Word: somozaism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...patrol of the crack "General Somoza" battalion surrounded the village of Varilla in Nicaragua's Zelaya province. With the troops were several jueces de mesta (police magistrates). The official charge that brought them there: five of Varilla's campesino families had aided antigovernment guerrillas. The soldiers shot, bayoneted or strangled four men, eleven women and 29 children. After dumping the bodies in an unmarked pit, the magistrates divided the villagers' land among themselves...
...massacre at Varilla two months ago was not unique, according to a pastoral letter by Nicaragua's Roman Catholic bishops. The letter, which has not been published because of government censorship, was read from pulpits in January. It accuses President Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Debayle's National Guard of subjecting innocent peasants to "inhuman" abuse "ranging from torture and rape to summary execution" during the government's two-year drive against leftist guerrillas. The bishops buttressed their charges with testimony from rural missionaries-who claim that dead and kidnaped campesinos number in the hundreds...
...indiscriminate killing began after gun-toting members of the Sandinist National Liberation Front (FSLN)* staged a spectacular invasion of a 1974 Christmas party honoring the U.S. ambassador. They took hostage a dozen leading businessmen and members of Somoza's government, including his Foreign Minister and ambassador to Washington. Swallowing his pride, Somoza negotiated the ministers' release, paid the guerrillas $1 million, and let them and 15 imprisoned FSLN members fly to Cuba. But then he declared martial law, which is still in force, and set out to crush the Sandinistas, who have received support, training and some arms...
...Somoza has accomplished that. Last November, in a clash with National Guard troops, the Sandinistas' secretary-general, Carlos Fonseca Amador, 40, was killed en route to a meeting, laid out under a mango tree and photographed; his fingertips were then sliced off for exact identification. Other ranking leaders of the leftist rebel movement have also been killed. Last month, in an unpublicized trial in Managua, 36 captured guerrillas and 74 of their compatriots who were tried in absentia drew sentences ranging from 18 months to 129 years in prison...
Eckersley dropped off Hughes and Stewart at the Somoza house, where Stewart secluded the billionaire in a large cabana alongside the pool...