Word: tachito
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After 26 years of firm Somoza family rule, Nicaragua had someone with a different name at the head of its government last week. In much-heralded "free elections," Luis Somoza, 40, and Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Jr., 38, the two brothers who took over the small Central American country in 1956 after the assassination of their father, stuck to their promise that no Somoza would appear on the ballot. But the boys will have a friend in the palace. Elected President by a landslide was former Foreign Minister René Schick, 53, hand-picked choice of the Somozas' Nationalist Liberal...
...opposition loudly cried fraud, said that the ballot boxes were stuffed before the polls opened, that the government had printed thousands of duplicate registration cards. In the new regime, Luis Somoza will sit in the Somoza-dominated Senate, tough Tachito will still command the national guard, and the only genuine opposition will have no voice in the legislature. Nevertheless, the U.S. chose to regard the election as a small evolutionary step toward representative democracy. In recent years the Somozas have instituted a few tentative reforms, have even permitted the opposition press to have its say. To encourage all concerned...
...country together. Tacho was shot and critically wounded by an assassin in 1956, and it was his friend Tommy Whelan who arranged to fly the dying dictator to a U.S. hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. He was succeeded by his sons, President Luis Somoza and Army Chief Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza...
Sometimes, in his plain North Dakota way, Whelan had tried to persuade old Tacho to allow Nicaragua a little democracy, but then he would quickly agree with Tacho that Nicaraguans were politically too immature for much freedom. Whelan claims a little more success with Luis and Tachito. After his father's death, Tachito was bent on killing the enemies of the Somozas when Ambassador Whelan convinced his friend that this might be going too far. He also encouraged Luis to put through a law prohibiting any member of the Somoza family from succeeding him to the presidency...
...fight them. West Pointer Tachito has a 4,000-man army, with Garands. Thompson submachine guns, .30-cal. machine guns, a few mortars. For Central America his air force is impressive: 20-odd P-51s. Tracking his troops on an Esso map last week, Tachito disdainfully dismissed the revolt as a "flop.'' For his part, Luis put Nicaragua under a state of siege and pressured the Organization of American States into a reluctant, long-distance study of the uprising...