Word: prensa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...understands the power of a free press better than Nicaragua's Sandinistas, who overthrew Dictator Anastasio Somoza two years ago with the help of the crusading opposition newspaper, La Prensa. Under Somoza, La Prensa (circ. 75,000) had paid a steep price for its dissenting views: its reporters were beaten and jailed, its offices were bombed, and finally its unflinching editor, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, was murdered by Somoza's henchmen. When the Sandinistas came to power 18 months later, they promised to create a pluralistic society in which freedom of the press would guaranteed...
...Prensa is the only Nicaraguan newspaper not aligned with the government, which also controls 80% of the radio and TV stations. As it chronicled the revolution's mounting failures, the daily, now edited by Chamorro's son, Pedro Joaquín Jr., 30, once more found itself the principal target of a regime that does not tolerate dissent. Chamorro's widow Violeta, an original member of the revolutionary government, resigned in March 1980, offering reasons of health, to concentrate on helping her son with the paper. One month later, La Prensa was paralyzed by a Sandinista-induced...
...unfairly confiscating private property, and packing the national legislature with Sandinistas. When the Sandinistas, having long since deferred plans for free elections in Nicaragua, called for free elections in El Salvador, Chamorro acidly asked: "If Salvadorans can vote, why not us?" After the latest shutdown earlier this month, La Prensa returned with a blistering editorial written by Violeta Chamorro...
...Sandinistas' response to this invocation of the martyred Chamorro-still a symbol of the revolution-was swift. Unless La Prensa stops criticizing the government, announced Sandinista Commandante Jaime Wheelock, the newspaper will be shut down permanently. La Prensa, said Wheelock, must "fit in with the revolution...
...closing of La Prensa would have a devastating effect on the government's image, both at home and abroad. It would be an admission that the Sandinistas had abandoned their commitment to pluralism and freedom of the press, and were drifting toward totalitarianism. But with the Nicaraguan economy in a tailspin and public restiveness on the rise, the government seems increasingly unwilling to give free rein to so outspoken a critic. If La Prensa is crushed, said Vice President George Bush last week in Rio de Janeiro, the Sandinistas will "make it strikingly clear in the eyes...