Word: nicaragua
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...Nicaragua has a precise way of marking time, like a.m. and p.m. or B.C. and A.D. Everything that happened during the 43 years prior to July 1979 took place "during the dictatorship"; everything afterward is "since the triumph of the revolution." Ten years ago this month, a victorious band of guerrillas who called themselves Sandinistas, embraced a unique brand of tropical Marxism, and promised to educate, heal and enfranchise the poor triumphed over the corrupt rule of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the inheritor of a family dynasty begun in 1936. The Sandinistas had ridden to power on an armed uprising, aided...
...price of that failure is immense. Nicaragua is a wreck, inhabited by despair. A report secretly commissioned by the Sandinistas confirms the country's plight: with an annual per capita income of $300, Nicaragua is possibly the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Unemployment may reach 30% this year. Those who have skills to sell and some place to go get out: more than 10,000 have joined the contra counterrevolution, and at least 250,000 out of the population of 3.5 million have fled, many...
Victims of illness or accident who cannot afford treatment outside Nicaragua must rely on scandalously inadequate health care. The leading cause of death among children is diarrhea. Dysentery, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis plague communities. Dengue fever, wiped out in Somoza's day, is again a common menace. Malnutrition is a growing killer...
George Bush has acknowledged this turnaround in Soviet policy by proclaiming it an opportunity for the U.S. to move "beyond containment." Already there has been a shift in U.S. policy toward diplomatic compromise in all three of the principal regional conflicts. In Nicaragua the Reagan Administration wanted to overthrow the Sandinistas; the contras were a means to that all-or- nothing end. The Bush Administration, by contrast, is seeking a political settlement that would entail some sort of power sharing between the Sandinistas and their opponents. During consultations on Cambodia in Brunei last week, Secretary of State James Baker made...
...Castro moved on Ochoa to send a message to the military, he could not have picked a better target. Enormously popular among the troops, Ochoa is a veteran of Castro's revolution who has commanded troops in Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua. In 1984 he received the Hero of the Cuban Republic medal, the military's highest honor. Last week Ochoa was removed as a full member of the Communist Party Central Committee and an elected delegate to the National Assembly. The move against Ochoa may have been personal as well as symbolic. His popularity may have threatened Defense Minister Raul...