Word: somozaism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Earlier this year Congress approved a $12 million loan and the State Department sent $25,700 in military grants and $400,000 in grants for training the military and police. In June, President Carter sent Somoza a letter commending his human rights record...
...that time Anastasio Somoza Garcia, father of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was dictator. Somoza was brought to power by the marines in the early '30s and enjoyed Washington's consistent support. Somoza, a fervent capitalist who, like his son, never hesitated to use the state apparatus to augment his personal fortune, was logically enough fervently anti-communist. Given Somoza's anti-communism, Nicaragua's strategic position in the heart of Central America, and the possibility of building a second transisthmian canal through Nicaraguan territory, the U.S. was more than happy to prop up the Somoza regime both militarily and economically...
...What has Somoza done for Washington in exchange? Aside from repressing any domestic movement for popular power, the Somozas have had a strong regional anti-communist consciousness. In 1954, for example, the elder Somoza lent his private estate for CIA training of right-wing Guatemalan exiles led by Castillo Armas, and allowed U.S. bombers supporting the exiles to take off from Nicaragua. After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Somozas began to develop tighter relations with right-wing Cuban exiles who, with the CIA, were plotting to overthrow the Castro government. In 1961, the Somozas' private lands were used...
...Somoza's dictatorship defies our philosophy of human rights, but the first principle of our foreign policy must be the security of the U.S. If we jeopardize our own security by permitting Communist bases around us, no freedom and no human rights will be safe in any country of the world...
...national guard's brutality in suppressing the rebellion incensed leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, who until recent years had backed Somoza's regime. Church authorities in a letter to Jimmy Carter asked the President to halt all aid to Somoza's "death-dealing regime" and pleaded for U.S. support of the "just demands of the Nicaraguan people, who seek a democratic route to their destiny." To Father Miguel d'Escoto, 45, an activist Maryknoll priest, the guard's barbaric tactics in destroying resistance reflected Somoza's own megalomania: "When the Sandinistas marched into León, they were applauded. That...