Word: somoza
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recreates the final bloody months of the 1979 revolution, and Sandino, a documentary, looks at the year that follows the victory. Despite crude acting and a liberal dash of sentiment, Lilienthal succeeds brilliantly in showing how this revolution--and more important how the brutal piggishness of American ally Anastasio Somoza--touched the life of the people. Little wonder that Nicaraguans who watched their neighbors, their sons, shot in the back for no good reason, who ran off the streets to avoid the ubiquitous National Guard convoys, who saw their priests murdered and their churches desecrated, little wonder that they embraced...
...first hundreds, then thousands, finally millions of individual decisions. Usually the decisions are horribly hard; the young Guard member in The Uprising who eventually joins the Sandinistas knows it will likely be the death of his parents. Those who have a hard time imagining how bad conditions were under Somoza (or are under El Salvador's "14 families") might try thinking about how bad things would have to be before they'd risk their own and their family's lives...
...small country. The few National Guardsmen who must "control" Leon, in reality control only the garrison in the center of the city, and the radius of automatic fire around their heavily armed vehicles. Sooner or later, by defection or defeat, the soldiery will fall, though the lengths Somoza went to--including the aerial bombing of Nicaragua's cities--are terrifying. Especially worth American notice is the deadly force of a few jeeps with gun mounts and a few more armored personnel carriers. Few squawk when such material is dispatched to Latin American despots, but against outgunned opponents, and unarmed civilians...
...border to murder one literacy brigadista, hundreds of men from the People's Militia volunteer to join the army in the eventually successful manhunt. Nicaraguans may not one and all love their new government, but there seem to be very few who are eager to return to anything like Somoza's rule...
...Hope Somoza, the widow of the Nicaraguan President, lives in Key Biscayne. Nicole Duvalier, who opposes her brother Baby Doc, owns a sumptuous home in southwest Miami. The son of the late Fulgencio Batista, former President of Cuba, works as a model in Fort Lauderdale. A retired leader of the Tonton Macoute, the Haitian secret police, lives in Miami. Says one leading political exile, alive...