Word: somoza
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Much as Wilson hung around with bad company because of his personal grudge with the Huertistas--at one point he even supported Pancho Villa--so Reagan's disgust with the Sandinistas has fogged his presumed better judgment and led to his cozy embrace of a contra-band of ex-Somoza thugs...
...joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and by 1967, at the age of 22, he was already the head of the urban-resistance campaign. He helped found the Tercerista faction, or Third Party, within the divided Sandinista movement, which forged an alliance with the widespread middle-class opposition to Somoza. Mainly on the strength of that bond, the Sandinistas came to power. After serving as the first among equals in the party command and in the nine-man National Directorate, he won the presidency in a 1984 election that was boycotted by most of the moderate opposition parties. His brother...
Ortega derives some of his political popularity from having spent seven years in Somoza's prisons. In 1967, he was captured and jailed for participating in a bank robbery. During his incarceration, Ortega composed poetry. His most famous is called "I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion." After years of hunger--and, he claims, torture--he was freed in 1974 when a group of Sandinistas barged into a fancy Managua Christmas party, took a number of guests hostage and successfully demanded that Somoza release ! certain guerrillas, among them Ortega. He was then hustled off to Cuba, where...
...When I was in prison, I never thought I would see the triumph of the revolution," Ortega recalls. "All I thought about was the fight against Somoza and how to get out of prison." It is common wisdom that the Sandinistas have had difficulty getting used to governing rather than opposing. Says Ortega: "I never thought about being President of Nicaragua." But now he is, and in the hard months ahead, as the U.S. vacillates on the question of contra aid and the Nicaraguan economy sputters, Ortega faces tough tests not as a revolutionary but as a politician...
...contras are theoretically united under an umbrella organization called the United Nicaraguan Opposition, which was pulled together with U.S. help in 1985. In fact they are divided among themselves. Their political leaders tend to be former foes of the Somoza regime who fell out with the Sandinistas when the revolution was "betrayed"; many of the top military field commanders, on the other hand, served in Somoza's National Guard. Still, the contra forces are "too large and have too much support inside the country to be dismissed simply as a tool of the CIA," writes Leiken...