Word: somoza
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...zones continually." Getting there was a perilous ordeal in itself, and indiscriminate bombing and shelling made it necessary to take refuge in the homes and backyards of friendly Nicaraguans. The scene at Managua's Inter-Continental Hotel, headquarters and domicile of the foreign press corps, was similarly threatening. "Somoza flunkies were wandering around saying that newsmen should be taken out and shot," says Diederich. When the staff fled after the hotel had been designated a military target by Sandinistas in mid-June, Diederich and three other foreign journalists abandoned it for what they euphemistically called a "safe house...
...responded to Guerrilla Leader Humberto Ortega's appeal. From Chinandenga in the north to Rivas in the south, committees led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.) began distributing food and providing medical care for the thousands wounded in the savage civil war against exiled Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle. In Managua the junta that heads the Government of National Reconstruction ordered peasants who had occupied plantations owned by wealthy farmers to move on. The junta instructed them to join the peasant-owned agricultural collectives that will soon be established on the more than 1 million acres, roughly...
...junta was also trying to mop up diehard remnants of Somoza's national guard. Almost every night the sounds of gunfire shattered the stillness of Managua as Sandinista security men battled renegade guardsmen. Egged on by a Masaya mob that demanded the death of its prisoner, Sandinista troops summarily executed a 19-year-old informer who had admitted leading Somoza's assassination squads to the hideouts of at least 20 guerrillas during the civil war. New York Democratic Congressman John Murphy, a longtime friend of Somoza's, claimed that the Sandinistas were executing "thousands" of guardsmen...
Carter's administration implicitly admitted the error of the Somoza reign in its close negotiations with opposition Sandinistas and its insistence that Somoza and Urcuyo immediately hand over control of the country. In its obsequious eagerness to establish relations with the rising star of the Sandinistas, the U.S. dealt meekly with rebel leaders, saving heavyweight tactics for Somoza and his troupe. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher informed Somoza that if interim President Urcuyo continued to bollix the transferral of power to the rebels by refusing to give up U.S. Characteristically, the U.S. approached the problem of Urcuyo's last...
PERHAPS IT IS FITING that two other members of the junta, Violetta and Joaquin Chamarro, are the children of the President who fell from power shortly before Anastasio Somoza's Debayle's father made his meteoric rise. But poetic justice will not sustain their newgovernment. If they succeed in their dream of becoming a social democracy, the U.S. will find it must account for its dealings there in the future. If not, the coalition could dissolve into another civil...