Word: marxist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...multibillion-dollar standards of the international arms trade, the deal that came to light last week was almost unworthy of notice. The Socialist government of French President Francois Mitterrand had quietly agreed to sell $17.5 million worth of "nonoffensive" military equipment to the Marxist-dominated Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The items: two patrol boats, two Alouette III helicopters and 15 trucks. Paris also contracted to train a dozen Nicaraguan pilots and an equal number of sailors in the use of the equipment. Yet when word of the deal reached Washington, both Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar...
...force, as it illustrated unmistakably last week during a skirmish in the remote swamplands of eastern Honduras. Some 75 members of the revolutionary army of Nicaragua collided with roughly equal numbers of Miskito Indians, members of a Nicaraguan tribe that has rebelled against their country's Marxist-dominated Sandinista government. When the shooting stopped at least eight Indians were dead, according to sketchy local reports, and the Honduran government was enraged at a clear violation of its borders by the Sandinista forces. The ill-equipped Honduran army went on full alert, Honduran troops sped to the trouble zone...
There was no immediate danger of a war between the two countries, but the flare-up was yet another sign of the tense atmosphere in a region that is increasingly aboil with Marxist guerrilla activity. The aims, ambitions and military preparations of the Sandinista regime worry Washington and Nicaragua's neighbors. Says Lieut. General Wallace Nutting, head of the Panama-based U.S. Southern Command: "All of a sudden, Nicaragua has become a military base of substantive potential. It's a whole new universe...
...military buildup does not square with protestations that it is meant to be defensive. Says a State Department expert: "They would like to have an armed force sufficiently strong that they can, with impunity, participate in the subversion of neighboring states. They are, by their own definition, Marxist-Leninist, and it would seem fundamental that they would prefer to see their neighbors in the same bloc...
...Nicaraguan military splurge is financed largely by the Soviets and their allies, but the effort is diverting resources from the task of rebuilding the country after the devastating struggle against Somoza. Although they have been encroaching on their non-Marxist opposition, the Sandinistas have been beset by ultraleftist groups, members of the Nicaraguan Communist Party, who feel that the country is not moving fast enough to ward a total dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communists have encouraged wildcat strikes and farm takeovers that have further hurt the already troubled economy. The Sandinistas have jailed 22 members of the Communist Party...