Word: somoza
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...massacre at Varilla two months ago was not unique, according to a pastoral letter by Nicaragua's Roman Catholic bishops. The letter, which has not been published because of government censorship, was read from pulpits in January. It accuses President Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Debayle's National Guard of subjecting innocent peasants to "inhuman" abuse "ranging from torture and rape to summary execution" during the government's two-year drive against leftist guerrillas. The bishops buttressed their charges with testimony from rural missionaries-who claim that dead and kidnaped campesinos number in the hundreds...
...indiscriminate killing began after gun-toting members of the Sandinist National Liberation Front (FSLN)* staged a spectacular invasion of a 1974 Christmas party honoring the U.S. ambassador. They took hostage a dozen leading businessmen and members of Somoza's government, including his Foreign Minister and ambassador to Washington. Swallowing his pride, Somoza negotiated the ministers' release, paid the guerrillas $1 million, and let them and 15 imprisoned FSLN members fly to Cuba. But then he declared martial law, which is still in force, and set out to crush the Sandinistas, who have received support, training and some arms...
...Somoza has accomplished that. Last November, in a clash with National Guard troops, the Sandinistas' secretary-general, Carlos Fonseca Amador, 40, was killed en route to a meeting, laid out under a mango tree and photographed; his fingertips were then sliced off for exact identification. Other ranking leaders of the leftist rebel movement have also been killed. Last month, in an unpublicized trial in Managua, 36 captured guerrillas and 74 of their compatriots who were tried in absentia drew sentences ranging from 18 months to 129 years in prison...
Spokesmen for Somoza insist that the bishops' charges are grossly exaggerated. Many campesinos, they explain, have not been killed, but simply fled their homes to avoid the fighting. U.S. Ambassador James Theberge, however, takes the reports seriously: "We have reason to believe that some of the allegations of human rights violations are accurate, and our concern has been made clear to the Nicaraguan government on various occasions in the past year...
Critics of the Somoza family's corrupt, baronial, four-decade reign hope that the Carter Administration will make that concern more explicit. Says a leading opposition member: "Nicaragua is a case where Carter can show that his advocacy of human rights is not just words. That is why Somoza is so nervous." Should the Administration choose to act, it has substantial leverage. Nicaragua's National Guard relies on U.S. weapons and is scheduled to receive $2.5 million in military sales credits in fiscal 1977. Loss of that aid is something that the American-trained Tachito Somoza (West Point...