Word: somozaism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...GODDAMMIT!" shouted a handsome figure in tailored army fatigues at Managua's Las Mercedes Airport. "What I need is some concertina wire. The U.S. gives me everything but concertina wire." The impatient young man was Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, 22, a senior at Harvard University, son of and heir apparent to Nicaragua's ruling strongman, General Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Debayle, 47. Summoned from a Manhattan debutante party to help with the relief effort, young Somoza stood atop a stack of Sears camping tents, surrounded by crates of Canada Dry, boxes of baby food and a seemingly inexhaustible supply...
There is no shortage of food in Managua; the only problem last week was that most of it was piled up in an airport hangar far away from the hungry and homeless of the city. A bevy of Red Cross volunteers and unctuous army officers waited to do young Somoza's bidding; for the moment, he had other things on his mind, namely his misplaced automobile. "Where is my car?" he demanded. "I want the person who took it arrested immediately," he said, and ran off in search of the culprit. Silence. Since nothing could be done without...
...authorities for survival, the geological tragedy became a human one. Shooting broke out frequently between troops and bands of looters who roamed the savaged city. Emergency hospitals set up to care for quake victims treated at least 32 Managuans for bullet wounds. In a radio broadcast, General Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza, 47, the strongman head of the family that has ruled Nicaragua for more than 30 years, despairingly said that his capital's biggest immediate problem was not hunger or the threat of disease but the "abominable beings" scouring the dead city...
Even as Managua still smoldered, the Somoza regime began pondering reconstruction. Money posed no great problem; the Nixon Administration, which is anxious to burnish Washington's tarnished image in Latin America, would almost certainly be eager to help bankroll the building of a new capital. But where? Managua was now a three-time loser, it was true, but Leon, the country's second city (pop. 50,000), also lies in an earthquake zone...
There was no doubt as to who would make the final decisions. Earthy Tachito Somoza, whose only title at present is National Guard commander, had stepped down from the presidency last May and turned his powers over to a figurehead three-man junta only because he could not succeed himself under the Nicaraguan constitution. He had planned to stay on the sidelines until late 1974, when he would run for a second certain five-year term as President. Now, with his country in crisis, it seemed likely that the strongman would be flexing his muscles a lot sooner...