Word: somozaism
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...Nicaragua, Spanish Missionary Gaspar Garcia Laviana sat inspecting a clutch of automatic rifles last October and told a visitor why he had become a firearms expert with the guerrillas who are fighting the Somoza dynasty: "I tried to save the situation in a Christian manner, in the pacifist sense of social promotion, but I realized that all this was a big trick." Two months later, the Nicaraguan National Guard announced that Garcia had been slain in combat...
...begin work on an agreement for the U.S. to purchase Mexico's oil and natural gas, and to ease the strains caused by the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. In Nicaragua, meanwhile, months of patient U.S. diplomacy were thrown into question when President Anastasio Somoza Debayle last week rejected a U .S. proposal for internationally supervised elections aimed at ending civil strife over his rule...
...stepped up again following the 1972 earthquake that destroyed Managua. At Somoza's request, 600 marines were flown to Managua the next day to protect lives and property and stabilize the Somoza regime. The determination of successive administrations to keep Somoza in power is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the U.S. government continues to violate its own laws in order to funnel aid to Somoza. Specifically, the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aid to foreign police forces--but the National Guard is Nicaragua's police force. (It is also the army. But there is no real threat...
...While Somoza has clearly served as Washington's puppet, he is also motivated by his own greed, which has resulted in the alienation of much of the bourgeoisie in recent years. In past years U.S. officials have had to intervene on the diplomatic level to overcome differences between the wealthy Conservatives, for years the only legal opposition party, and Somoza's National Liberal Party. The main U.S. concern has been for the bourgeoisie to present a united front against the Sandinistaled popular threat...
...present the State Department is again trying to mediate between Somoza and certain elements of the bourgeois opposition, and again the U.S. government is betraying the interests and aspirations of the Nicaraguan people. The people rise up in armed struggle precisely because they know that Somoza and the system of exploitation that he represents are their enemy and the principal obstacle to the possibility of any real democratic change in Nicaragua. Those most enthusiastic about negotiations are the business and financial sectors that have a vested interest in seeing certain aspects of the present social disorder preserved, while the people...