Word: somozaism
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...THESE EVENTS point up the dwindling U.S. influence in an area where it once enjoyed nearly complete control through complaisant leaders. But U.S. withdrawal from its traditional position supporting Somoza, even though dictated by the determination of Nicaraguan rebels, is a fundamental step in the right direction, a basic prerequisite to reestablishing the trust of a people whose skepticism of U.S. motives towards its country runs in the blood, and with good reason...
...Nicaraguans, Somoza represented the U.S. economic exploitation which has overshadowed Nicaragua since the U.S. raced the U.K. for transition rights in the 1830s, and which continues today. Nicaraguans threw their own President, Jose Zelaya, out of office in 1909, because he had stirred up U.S. hostility when he told the U.S. that it would have to stop elsewhere for a site for the canal it planned to build. Zelaya refused to sign a treaty which he felt was unfairly advantageous...
Since then, U.S. businessmen have managed to make do by exploiting Nicaragua's gold mines and controlling its benking industry. All brought to you through the courtesy of the Somoza government, which made exploitation easy. When things got hot, he declared all nine opposition parties illegal, including a tiny band of radicals who called themselves Sandinistas, and had their members arrested and tortured...
Carter's administration implicitly admitted the error of the Somoza reign in its close negotiations with opposition Sandinistas and its insistence that Somoza and Urcuyo immediately hand over control of the country. In its obsequious eagerness to establish relations with the rising star of the Sandinistas, the U.S. dealt meekly with rebel leaders, saving heavyweight tactics for Somoza and his troupe. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher informed Somoza that if interim President Urcuyo continued to bollix the transferral of power to the rebels by refusing to give up U.S. Characteristically, the U.S. approached the problem of Urcuyo's last...
PERHAPS IT IS FITING that two other members of the junta, Violetta and Joaquin Chamarro, are the children of the President who fell from power shortly before Anastasio Somoza's Debayle's father made his meteoric rise. But poetic justice will not sustain their newgovernment. If they succeed in their dream of becoming a social democracy, the U.S. will find it must account for its dealings there in the future. If not, the coalition could dissolve into another civil...