Word: somoza
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...Somoza is killed in an ambush that Nicaraguans cheer...
...game was big and artillery appropriately heavy. Shortly before 10 one morning last week, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, 54, the exiled former dictator of Nicaragua, climbed into his white Mercedes-Benz 280 limousine along with his chauffeur and a business associate, and drove away from his luxurious villa in a suburb of the Paraguayan capital of Asunción. The limousine, followed by a backup car carrying three bodyguards, had traveled a mere five blocks when a Chevrolet pickup truck pulled up alongside, and unleashed a hail of automatic rifle fire. As the bodyguards returned the fire, a bazooka rocket, launched...
...getaway, though Paraguayan authorities believed one of the assassins may have been wounded. Paraguayan police launched a manhunt for suspected members of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), a leftist Argentine guerrilla group. Their presumed motive: solidarity with Nicaragua's Sandinista revolutionaries, who succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza family's ruthless 43-year dynasty last year after a bitter civil war. At week's end, one suspected ERP ringleader was killed in a shootout and 60 people had been picked up for questioning...
When news of Somoza's death reached Managua, Nicaraguans went wild with joy. Thousands of people poured into the streets, singing and dancing and setting off fireworks. Said a journalist in Managua: "Somoza finally brought happiness to his countrymen." The leaders of the ruling Sandinista junta denied any direct role in the assassination. In a brief communiqué, they called it ajusticiamiento-justifiable execution -reminding their followers that the dictator had been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Nicaraguans. Concluded one Sandinista simply: "Divine justice...
...assassination, as it happened, came at a time when the revolutionary regime has become increasingly worried about the ousted Somoza forces. A few days before the assassination, the Nicaraguan junta revealed that it had thwarted a plot by former National Guard officers to free thousands of jailed former soldiers and put together teams to kill the Sandinista leadership. They identified Somoza's eldest son, Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Portocarrero, 29, as the "principal leader" of the plot...