Word: somoza
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...down government casualties, Somoza's troops last week began to shell rebel positions with heavy artillery before moving in to retake streets of Managua's barrios "yard by yard." But the indiscriminate shelling, along with devastating bomb and rocket attacks by Somoza's air force, has killed far more civilians than Sandinistas...
Among the refugees, there was fury at the Somoza regime. Many had been wounded by the national guard's indiscriminate shelling and air attacks. Said Miriam Morales, 20, who had just given birth in a chicken coop in the courtyard to her second child: "I have named her Diane, and I hope she never hears a rocket in her life...
There were few teen-age boys among the families who sat cooking their scanty meal over campfires in the courtyard. Virtually all have joined los muchachos, youths who fight with the Sandinistas at the barricades. Said a seven-year-old whose older brothers have enlisted in the anti-Somoza forces: "When I am big enough I am going to be a Sandinista...
...Somoza has been able to stay in power because his guardsmen remain loyal...
Many of them feel they have no choice. As one officer put it: "If we give up, the Sandinistas will kill us." But there is a growing recognition that the civil war cannot be stopped as long as Somoza reigns. As an American-trained national guardsman put it last week, "In this war, nobody gives an inch. The current round could cease in two weeks. But when it does, both sides will just rearm, and we'll be fighting again in three months or so, just like before...