Word: somozaism
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Four years after the popular uprising that overthrew the bloody and grasping dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaragua is still lurching through an erratic political and social transformation, in which many of the ultimate goals of the regime are, at best, haphazardly defined. Consequently, Nicaragua abounds in paradox and ambiguity as its leadership claims to be launched upon a new experiment: an attempt to align Marxism-Leninism with the principles of political pluralism and democracy. Says a sympathetic American observer: "The Sandinistas really like to believe they have invented a new way, a laissez-faire, nonstructured Marxism in which people...
While this may have been the intention of the Sandinistas, the reality is different. No one could deny that drastic social change of some kind was inevitable in Nicaragua after the 1979 revolution. Under Somoza, the country had an illiteracy rate (50%) and a health-care record (infant mortality: 46 per 1,000 live births) high even in a region notorious for its backwardness and poverty. The Sandinistas can claim with justification to have addressed at least some of Nicaragua's crying social needs...
...Administration's tactic is pitiful indeed. But given the history of American involvement in Central American elections, this latest episode is nothing short of a disgrace. For years, whoever happened to be sitting in the Oval Office rubber stamped the blatantly fixed elections of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastassio Somoza. A similar policy has prevailed for dealing with equally corrupt Guatemala since 1954, when a U.S.-instigated coup deposed the democratically elected, but leftist, Arbenz government. And the Reagan Administration points with pride to its role in conducting and monitoring the March 1982 elections in El Salvador certainly not the model...
...Sandinistas Nicaragua is hardly a paradise on earth. But it is an immeasurable improvement over Somoza. And measured by an accurate yardstick, human rights excesses in Nicaragua are considerably fewer than in El Salvador or Guatemala. If we allow them enough breathing room, the Sandinistas could produce a truly democratic form of government. Instead, by hindering the efforts Managua is making to improve the present system, we are only choking off the erratic first breaths of an ideal our country supposedly advances...
...inspected the damage, the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (A.R.D.E.), a group of anti-Sandinista rebels based in neighboring Costa Rica, claimed responsibility for the air raid. The rebel group is led by Edén Pastora Gómez, "Commander Zero," a hero of the revolution that overthrew Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 and now a bitter opponent of the Sandinista government. Dozens of people were in the terminal at the moment of the attack, but only four people were injured, mostly by shrapnel and flying debris. One, a young military reservist, died the next day. Bertha Mayo, a waitress...