Word: somozas
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...years Chamorro had been a relentless critic of Strongman Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza and his family, who have ruled the nation for more than four oppressive decades. His death caused a political earthquake in Nicaragua, and his funeral quickly dissolved into a political event. A crowd swelling to 40,000 followed the coffin from the hospital mortuary to Chamorro's home and then to La Prensa's office. The angry marchers moved on to burn a Somoza-owned textile mill and a commercial blood bank that Chamorro had exposed for selling Nicaraguan blood abroad at a lucrative profit. Some...
...light of these conflicts, the FSLN moved last September to adjust its strategy to the new political conjuncture and with an aim to toppling the dictatorship. Last month's offensive corresponded to what the FSLN designated the "last phase of the revolutionary war" against Somoza, as opposed to the old strategy, favored by the more left-wing militants, emphasizing long term work in the countryside and the establishment of socialism through military struggle...
...FSLN is now making a bid for broad national and international support while escalating the military pressure in the regime. Spokesmen for the front have issued a call for Somoza's immmediate ouster and for free elections to be held, by a provisional government in which the FSLN would be represented. The demands of the Sandinistas include sweeping reform of the agrarian structure, nationalization of the banking sector, concentration of social welfare programs and education in particular, the establishment of diplomatic relations with socialist countries, and the expropriation of Somoza's massive business empire...
Clearly the FSLN is preparing itself for a post-Somoza political stage, which now appears to be forthcoming. The FSLN runs the risk of being gravely weakened as a political force in that stage unless it secures the right to build a political apparatus (as it already has in the universities) capable of affecting state power and thereby addressing the aspirations of the masses that the FSLN, more than any other movement in Nicaragua, represents. Such an apparatus would translate the popular following of the front into a mass political organization capable of achieving victory through a free electoral process...
...objective, then, is to prohibit alliance of anti-communist and anti-Somoza forces that could rob Nicaraguans of what may be the most significant opportunity for social advancement in their history. The FSLN has shown clearly that the armed struggle will continue if Somoza is merely replaced by a military junta, or if any sort of political arrangement is worked out with opponents of the regime which does not include the Sandinista representatives of the mass of dispossessed Nicaraguans...