Word: somoza
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...make that point even clearer, each tree is now topped with an illuminated "30" to mark the 30th anniversary of the victory of The Sandinista National Liberation Front over the repressive U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty. Nicaragua's continual Christmas theme is also appropriate because President Ortega governs Nicaragua a bit like Santa Claus. Not because he is jolly or has a tummy like a bowl full of jelly (Ortega is very serious and has kept in remarkably good shape for a 63-year-old), but because the Sandinista boss uses gifts to keep people in line, and always double checks...
...President Franklin D. Roosevelt said about then Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. "But he's our SOB." That lesser-evil outlook might just as easily have described the U.S. attitude toward Pakistan's General-turned-President Pervez Musharraf, who resigned on Aug. 18 in the face of looming impeachment. Nor was it only the West that saw Musharraf as preferable to the chaos and venality of the political system he overturned to seize power in 1999. He carried the support of the urban middle class, which was desperately looking for the stability and modernity that had eluded a political system dominated...
...legendary nationalist guerrilla general Augusto Sandino has become the object of a political tug-of-war between the government and its naysayers. Sandino died in 1934, but his mantle - and iconic sombrero - has long been claimed by the Sandinista Front, which overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The Sandinistas, of course, are back in power under President Daniel Ortega, but a group of old-school Sandinista revolutionaries charge that Ortega has betrayed the movement's leftist principles - and they want Sandino (and his hat) back, to use as the symbol of their revived opposition movement...
...streets, the battle over Sandinista symbols has led to a kind of semiotic chaos in which the government and opposition groups use the same images to convey very different messages. The ruling party pays homage to national hero Rigoberto Lopez Perez, who assassinated former dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia, but dissidents paint graffiti with the message "Rigoberto come back!" to underscore the strength of their disdain for the current president. While the government plasters the country with posters touting Ortega's fealty to Sandino, anti-government protesters wave signs proclaiming "Sandino would never have been a Danielista...
...According to Nunez, the decline of the oligarchy began even before the Sandinista revolution, when the U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty used its dictatorial power to strip the old-money class of its traditional military and political power. In fact, when economic power began to shift in the 1970s to a new bourgeoisie based in the cotton industry, some of the old landowning oligarchy even sided with the rowdy Sandinista rebels, hoping that the overthrow of the dictatorship would allow them to reclaim lost power. But the Sandinistas had other ideas: After seizing power in the insurrection of 1979, they systematically...