Word: somoza
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...Nicaragua, a movement that started off channeling youth rebellion into the violent overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 is once again the governing party. And in many poor neighborhoods, the Sandinista Front has more street cred than the local youth gang...
...hawkish Alem?n, who speaks wistfully of the repressive days of the Somoza dictatorship (which Ortega overthrew as leader of the Sandinista insurgents), was never a typical prisoner. He has spent more of his jail sentence in a hospital bed recovering from a minor finger surgery (three months to be exact) than he spent behind bars. And now that full freedom appears to be just around the corner, he has valiantly cast aside concerns for his own health for the good of his party...
...underscore his warmer, fuzzier incarnation, supporters often wore pink to rallies instead of the party's more militant red and black. But whether Ortega has shed his penchant for cynicism is another question. He and his Sandinista comrades were global guerrilla heroes when they overthrew the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. As Nicaragua's Marxist comandante, Ortega was widely criticized for being as incompetent and corrupt as he was authoritarian. Those who know him say his quest to regain the presidency--he lost elections in 1996 and 2001--stemmed less from leftist ideals than from a raw need...
...election of Ortega - who won with 38% of the vote, about 8 points ahead of his U.S.-backed opponent, conservative banker Eduardo Montealegre - is no doubt a concern. After he and Sandinista guerrillas toppled Nicaragua's brutal dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in 1979, Ortega led an authoritarian, Soviet-backed regime that wrecked the economy and fought a civil war with U.S.-backed contra rebels that killed some 50,000 people. Ortega was finally ousted in a 1990 election, and for the past 16 years, during which he twice failed to recapture the presidency, he seemed little more than a relic...
...Improbable as it may seem, Ortega, now 60, has reemerged as the frontrunner in Nicaragua's presidential race through his alliance with an unlikely chum, former President Arnoldo Aleman. The corpulent Aleman would seem to be the skinny Ortega's antithesis - an arch-conservative Somoza acolyte elected President in 1996 in a wave of nostalgia for the pre-Sandinista days. But as President from 1997 to 2002, Aleman stole tens of millions of dollars from public coffers, including $1.8 million he charged on a government credit card for his wedding in Miami to a woman 22 years his junior. Aleman...