Word: nicaragua
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...real question was whether Somoza had won the civil war, or merely the first battle in a campaign to oust his dictatorial regime. Although the Sandinistas slipped over into their wilderness hiding places, they had won something of a moral victory. They had shown that most of Nicaragua's 2.6 million people are bitterly anti-Somoza. In town after town, armed only with pistols and hunting rifles, ordinary people ignored danger and risked reprisal to support the guerrillas. In León, an elderly doctor, patching up the wounded, paused long enough to offer this defiant assessment: "Our wounds will never...
Fighting back, Nicaragua's longtime dictator last week declared martial law, a familiar tactic of troubled governments (see page 40). Somoza instructed his tough, 8,100-member National Guard to destroy the rebel forces and end the uprising. Guard units set out to rescue the embattled towns; in the south at Sapoá and Peña Blanca, they also violated the Costa Rican border in hot pursuit of Sandinistas. After a week of steady fighting, the conflict had taken on the proportions of a bloodbath, and U.S. diplomats met hastily with the government to speed the evacuation...
Ironically, the civil war erupted just as the country prepared for Independence Day, the annual celebration on Sept. 15 of the break by Nicaragua and other Central American states from Spanish rule in 1821. Somoza, directing the war from a windowless bunker at National Guard headquarters overlooking Managua, marked the day with a champagne reception that U.S. Ambassador Mauricio Solaun declined to attend. The Sandinistas promptly labeled this year's observance Second Independence Day. But neither side could really celebrate a victory in one of the most savage and confusing wars that Central America has ever seen. Each side...
...countries as diverse as Iran, Nicaragua and Rhodesia, the first response of the three beleaguered governments to civil emergencies this month was to impose martial law. In Rhodesia this meant little, since the country had been under military control since the guerrilla war began six years ago. In Iran the Shah's declaration brought a clampdown on civil liberties and empowered the army to arrest without charges and to invade homes without warrants. In Nicaragua martial law merely underscored Anastasio Somoza's desperate situation. Said a Managua businessman: "Martial law here is simply a license to kill...
...This is only the beginning. I'm leaving for Costa Rica just as fast as I can," said one rebellious resident of Esteli, a city which was severely pounded during a week-long assault by the national guard, Nicaragua's 7,500-man army...