Word: strongman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) set up a triumvirate last month, American papers hailed Carvalho as the likeliest "Latin American-style strongman" of the group. As head of the military's security forces, he has the power to selectively stifle anti-revolutionary demonstrations: his failure to move strongly against anti-Communist terror in the North signalled more than dislike for the pro-Communist Goncalves. Apparently Carvalho was trying to reduce Communist strength and simultaneously, maneuver Left Socialist support for his independent left position by joining the anti-Communist campaign. But Carvalho may have misjudged a delicate situation, overestimating Communist...
While delegates to the conference of nonaligned countries were winding up their meeting in Lima last week, host Peru did a little realigning of its own. In a swift, bloodless coup, Strongman Juan Velasco Alvarado was ousted, and left the palace freely for his home in the suburb of Chaclacayo. His No. 2 man, Francisco Morales Bermudez, took his place. The change, the new government said rather vaguely, would not only end "personality cults" but would also ensure a "free fatherland...
Even if the radicals and moderates do manage to triumph over the Communists, Portugal's future will remain precarious. Were Saraiva de Carvalho to emerge as a strongman, Portugal might well escape an East European-type dictatorship only to end up with a perhaps unorthodox but still dictatorial system. Then, too, nobody could discount the possibility that if the drift toward anarchy continues, the old right wing, powerless since the April 1974 revolution, might stage a coup. Indeed, the anti-Communist activities led by the armed forces' moderates provided an umbrella for all kinds of non-Communist groups...
...possible scenarios in the ensuing months; both focus on the left because rightist forces at present are completely scattered and discredited. One scenario is a relatively quick disintegration of the troika, with Gonçalves as the likely loser and the mercurial Saraiva de Carvalho emerging as a new strongman. Despite his popularity with the radical masses, the charismatic boss of the security forces would polarize discontent; he could only govern by imposing the kind of repressive measures the April 25 revolution supposedly abolished for good. Cunhal's party might be forced back into the opposition if that came...
...best damn jail in Europe," boasted erstwhile Greek Strongman George Papadopoulos in 1968, brushing off reports that under his rule, thousands of Greek political prisoners had been held in Athens' Korydallos prison. Last week Papadopoulos himself, after seven months in Korydallos, became the principal defendant in a mass trial at the prison. Along with 19 other former members of the ousted military junta, the ex-dictator was charged with acts of high treason and insurrection that had subjected Greece to 7½ years of dictatorship, from 1967 to 1974. The maximum penalty for insurrection: death by firing squad...