Anastasio Somoza Debayle

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Anastasio Somoza Debayle

Anastasio Somoza Debayle (Tachito) (* 5. December 1925 in León , Nicaragua ; † 17th September 1980 in Asuncion , Paraguay ) was President and dictator of Nicaragua from 1967 to 1972 and from 1974 to 1979. As head of the National Guard he was also in the interim years in which others formally exercised the presidency, the de facto ruler. He was the penultimate member of the Somoza clan , whose members had held the presidency since 1934.

Life

Early years and military training

Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the second legitimate son of Anastasio Somoza García and Salvadora Debayle Sacasa . His father was very corpulent and was nicknamed Tacho (common short form of "Anastasio"). He himself had less corpulence and was nicknamed Tachito ( belittling the usual short form of "Anastasio"). He was educated in Tampa , Florida and La Salle Academy on Long Island . He then attended the military academy in West Point from 1943 to 1946 , from which he successfully graduated with a bachelor's degree and where he made many friends in the US military who later gave him strong support. On his return to Nicaragua he was promoted to major and shortly thereafter to lieutenant colonel . The following year he was promoted to Colonel and Chief of the National Guard by his father , who had previously endowed his family and close friends with a number of important offices.

On December 10, 1950, he married Hope Portocarrero , a daughter of one of the richest and most powerful families in Nicaragua and also his cousin. The wedding took place in the Santiago de Managua Cathedral in Managua and was carried out by the then Archbishop José Antonio Lezcano y Ortega and celebrated in the presence of over 4000 wedding guests. There are five children from the marriage. Hope Portocarrero grew up to be the First Lady of Nicaragua and a style icon of the country, at the same time she was also active in charity. Later the relationship deteriorated and the couple went their separate ways, Portocarrero moved to London .

Anastasio Somoza had a relationship with Dinorah Sampson from around 1955 , which was not kept secret from the public. Sampson was his lover until his death. In the 25 years of this childless relationship, there are said to have been several abortions.

In 1948 and 1949 border conflicts arose with Costa Rica and in 1955 and 1957 with Honduras , in which Somoza acted as commander in chief of the National Guard with US support.

Supreme Commander of the National Guard, President and Dictator of Nicaragua

After the murder of his father Anastasio Somoza García in 1956, who had put himself up for president of Nicaragua against his uncle Juan Bautista Sacasa in 1937, the eldest brother Anastasio Somozas, Colonel Luís Somoza Debayle , followed as president. In revenge for the murder of their father, the brothers carried out brutal actions against the opposition. At the time, Luis Somoza wanted the family to relax, while Anastasio wanted the Somoza family to control the Nicaraguan government and economy even more.

After Luís' untimely death, Anastasio Somoza Debayle himself was elected president in 1967 as a candidate for the Partido Liberal Nacionalista , but under a law that prohibited direct re-election, limited until 1972. Before the election, there was a peaceful demonstration by the opposition , the was shot down on his orders and resulted in a massacre . In the following time as President of Nicaragua, he was on the diplomatic floor with his wife at his side with the heads of western states, including US President Richard Nixon and Tennō Hirohito . Domestically, he secured his rule through a further, stronger involvement of his family in the control centers of power, for example through his half-brother José R. Somoza , whom he promoted to Inspector General of the National Guard. He himself now held the rank of five-star general.

Enrichment of the Somoza family under his rule

In December 1972, an earthquake almost completely destroyed the capital Managua . Around 10,000 people died in the process. The state of emergency was declared and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, as head of the National Guard, in fact rulers of the country, and his family used the earthquake, the acute hardship and the reconstruction to enrich themselves with land and to usurp the banks and the construction industry. It was later revealed that the Somoza family had embezzled large amounts of international aid worth around US $ 500 million that had been sent to repair the damage caused by the earthquake, including blood plasma that was being imported back into the United States. His father had already used the earthquake of 1931 and a fire disaster in 1936 with similar means to enrich himself. In 1976 he owned 346 companies in various sectors of Nicaragua's economy and his family owned about a quarter of the country's agricultural land. Somoza himself owned 30 percent of the agricultural land, including cattle ranches, cotton, sugar and coffee plantations. Among other things, he controlled port facilities, breweries, cement and textile factories, construction companies, insurance companies, the country's airline (Lancia) , a shipping line (Mamenic) , a newspaper (Novedades) and a television company. Anastasio Somoza Debayle himself was the general importer of Mercedes-Benz vehicles for all of Central America and took advantage of this position to completely disintegrate the rail system that American plantation companies had created in Nicaragua. Thereupon he granted bus concessions to followers who were forced to purchase a Mercedes-Benz bus from him.

Anastasio Somoza Garcia had left an estimated US $ 150 million fortune when he was murdered; Anastasio Somoza Debayle quintupled that fortune in at least less than 20 years of being Nicaragua's strongest man.

Civil war and fall

Regardless of this, Anastasio Somoza Debayle was re- elected president in 1974 against the opposing candidate Edmundo Paguaga Irías , although the Roman Catholic Church , which had long supported the system of the Somoza family, voted against him. He took office shortly before his 49th birthday on December 1, 1974. By the late 1970s, criticism of the Somoza government from the opposition and human rights groups grew, as did general support for the Sandinistas across the country. The murder of the publisher, head of the daily La Prensa newspaper and head of the bourgeois opposition, Pedro Chamorro , at the instigation of his eldest son, aggravated the already tense situation in which Chamorros widow, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro , who later became President of Nicaragua, was also aggravated solidarized with the Sandinista opposition to Somoza. The general strike that followed was suppressed, as was the revolt of the indigenous people in Masaya , who were brutally crushed and killed several hundred people.

In the summer of 1977 Somoza suffered a heart attack in his lover's bed, from which he quickly recovered.

Jimmy Carter , who was elected US President in November 1976, distanced himself from him and his methods of rule and stopped delivering arms from the USA to Nicaragua. Nicaragua continued to receive armaments and aid from Brazil , Argentina , South Africa and Israel . Somoza reacted to the beginning civil war and successes of the Sandinista with draconian countermeasures. Opposition and other unpopular people were arrested; many of them were tortured and killed. Some of those killed disappeared without a trace (e.g. in the sea); others were later discovered as corpses in the crater of the Momotombo volcano . He ordered the National Guard, under the command of his eldest son, Lieutenant General Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero , to use artillery and air force against cities that had been captured by the Sandinista. This was followed by an attempted coup against Somoza and his family by parts of the National Guard on August 28, 1978, but it failed. In an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel in May 1979, he downplayed the problems and blamed the civil war-like conditions on individual rebels.

Around 30,000 people died in the civil war. Overall, the civil war against the Sandinista opposition drove over 150,000 people to flight and led to the further impoverishment of the already impoverished country. Guatemala , Honduras and El Salvador provided logistical support for Somoza's efforts to crush the Sandinista opposition, while Costa Rica and Panama granted refugees from Nicaragua in exile. In Panama even international brigades were trained against him.

Finally, on July 17, 1979, the Sandinista, who showed solidarity with the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, rushed Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who with his family, including his mistress Dinorah Sampson, took the treasury and the coffins of his father and brother to Miami ( Florida ) fled. He also took two parrots, 45 advisors, various boxes, boxes and bank statements with him. In the end, the US government asked him to leave his fortification ( El Bunker ) on the grounds of the National Guard with his loved ones and to flee Nicaragua. He was succeeded by the President of the Congress, Francisco Urcuyo Maliaños , who was related by marriage to him. He was only able to stay in power for 43 hours and handed it over to the victorious rebels.

exile

In Florida, Anastasio Somoza Debayle had bought some companies early so that he could continue to lead a prosperous life. In his fortune was the island of Easton Sunset , on which he could temporarily reside with Dinorah Sampson in his lavish mansion. According to Anastasio Somoza Debayle himself, his fortune should have been around 100 million US dollars at the time. However, a CIA report put his net worth at around $ 900 million. Other sources even see the billion mark exceeded, with which the family would have owned about a quarter of the country's total wealth. His remaining assets in Nicaragua were expropriated by the new Sandinista rulers without compensation. On August 19, 1979, Alfredo Stroessner granted him asylum in Paraguay after he was no longer wanted in the United States. His son Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero then went into exile in Guatemala.

In 1980 he brought out his memoir under the title Nicaragua Betrayed (Spanish version: Nicaragua Traicionada ), in which he blamed the US government under Jimmy Carter for the collapse of his rule over Nicaragua, at the same time he stood as a champion against communism represent.

assassination

On September 17, 1980 he was the victim of an assassination attempt by seven members of the Argentine People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) in the capital of Paraguay , Asunción , who shot him with M-16 rifles and gunshots in his unarmored, white Mercedes S-Class sedan an RPG-7 grenade. One of the assassins, Hugo Alfredo Irurzún (Capitán Santiago) , was discovered the next day and shot by Paraguayan police officers.

According to a book by the former NIA agent and Cuba expert Professor Brian Latell , the plan to assassinate Anastasio Somoza Debayle is said to have come from the Sandinista and, above all, from Fidel Castro , who had provided the Sandinista with logistical supplies and reinforced them with Cuban aid troops for years. Somoza was an archenemy of Castro and had worked closely with the US government for many years. For example, he and his brother Luis made training rooms available to the troops of the Bay of Pigs invasion . His ardent anti-communism was probably a reason for Castro's actions against him.

His coffin is laid out in the family's mausoleum in Miami next to that of his older brother Luís, his half-brother José, that of his father and that of his wife Hope in one of the oldest cemeteries in Florida, the Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum . His funeral took place with great attendance from his followers.

Aftermath

Although his descendants have made several tentative attempts to regain power in Nicaragua or to regain parts of their former family assets in the country, they have not appeared personally since their emigration and, as in the case of Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, only have this for over let the press announce. In the 1980s the family supported the Contras in their fight against the Sandinista, as there were also many members of the old National Guard in the ranks of the Contras who were still loyal to the Somoza family.

Only his nephew Alvaro, the son of Luis Somoza Debayle, had opposed this during the family rule and has recently become active on the democratic side of the Nicaraguan political scene.

progeny

From his marriage to Hope Portocarrero, Anastasio Somoza Debayle had five children who were involved in the state and family apparatus.

His love affair with Dinorah Sampson remained childless.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Anastasio Somoza Debayle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Nicaragua under the whip of the Somoza clan ( Memento from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), article in the Hamburger Abendblatt from June 22, 1979.
  2. ↑ a b c d Which shootings? In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1979, pp. 164–167 ( online - May 21, 1979 , SPIEGEL interview with Nicaragua's dictator Somoza).
  3. ↑ a b c d entry on answers.com
  4. ↑ a b El hermetismo de Dinorah Sampson ( Memento of May 3, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) Article in the magazine La Prensa (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Aníbal Ramírez: Stories from Nicaragua in Quetzal magazine , print edition 04/05
  6. ↑ The Somoza Clan - Nicaragua's Dictators . Association for the promotion of the city partnership Berlin-Kreuzberg / San Rafael del Sur e. V. Retrieved September 17, 2010.
  7. ↑ A bunker high above the ruins . In: Die Zeit , No. 26/1979
  8. ↑ Somoza's Legacy of Greed . In: Time , August 6, 1979
  9. ↑ Entry on September 1, 1979 on chronik.net
  10. ^ Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi: The Israeli Connection . IB Tauris & Co., 1988 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  11. ↑ Entry on August 28, 1978 on chronik.net
  12. ↑ Heavy fighting in Nicaragua . In: Die Zeit , No. 38/1978
  13. ↑ A people is finally becoming free . In: Die Zeit , No. 30/1979
  14. ↑ a b Tacho steps down In: Die Zeit , No. 31/1979
  15. ↑ a b Somoza's exile - a paradise . ( Memento from July 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , July 18, 1979
  16. ^ Gerhard Möckel: On the 25th anniversary: ​​memories of the first years of the Sandinista people's revolution in Nicaragua , AG Friedensforschung at the University of Kassel
  17. ↑ Keyword: Paraguay , article on Deutsche Welle .de of April 21, 2008.
  18. ↑ Somoza's election as President of Nicaragua ( memento of March 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), calendar sheet on the homepage of Bayerischer Rundfunk
  19. ↑ Michael Newton (2014): Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia , Vol. 1, p. 535 ( online )
  20. ↑ Claribel Alegria and Darwin Flakkoll: Death of Somoza , Curbstone Press, 1996
  21. ^ Aquí, Asunción, September 26, 1980
  22. ↑ miaminewtimes.com (with photo of the mausoleum)
  23. ^ German edition of the weekly press service of Latin American agencies No. 372 of February 12, 1999 ( Memento of April 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  24. ^ German edition of the weekly press service of Latin American agencies No. 315 from November 13, 1997 ( Memento from April 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ^ German edition of the weekly press service of Latin American agencies No. 427 of April 7, 2000 ( Memento of April 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
predecessor Office successor
Lorenzo Guerrero Gutiérrez
Alfonso Lovo Cordero 		President of Nicaragua
May 1, 1967–1. May 1972
December 1, 1974-17. July 1979 		Roberto Martínez Lacayo
Francisco Urcuyo Maliaños
personal data
SURNAME Somoza Debayle, Anastasio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tachito (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Nicaraguan President (1967–1972 and 1974–1979)
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Leon
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 1980
Place of death Asunción , Paraguay