Word: slumming
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Nicaraguan government evidently feels that its military presence close to the Honduran frontier will be enough to contain the contras. But the Sandinistas do not seem to have a strategy for the domestic disenchantment that has begun to seep even into their own ranks. In Managua's Barrio Riguero slum, a stronghold of militance during the 1979 insurrection against former Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a Sandinista activist named Maria says she remains faithful to the revolution's principles, but "life is getting harder." The main problem: "Basic necessities cost more and more, and some items are almost impossible to find...
With such rare exceptions, the current low intensity of the conflict may have reinforced the longing among Salvadorans for more permanent tranquillity. That yearning may have been the most significant element in the Christian Democrats' victory. As Francisco Chicas, a factory worker in the San Salvador slum of Mejicanos, put it, "There has been too much suffering in this country. Duarte at least has started to talk to the guerrillas. We need to support him so that he will feel confident...
...attractive" or "impressive." This is incorrect. In journalese, all homes are either modest or stately. When confronted with a truly ramshackle fixer-upper, knowing scribes will deflect attention to the surrounding area, describing the residence as "off the beaten track" or "in a developing area," that is, a slum. Distaste for the suburbs is conveyed by mentioning "trimmed lawns and neat flower beds," thus artfully suggesting both compulsiveness and a high level of intolerance for life in its hearty, untrimmed state...
...people who live in the slum's 10,000 squalid shanties have not emerged entirely victorious. According to Viljoen, only 3,000 dwellings in Crossroads can be approved. Most of the squatters will still have to move, presumably to Khayelitsha, a new township eight miles away that many blacks reject as being too costly and too remote. Admitted Viljoen: "I can give no assurance that people will not be resettled under compulsion...
...uniformed policemen and riot squads raced to the scene with canisters of tear gas, they found themselves confronted by roughly 3,000 protesters, some of them lifting their arms in a black-power salute and chanting "Amandhla!" ("Power!"). The slum dwellers hurled stones at passing vehicles; the authorities opened fire with rubber bullets and bird shot. For hours, police chased rioters through a labyrinth of tumbledown shacks. By the time the battle had subsided the following day, 28 police vehicles had been damaged and 26 policemen injured on the one side; 18 were dead and 250 wounded on the other...