Word: sandinistas
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Jaime Morales was a wealthy Nicaraguan banker in the 1980s when Daniel Ortega stole his six-bedroom house. Ortega, who was then Nicaragua's President, called it a justified "confiscation" on behalf of the Marxist revolution that he and his Sandinista Front were leading. Morales became a leader of the U.S.-backed contra army that waged a civil war with the Sandinistas. That conflict killed 30,000 people and led to Ortega's ouster in a 1990 election--after which he paid Morales for the house...
...sung to the tune of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance. To underscore his warmer, fuzzier incarnation, supporters often wore pink to rallies instead of the party's more militant red and black. But whether Ortega has shed his penchant for cynicism is another question. He and his Sandinista comrades were global guerrilla heroes when they overthrew the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. As Nicaragua's Marxist comandante, Ortega was widely criticized for being as incompetent and corrupt as he was authoritarian. Those who know him say his quest to regain the presidency--he lost elections...
...Congress wasn't the only place the Bush Administration suffered electoral embarrassment this week. In Nicaragua, cold-war bogeyman Daniel Ortega - whose Marxist Sandinista government had been an obsession of the Reagan Administration - was elected president again on Sunday despite frantic U.S. lobbying for his defeat. By most accounts, the yanqui politicking - which included a threat to cut off U.S. aid to impoverished Nicaragua if Ortega won - backfired miserably, actually helping boost the Sandinista leader to his first-round victory. That such U.S. pressure tends to work in favor of its opponents is a lesson Washington seems woefully unable...
...election of Ortega - who won with 38% of the vote, about 8 points ahead of his U.S.-backed opponent, conservative banker Eduardo Montealegre - is no doubt a concern. After he and Sandinista guerrillas toppled Nicaragua's brutal dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in 1979, Ortega led an authoritarian, Soviet-backed regime that wrecked the economy and fought a civil war with U.S.-backed contra rebels that killed some 50,000 people. Ortega was finally ousted in a 1990 election, and for the past 16 years, during which he twice failed to recapture the presidency, he seemed little more than a relic...
...Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, wrote that an Ortega presidency would "invigorate the axis of leftist proto-dictators led by" Chavez. Familiar Cold Warriors like former U.S. Marine Colonel Oliver North, a cynosure of the Contra war, started showing up in Managua to denounce the Sandinista leader. And U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez even warned recently that the Administration might suspend its almost $100 million in annual aid to Nicaragua if Ortega...