a corrupt regime...