Word: tacho
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...though the country had emerged from a coma. After the 46 years of suffering inflicted by the corrupt Somoza dynasty, a new spirit ruled the land. From the flagpole by the bunker in Managua where exiled Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle had commanded a bloody last stand fluttered the red-and-black banner of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.). Even the sounds were different Gone was the stream of anti-Communist propaganda that had once poured from Somoza's radio station. In its place came round-the-clock broadcasts of revolutionary songs and tributes to General Cesar Augusto...
...Sure I've got enough to live on," conceded Tacho Somoza, as he fled Nicaragua for his $1 million home-in-exile in Miami Beach. By his own reckoning, the ex-dictator's uncertain future would be cushioned by about $20 million (out of his $100 million fortune) that he had managed to stash outside the country. To American experts who have studied Somoza's corrupt regime, both estimates, however, appeared surprisingly low. Most valuations of the dynasty's holdings were between $500 million and $1 billion; they included Nicaragua's national air line, Lanica...
That empire grew from a modest beginning. When he seized power in 1933, Tacho's father, Anastasio Somoza García, had only a near bankrupt coffee farm to his name. Little by little, he added to his holdings. If he saw a plantation he admired, for example, Somoza García made its owner an offer he dared not refuse, usually about half the property's real value. Often as not, the owner presented the land as a gift. By the time of his assassination in 1956, Somoza García was worth about $150 million...
...Tacho greatly expanded the family's wealth, although he did not always manage it well; some of his companies were so poorly run that they failed to turn a profit. Moving into the banking field with ownership of the Banco de Centroamerica, he heavily mortgaged his properties in Nicaragua in order to make available large amounts of cash. These funds were then shuttled through a network of interlocking companies in the U.S. and the Caribbean. Through such maneuvering, Somoza acquired his mansion in Miami Beach, which is officially owned by a company based in the Virgin Islands, two posh...
...elite. After the 1972 earthquake that leveled Managua and killed 10,000 of its residents, Somoza began moving into areas that the dynasty had previously left untapped. He set up a company that held a monopoly on supplying paving stones for miles of new roads in the capital. Moreover, Tacho and his cronies made killings by selling land to the government that was used for new developments to replace the residential areas that the quake had destroyed...