Fall
In 1975 Somoza Debayle launched a campaign to crush the Sandinistas; individuals suspected of supporting the Front were targeted. The Front, named after Augusto César Sandino (a Nicaraguan rebel leader in the 1920s), began its guerrilla war against the Somozas in 1963 and was funded by Cuba under Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union. Support for the Sandinistas ballooned after the earthquake, especially when U.S President Jimmy Carter withdrew American support for the regime for human rights reasons.
At this point, the opposition to the Somozas included not only Sandinistas, but other prominent figures such as Pedro Chamorro (assassinated on January 10, 1978). Israel was the last supplier of weapons to the Somoza regime, because during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Somoza's father provided substantial financial support for Israel. Carter forced the Israeli government to call back a ship carrying weapons vital to the survival of the Somoza regime.
Because of his status, most of his family members were forced to flee into Honduras, Guatemala, and the United States, it is uncertain where the remaining Somozas live given the fact that they changed their names to protect their own lives.
In July 1979, Somoza resigned the presidency and fled to Miami in a converted Curtiss C-46. He was denied entry to the U.S. by President Carter. He later took refuge in Paraguay, then under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. He bought a ranch and a gated house at Avenida de España no. 433 in Asunción. Somoza's regime only survived him by a day, when the Sandinistas captured Managua.
Read more about this topic: Anastasio Somoza Debayle
Famous quotes containing the word fall:
“mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders
we drowse as horses drowse afield,
in accord; though the fall cold
surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and often lonely.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Missionaries, whether of philosophy or religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone, and yet this suffices.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)