Word: somoza
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Tommy, they got me this time," President Somoza said to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Whelan the night he was shot down. That remark recalls the one the President made when I told him I was retiring [in January 1945] as U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua. It was early morning, and he was in his hammock being shaved. He turned his head and said: "Jeemmy, do you realize that in the two and one half years you have been in Managua I have not once said 'no' to you?" It was true. During those war years, I had made many requests...
...that Somoza is gone, will our State Department try to cram his heirs down the throats of the Nicaraguan people by labeling any opposition to them as "Communist-inspired"? I know that U.S. policy has long been to support any dictator who is willing to play ball with our State Department. Is this the way we are going to lead the enslaved peoples of the world to freedom...
...died, as Nicaragua's Ambassador to the U.S. Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa curtly put it, "of four bullets." A man of great personal charm, Somoza was also a no-nonsense dictator with many enemies; he was well aware of the danger of assassination, and usually went about well guarded. But in mixing with the people at a political rally and dance in the town of Leon, Tacho provided the fatal opportunity for a young Nicaraguan who was in appearance an innocent dancer but at heart an assassin bent on what he conceived to be glorious tyrannicide and a martyr...
King of the Hill. Tacho Somoza ruled Nicaragua for 22 years by king-of-the-hill toughness. "I'll give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to get it," he announced just after the U.S. Marines, ending their occupation in 1933, turned over the command of the Guardia to him. The Guardia shot scores -and brought peace. Meanwhile, by "buying from heirs" Somoza acquired coffee fincas and cattle ranches, parlayed them into a fortune estimated at $60 million-some $20 million more than Nicaragua's annual budget. He reputedly owned...
...nearly everyone he met. Seven early years of work and study in Philadelphia-he never stopped rooting for the Phillies-gave him close U.S. ties. President Eisenhower, who sent his own surgeon. Major General Leonard D. Heaton, to try to save Tacho, noted in a message of condolence that Somoza "emphasized, both publicly and privately, his friendship for the United States...