Word: somozaism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...implicit hope is that Somoza will step aside, sparing his country from ceaseless violence...
...President Somoza, Nicaragua's uprising is nothing more than a Communist plot aimed at unseating him. "As long as the Communists in Cuba and Panama continue to supply the weapons, there will be a battle," he maintains. The Carter Administration is also concerned about Fidel Castro's influence on Nicaragua's civil war and on the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a broadly based collection of Marxist and non-Marxist leftists held together mainly by hatred for Somoza's regime. The evidence of such influence is scant, though U.S. intelligence reports indicate that since late...
...FSLN was founded in 1962 by Carlos Fonseca Amador, a Cuban-trained guerrilla who was slain by Somoza's troops two years ago. Named for Augusto César Sandino, a legendary nationalist guerrilla murdered on the order of Somoza's father in 1934, the Sandinistas started out as a ragtag rebel band that staged sporadic raids on isolated government outposts. Since then, the Sandinistas' ranks have swelled to 3,000 or so battle-hardened fighters armed with an assortment of modern weapons...