Word: somozaism
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...Reagan Administration's tough stand comes at a time when the exuberant optimism that followed the July 1979 overthrow of the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle has all but evaporated. After 28 months in power, a kind of bunker mentality seems to have settled over the nine-member Sandinista national directorate that controls the country. Economically, Nicaragua is on the rocks. Politically, the Sandinista leadership is betraying itself as insecure, arbitrary and determined to hold on to power, come what may. Says one Western diplomatic analyst in Managua: "They've made up their minds they...
...recreates the final bloody months of the 1979 revolution, and Sandino, a documentary, looks at the year that follows the victory. Despite crude acting and a liberal dash of sentiment, Lilienthal succeeds brilliantly in showing how this revolution--and more important how the brutal piggishness of American ally Anastasio Somoza--touched the life of the people. Little wonder that Nicaraguans who watched their neighbors, their sons, shot in the back for no good reason, who ran off the streets to avoid the ubiquitous National Guard convoys, who saw their priests murdered and their churches desecrated, little wonder that they embraced...
...first hundreds, then thousands, finally millions of individual decisions. Usually the decisions are horribly hard; the young Guard member in The Uprising who eventually joins the Sandinistas knows it will likely be the death of his parents. Those who have a hard time imagining how bad conditions were under Somoza (or are under El Salvador's "14 families") might try thinking about how bad things would have to be before they'd risk their own and their family's lives...
...small country. The few National Guardsmen who must "control" Leon, in reality control only the garrison in the center of the city, and the radius of automatic fire around their heavily armed vehicles. Sooner or later, by defection or defeat, the soldiery will fall, though the lengths Somoza went to--including the aerial bombing of Nicaragua's cities--are terrifying. Especially worth American notice is the deadly force of a few jeeps with gun mounts and a few more armored personnel carriers. Few squawk when such material is dispatched to Latin American despots, but against outgunned opponents, and unarmed civilians...
...border to murder one literacy brigadista, hundreds of men from the People's Militia volunteer to join the army in the eventually successful manhunt. Nicaraguans may not one and all love their new government, but there seem to be very few who are eager to return to anything like Somoza's rule...