Word: tacho
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...Little Machine. Tacho was not too worried. First of all, he had U.S. support; the stability-loving U.S. State Department wants no filibustering in the Caribbean. Besides, the rules of the U.N. and the Pan American system ban direct attacks by any American country against a neighbor. Tacho could also thank the U.S. for the best army in Central America. After the U.S. Marines moved into Nicaragua to protect U.S. interests in the Coolidge administration, they reorganized and trained Nicaragua's army. Before the Marines pulled out in 1933, the crack new Guardia National was the country...
Unlike Dominican Dictator Trujillo, Tacho kills a man only as a last resort. A spell in jail usually brings an enemy around. If jail fails, the Guardia has a little electric device known as la maquinita. A wire is wrapped around the prisoner's scrotum, and if he is stubborn, the current is turned on. There are Nicaraguan exiles in Guatemala who cry in their sleep about the Little Machine. "Oh, hell," snorts Tacho, "that damned thing isn't so bad. I've tried it myself-on my hand...
...Tamale. Tacho says he dislikes rough stuff: when a man is sure of his position, he thinks, it isn't necessary-as the case of General Carlos Pasos shows. Pasos, once a good Somoza man and like him a Liberal, fell out with the dictator in 1944. Nicaragua, Pasos felt, could do with a little more democracy; after a time the Liberals called a convention to talk about it. Some of the cautious ones went to Tacho to get his views. They got them. "Tell Carlos Pasos that I know that twice last night at the home of Castro...
There was no gunplay. Pasos did not make his speech; instead, he went to jail for three weeks. But neither then nor later did Tacho touch the textile mill and other businesses that made Pasos wealthy. General Pasos still hangs around Managua, in halfhearted opposition to Somoza-but Tacho is in wholehearted control...
Once a Nicaraguan Conservative, who had been under house arrest for two months on Tacho's order, charged up to the general at a party and roared: "I want to know why you ordered my house arrest!" Said Somoza, grinning: "I did it to please your wife. She told me she couldn't keep you home nights...