Word: somozaism
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...goner," said President Anastasio Somoza to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Whelan the night Somoza was shot down by a 27-year-old gunman (TIME, Oct. 1). "They got me this time, Tommy," he added. Rushed from Nicaragua to the Canal Zone, the 60-year-old strongman withstood a four-hour bullet-removing operation and later a windpipe incision to ease his labored breathing. But he never fully regained consciousness in the U.S.-owned Gorgas Hospital. Late last week, just seven days after the shooting, he began to sink fast. A few hours later, as he had foreseen, Tacho Somoza...
...died, as Nicaragua's Ambassador to the U.S. Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa curtly put it, "of four bullets." A man of great personal charm, Somoza was also a no-nonsense dictator with many enemies; he was well aware of the danger of assassination, and usually went about well guarded. But in mixing with the people at a political rally and dance in the town of Leon, Tacho provided the fatal opportunity for a young Nicaraguan who was in appearance an innocent dancer but at heart an assassin bent on what he conceived to be glorious tyrannicide and a martyr...
King of the Hill. Tacho Somoza ruled Nicaragua for 22 years by king-of-the-hill toughness. "I'll give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to get it," he announced just after the U.S. Marines, ending their occupation in 1933, turned over the command of the Guardia to him. The Guardia shot scores -and brought peace. Meanwhile, by "buying from heirs" Somoza acquired coffee fincas and cattle ranches, parlayed them into a fortune estimated at $60 million-some $20 million more than Nicaragua's annual budget. He reputedly owned...
...that hinted at an obsession for martyrdom. In a piece of literary criticism written ten days before for the León Cronista, López Pérez said: "Immortality is the aim of life and of glorious death." His acquaintances said that he grumbled incessantly against President Somoza. His act was patently suicidal, and his motive may well have been an itch for self-glorification...
...Nicaraguan Cabinet declared a state of siege, but no sign of revolution appeared to make the shooting seem like part of a large plot. Instead, Somoza's elder son Luis, President of Congress, smoothly took on his father's powers, with the complete support of the chief of the Guardia Nacional (army), Anastasio Somoza...