Word: somoza
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...President of Nicaragua last week challenged the President of Costa Rica to meet at the border and duel to the death with pistols. "If he hates me, then why not settle it this way?" grumbled Nicaragua's Anastasio ("Tacho'') Somoza, who claims to be the best shot in his tough, U.S. Marine-trained Gnardia National. "He's crazier than a goat in the midsummer sun," replied Costa Rica's José ("Pepe") Figueres. an M.I.T.-trained coffee planter...
...Nicaragua (pop. 1,200,000) is the more or less contented plantation of Dictator Somoza, who owns perhaps one-tenth of the country's best farm land. Somoza escaped a Costa Rica-born assassination plot just in time to provide airbases for the planes that won the anti-Communist revolution in Guatemala last June. He stood accused last week of trying to do as much for rebel Costa Ricans...
...this or any future plot, warplanes were obviously the key. Washington heard last week that Tacho Somoza had finally swung a deal to buy 25 U.S.-made F51 Mustangs from Sweden. When they arrive, he will have far and away the most potent air force of any Central American nation: the F51 was a hot plane in its day. But with deadly U.S. jets only 30 minutes away, Tacho may find that there is not money enough in Nicaragua to tempt any air soldier of fortune to risk combat in a World War II propeller...
...ordered jet fighters to the Panama Canal Zone, where no jets have been based for the past six years. The move was aimed at stopping a projected invasion of Costa Rica by disgruntled Costa Rican émigrés, mightily helped by Nicaragua's tough strongman, Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza...
...whom he blames for a trying experience last April, when Nicaraguan exiles entering from Costa Rica tried to kill him after a party at the U.S. embassy. About every dark of the moon since then, some kind of anti-Figueres plot has popped up. In July the U.S. got Somoza cooled off only after he had sent a mile-long convoy of armored cars and trucks to the Costa Rican border. But the current plot looked more like the big show than any of the warmups...