Word: nicaragua
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Vatican politics and presenting flawed priests. The narrator of An Occasion of Sin (Putnam; 352 pages; $19.95) puts forth the most imperfect of them all. The scurrilous, irritable Father Lar McAuliffe is assigned to test the claims of sainthood for his late detested colleague, John Cardinal McGlynn, martyred in Nicaragua. Father Lar rubs his hands in anticipation -- he knows all about the Cardinal's mistress, his alcoholism and his rumored misuse of church funds. But as the priest pokes through the debris of a dead man's life, he finds that His Eminence performed many hidden acts of bravery...
...like the Jesuit-trained postgraduate of M.I.T. that he is. For most of his 45 years, he has labored in profitable obscurity. During nearly 11 years of rule by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Lacayo, the son of one wealthy family who married into another, tended to business, leaving Nicaragua's treacherous politics to others...
...could no longer maintain that low profile after his mother-in-law, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, defeated the Sandinistas and became President of Nicaragua in April 1990. Lacayo, who served as Chamorro's campaign director, immediately began shaping the new administration; according to insiders, he picked the President's Cabinet and made the controversial decision to retain Sandinista General Humberto Ortega Saavedra as head of the armed forces. Lacayo's official title is Minister of the Presidency, but some feel he might as well be called Mr. Presidency. "Dona Violeta conferred absolute power on Antonio from the beginning," says...
...Chamorros, including the pro-government La Prensa, where Lacayo's wife Cristiana is president. During a two-hour interview, Lacayo bristled at the suggestion that he and his family wield inordinate power. "We are still in an emergency," he says. "To compare the form of government we have in Nicaragua with the U.S., or Costa Rica, or Switzerland, which have traditions of democracy, is infantile...
Lacayo attributes his success in business to financial acumen and patriotism during the Sandinista regime. Says he: "Everyone said that to invest in & Nicaragua meant supporting the Sandinistas. I believed that it would lead to victory against the Sandinistas. So I opted to invest...