Background
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was born on 5 December 1925 in Leon. Was the second of three sons of Anastasio Sonioza García.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was born on 5 December 1925 in Leon. Was the second of three sons of Anastasio Sonioza García.
At age 11 young Anast asio was sent with his brother Luis to the La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale, New York, and in 1942 entered West Point, already holding the rank of captain in the Nicaragua National Guard.
Tachito Somoza rose through the National Guard to become its commander in the 1960s. When brother Luis refused to run for a second term. Tachito ran as the Nationalist Liberal Party candidate for president in the February 1967 elections and won 70.8 percent of the votes, illustrating not only the party’s strength as a vote mobilizer but also a considerable degree of popular support.
According to the 1950 constitution, the president was not eligible to succeed himself. Instead, with the connivance of Fernando Aguero Rocha, a leader of the Traditional Conservative Party, and U.S. Ambassador Turner Shelton, Congress dissolved itself on August 31, 1971, and provided for executive power to be shared by two Liberals and one Conservative, until a new constitution could be prepared. Under the new constitution, a new Congress chose Tachito for a six-year term beginning December 1, 1974.
On December 23, 1972. earthquake destroyed about three quarters of the buildings in Managua. Somoza then took over effective control as head of the National Guard and of a new National Emergency Committee. Although he promised to rebuild downtown Managua, government buildings were relocated in other parts of the city on property owned by Somoza or his close friends. In this period of post-earthquake corruption and authoritarian politics, many former supporters of the regime or of an opposition still loyal to the system though not sharing in political power, came to favor violent overthrow of Somoza.
The most important group pursuing armed action was the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN), originally organized in 1962. A small FSLN force seized 35 hostages at a December 27, 1974, Christmas party in Managua honoring U. S. Ambassador Turner Shelton. Three days later, in return for a $1 million ransom, release of 14 political prisoners, and publication in La Prensa and over Managua radio stations of a lengthy FSLN communique, the hostages were released and the guerrillas given safe passage to Cuba. President Somoza then declared a state of siege, suspended constitutional guarantees, and ordered creation of a special counterinsurgency unit.
The assassination on January 10, 1978, of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, editor of the antigovemment newspaper La Prensa. provoked two days of rioting and a 17-day general strike. Sixteen opposition groups, including three labor unions, the Conservative, Nicaraguan Socialist, and Independent Liberal parties, and "Los Doce,” a group of businessmen, intellectuals, and priests, formed the Broad Opposition Front (FAO), which called for Somoza’s resignation and developed a program for a future government.
Although the National Guard regained control of the cities after the first “offensive” of the FSLN in November 1978, the number of FSLN forces in¬creased. When Tachito broke off negotiations designed to get him to leave peacefully, the United States, in February 1979, ended all military and economic assistance to his regime.
In June 1979, the FSLN launched a “final offensive” and established a government in exile, together with elements of the FAO. in Costa Rica. Somoza finally fled the country in July. Somoza family properties, worth an estimated $5(X) million, were then confiscated.
Being denied asylum in the United States, Somoza went to Paraguay. He was killed there, when the car in which he was riding was blown up by bazooka rockets and machine guns.
