Word: somoza
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...GODDAMMIT!" shouted a handsome figure in tailored army fatigues at Managua's Las Mercedes Airport. "What I need is some concertina wire. The U.S. gives me everything but concertina wire." The impatient young man was Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, 22, a senior at Harvard University, son of and heir apparent to Nicaragua's ruling strongman, General Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Debayle, 47. Summoned from a Manhattan debutante party to help with the relief effort, young Somoza stood atop a stack of Sears camping tents, surrounded by crates of Canada Dry, boxes of baby food and a seemingly inexhaustible supply...
There is no shortage of food in Managua; the only problem last week was that most of it was piled up in an airport hangar far away from the hungry and homeless of the city. A bevy of Red Cross volunteers and unctuous army officers waited to do young Somoza's bidding; for the moment, he had other things on his mind, namely his misplaced automobile. "Where is my car?" he demanded. "I want the person who took it arrested immediately," he said, and ran off in search of the culprit. Silence. Since nothing could be done without...
...scene was much the same at Tachito Somoza's hilltop estate in Managua's El Retiro section. Nicaraguan generals, journalists and crew-cut American hucksters panting to sell prefab housing units milled about one day last week waiting for an audience with the general. Somoza's American wife Hope, a striking woman dressed in a red bandanna, print blouse and tight black slacks, directed Red Cross activities from beneath a shade tree. The mood was relaxed and restrained-even though 3,000 Managuans are known to be dead, another 4,000 were buried alive when the earthquake...
...some cases, the U.S. effort has not been as effective or as widely noticed as it might be. While a 185-man Army medical team from the 21st Evacuation Hospital based in Fort Hood, Texas, operated in a barbed-wire-enclosed compound in a meadow in front of Somoza's El Retiro residence, a team of 50 Cuban doctors and paramedics worked in the densely populated Managua barrio of Máximo Jérez. The result was that while U.S. medics were seeing 250 patients per day, Cubans were treating about...
There was no doubt as to who would make the final decisions. Earthy Tachito Somoza, whose only title at present is National Guard commander, had stepped down from the presidency last May and turned his powers over to a figurehead three-man junta only because he could not succeed himself under the Nicaraguan constitution. He had planned to stay on the sidelines until late 1974, when he would run for a second certain five-year term as President. Now, with his country in crisis, it seemed likely that the strongman would be flexing his muscles a lot sooner...