Word: somozaism
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...unexpected power play set off tremors in Washington; State Department officials feared that the tenuous relations they had established with the junta would be destroyed if the transition did not take place on schedule. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who suspected that Urcuyo would not have acted without Somoza's approval, placed an angry phone call to the ex-dictator's $1 million, nine-room waterfront mansion in Miami Beach. According to Somoza, Christopher warned that if Urcuyo could not be persuaded to step down immediately, Somoza would no longer be welcome in the U.S. Chastened...
...then, Urcuyo had doubtless realized that his scheme had been a big mistake. Abandoned by the leader whose cause they had supported for so long, the national guard began to disintegrate. In a matter of hours, every one of Somoza's pilots, who had mercilessly bombed and strafed the barrios where the Sandinistas had their greatest support, had defected to neighboring countries. Soon Urcuyo flew to Guatemala and asked for asylum...
Safely ensconced in his Miami Beach estate, Tacho Somoza played host to a stream of reporters, blaming "Communist elements" for his ouster. Asked about his fortune, which has been estimated at up to $500 million, the dictator-in-exile allowed that he was worth about $100 million; 80% of his fortune, he claimed, had been left behind in Nicaragua. Before sailing off on a vacation to the Bahamas, Somoza said that he planned, as a private citizen, to carry on the fight against those who ousted him. "I don't feel morally defeated," he said. "I stepped down because...
...doubt. But during his bloody last stand against the Sandinistas' "final offensive," more than 15,000 people died. Another 600,000-roughly a fourth of the country's population-had been driven from their homes by Somoza's desperate, ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive to save a regime that most Nicaraguans had learned to loathe...
...would be hard to imagine a more vivid contrast to strutting President Tacho Somoza than the cool, unflappable man who has taken his place as the dominant figure in Nicaragua's government. Sergio Ramírez Mercado, 36, is a baby-faced intellectual who attracts little attention until he begins to speak, in a soft, nasal voice. But his quiet charisma has enabled the tall (6 ft. 2 in.) writer to win the confidence of all the factions represented on the five-member ruling junta and its 15-member Cabinet, though the ideologies range from the doctrinaire Marxism...