Word: ortega
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...road from Managua to the town of Tierra Azul has been an occasional target for antigovernment rebels. So when President Daniel Ortega Saavedra recently made the two-hour trip, he took along plenty of security. A fleet of more than a dozen sturdy vans accompanied the President's off-white Toyota, while an armed, Soviet-made helicopter provided surveillance from the air. When Ortega, 40, reached his destination, a makeshift plaza, he quickly took a seat behind a long table. "Face the People," a folksy forum that brings ordinary Nicaraguans into contact with officials of the Marxist-oriented Sandinista government...
...more than two hours Ortega faced questions from campesinos who had gathered for the occasion. Would the President find more land for peasants? (Yes. That very afternoon he would award 375 families some 6,000 acres of land.) Would he help arm the townspeople against the U.S.-sponsored contra rebels? (No. Nicaragua, he said, has no spare firearms.) Ortega rarely missed an opportunity to promote the goals and concerns of the Sandinista regime. "The revolution is not yet finished," he declared...
...lunch of rice, tortillas, chicken, steak and beer. Afterward he climbed behind the wheel of his Toyota, with a radiotelephone next to the gearshift and a rifle under the seat, and settled in for the drive back to the capital city. For the next 90 minutes, Ortega, occasionally taking his hands from the wheel to make a point, gave an unusually informal interview to TIME...
...Managua, on the day of Ortega's speech, Sandinista police tried unsuccessfully to break up a large demonstration of workers demanding higher wages. But two days later Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez said the decree was intended "to defend workers, not to repress them." The government also banned a "Private Enterprise Day" in Managua sponsored by COSEP, the leading business association...
...plan to go on as before," said Erik Ramirez, president of the Social Christian Party. Echoing that feeling was Luis Rivas Leiva, secretary- general of the Social Democratic Party. Said he: "We are always evading restrictions. We have to use our imagination to evade these limits." Rivas discounts Ortega's claims that opposition activities are coordinated. Ortega may have dropped a lid on domestic unrest, but the move is not likely to help his attempts to win respect for the government abroad. This week he was to address the U.N. in Manhattan and possibly accept some invitations to speak around...