More Blasts from the Bunker

Somoza recaptures Managua, but the end of his era seems near

Like a boxer who goes into the last round knowing that he needs a knockout to win, President General Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle last week threw every punch he could muster at his opponents. From his windowless bunker in Nicaragua's embattled capital of Managua, he ordered air force helicopters to drop 500-lb. bombs and oil drums filled with liquid explosives on the barrios that rebels of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.) have controlled for the past three weeks. The savage air attacks killed hundreds of innocent civilians, who were unable to reach the precarious safety of makeshift shelters or flee from the target zone. By the time the Sandinista guerrillas withdrew from the area to prepare a counterattack, the streets of the barrios were filled with bodies.

At week's end, the capital was back under Somoza's control, but he faced a prolonged struggle in the countryside. To the list of towns captured by the rebels were added the names of Masaya, Somotillo and Guasaule. In the south, a rebel column continued its pressure on Rivas (pop. 26,000), where the temporary government set up two weeks ago by the Sandinistas and their allies hopes to establish its capital. Said a dispirited national guard officer: "The rebels are like mosquitoes. We can never get rid of them."

Somoza was also losing on the diplomatic front. In Washington, the Organization of American States (OAS) rejected a U.S. proposal for an inter-American peace-keeping force to be dispatched to the strife-torn land. Nonetheless, in a 17-to-2 vote from which the military governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and Uruguay abstained, the OAS approved a resolution calling for "the immediate and definitive replacement" of Somoza's regime. The resolution cleared the way for the rebel junta to gather more support from anti-Somoza forces both inside and outside the country.

In Nicaragua, the center-right Broad Opposition Front and the business-oriented Supreme Council of Private Enterprise endorsed the Sandinistas' five-member provisional government. Panama's Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera welcomed three of its members to his capital with a military band, honor guard and government-arranged cheering throngs usually reserved for visiting heads of state. Following the OAS meeting, Peru broke off diplomatic relations with the Somoza regime; Brazil recalled its ambassador to Managua, announcing that relations with Nicaragua had been "suspended."

Caught off-guard by the depth of hostility to Somoza's corrupt reign, the Carter Administration has floundered in its pursuit of a response. U.S. intelligence officials did produce evidence that Havana has supplied some weapons to the rebels, several of whom were trained in guerrilla tactics in Cuba. Nonetheless, reports TIME Washington Correspondent William Drozdiak, "the obsessive concern with Cuban involvement struck some OAS members as blind paranoia. Panama, Mexico and Costa Rica even discerned a more sinister motive in the ill-substantiated attacks: to find an excuse for robbing the Sandinistas of their victory by sending in the Marines to set up a new pro-American government in which the guerrillas would have little say. That, of course, is how the current Nicaraguan President's father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, came to power 46 years ago."

The Administration is trying a new approach. It was expressed by Assistant Secretary of State Viron Vaky, who told a congressional subcommittee: "Nicaraguans and our democratic friends in Latin America have no intention of seeing Nicaragua become a second Cuba and are determined to prevent the subversion of their anti-Somoza cause by Castro." At week's end, new Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo flew into Managua to meet with Somoza. Simultaneously, veteran Diplomat William G. Bowdler, who was on the U.S. team that earlier this year tried to persuade Somoza to step down, met with representatives of the rebel government in Costa Rica. The Americans' mission: to seek agreement on a new peace proposal under which Somoza would resign in favor of a new provisional government dominated by moderates but in which both the Sandinistas and pro-Somoza conservatives would be represented. The rebel government, however, regards the plan as yet another attempt by Washington to interfere in Nicaragua's internal affairs.

In broadcasts from his bunker, Somoza last week declared that he was "ready to resist until my death"; not so his long-time mistress, Dinorah Sampson, who flew to one of Somoza's many properties in southern Florida. Although it has suffered heavy casualties, the 12,000-man national guard is getting weapons and ammunition from Honduras and Guatemala, and remains more than a match for the rebels in any conventional shootout. But there are faint stirrings of discontent within the guard, which at this point is the only significant segment of Nicaraguan society that backs the dictator. Said one bitter officer: "The Somoza family is taking the national guard to its destruction."

Sealed inside his bunker, Somoza seems unperturbed by that prospect or by the growing bitterness of the civil war. Both sides have begun summary executions of captured opponents or suspected informers. Missionaries picking through the rubble in Managua last week discovered the bodies of ten young men. They had been bound, tortured and mutilated by national guardsmen, the missionaries said.

How long can Somoza hang on? At week's end reports circulated that he would step down, if his armed forces were kept intact and his lapdog National Liberal Party was given the pivotal role in a new regime. Nicaraguan politicians speculated that he would announce his abdication at an emergency session of the National Assembly that he called late last week. But because so many of the 100 legislators failed to attend, Somoza could not put together a quorum, and the session was postponed.

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