Word: meza
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...Honduran border town of San Marcos, "is with the kind of action the U.S. pulled off in that island of Grenada." For the moment, though, it seems that the tensions and motions of war will continue, with none of the ready solutions. "No one feels completely secure," says Victor Meza, a political analyst at the Honduran Documentation Center whose name recently appeared on a death list. "Somebody wants to create a climate in which we do not know where the violence is coming from." Whatever the source of that threat -- the contras, the Sandinistas or the newly active local paramilitary...
When the national legislature handed down criminal charges in February against former Dictator Luis Garcia Meza, citing acts of sedition, armed revolt and assassination, many hoped that the anticipated supreme court trial would clean up the image of a nation tarnished by a flagrant cocaine trade, official corruption and worse. Last week, after three brief sessions, the trial ground to a halt. As the civilian government of President Victor Paz Estenssoro stood by, the twelve-member supreme court proved unable to come up with a quorum of judges to reconvene the case. Said a well-placed diplomatic observer: "People...
...nine justices have removed themselves from the Garcia Meza case. It is no wonder: on April 23 a replacement judge was mysteriously shot and wounded. Garcia Meza, 53, has done nothing to dissipate the atmosphere of intimidation. When he unexpectedly strode into court last month to defend himself, ending four years of exile and hiding, he was escorted by a platoon of soldiers. He now lives in an army garrison outside the city of Sucre, where the trial is being held...
...July 1980, Garcia Meza wrenched power from civilian hands in what has become known as the Cocaine Coup. U.S. Bolivian Affairs Expert James Malloy wrote then that the Garcia Meza government was a "rapacious, uniformed kleptocracy," openly in league with drug dealers. As major suppliers of the coca paste that is processed into cocaine, Bolivian drug traffickers earn some $3 billion a year...
Modest economic progress, however, could be destroyed in a moment by another military coup. The government is confident that the Garcia Meza trial will not provoke one, but many officials privately doubt whether the former dictator will be brought to justice...