Word: somozaism
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...procession of dignified, black-clad women streamed through the streets of Managua last month. Elderly mothers, respectable wives and daughters thus protested the mass arrest of more than 600 opponents of Dictator Anastasio Somoza. But ingenious "Tacho" Somoza broke up their demonstration with a more effective...
...Dictator. So long as he can operate his dictatorship in his unique way, 'Somoza prefers to avoid violence. "I want to treat everybody good," he says. "But if they don't come across, Godammit, they better remember I got an iron fist under my silk glove. I pray to God that the glove never rips...
...Coming across" has been the leitmotiv of the Somoza regime. Cattlemen pay through import-&-export levies, marketing and slaughtering licenses. Gold-mine operators pay through special "taxes." Those who deal in mahogany, cinchona bark, milk, hides, tallow, cement and liquor pay in devious but nonetheless painful ways. Nicaraguans quip about an alphabetical list of Somoza rackets running from A to Z; they say that X stands for rackets unknown to the public...
...Somoza makes it his business to turn his effervescent charm full-faucet on U.S. diplomats and officials. James Bolton Stewart, now U.S. Ambassador in Nicaragua, speaks up stoutly for Somoza's "stable" administration. Tacho, who likes a pun, has amiably referred to the Ambassador as "my steward...
...some ways, mostly personal, Somoza is a more attractive character than his visible opponents. Some of them fed at his trough until recently. Now that they have left him, they find his excesses hard to stomach. Old Jose Moncada, lately in retirement, is credited with saying: "While I was President, they called me a thief. Alongside this man I am an angel...