Somoza on the Brink

As the dictator readies his exit, he leaves behind a ruined land

The question no longer began with an if or a maybe. Last week even his top advisers were asking themselves not whether but on what day President General Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle would step down; rumor swirled throughout war-torn Nicaragua that his leave-taking was hardly hours away. Finally, Somoza himself spoke. "I am like a tied donkey righting with a tiger," he said in a subdued voice at week's end, referring to his war with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.). "Even if I win militarily, I have no future." He thus went ahead and placed his own future with the U.S., allowing Washington to decide the best time for his departure. Indeed, Somoza had already abandoned the ultimate demand that had kept him in Managua for the past two weeks: he no longer required assurances that members of his 12,000-strong national guard would not suffer reprisals once he was gone. He admitted, sadly, that he was "in no position now to impose anything. I am not negotiating."

The burly dictator actually had begun the week like a tiger, directing the battle against the Sandinistas from his concrete bunker in the country's ravaged capital of Managua. In effect, he was trying to buy bargaining time with firepower, but without much success. Early in the week, guerrilla forces added the strategic highway town of Sebaco to their growing list of occupied places. They also destroyed the last national guard garrison in Matagalpa and closed in on Chinandega, one of two major cities in northern Nicaragua not controlled by the rebels. In a desperate attempt to break the Sandinista noose that was tightening around Managua, Somoza launched a major attack against Masaya, 20 miles south of the capital; the government offensive included heavy bombing and strafing as well as the deployment of hundreds of troops from the capital.

Farther to the south, rebel forces nearly captured the town of Rivas before Somoza ordered an additional 300 troops airlifted in from Managua. Rivas, only 22 miles from the Costa Rican border, is of particular importance to the Sandinistas since they favor it as their provisional capital. If they succeeded in seizing the city, 1,000 government troops would be trapped between Rivas and the Costa Rican border, where an equally large contingent of guerrillas is entrenched. At week's end the Sandinistas had also captured the city of Jinotepe, and were battling for control of Esteii and Granada.

Meanwhile, the Carter Administration continued its scramble to devise a political solution that would be acceptable to both Somoza and the Sandinista-sponsored Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction. Washington's major worry about the junta, which set up temporary headquarters in a bungalow in San Jose, Costa Rica, is that two of its five members are leftists who may want to establish a Cuban-style Marxist regime in Managua. Hoping to ensure a more broad-based, and thus more democratic, future government for Nicaragua, Washington two weeks ago sent its new ambassador, Lawrence Pezzullo, to Managua and a veteran diplomat, William G. Bowdler, to San Jose with a proposal: Somoza would resign and be replaced by an interim government composed mostly of moderates but including some Sandinistas as well as pro-Somoza conservatives. That plan was rejected by the rebel leaders, partly on the ground that moderate political groups already support the junta and partly because they resented Washington's interference in what they viewed as strictly a Nicaraguan matter.

The Administration last week offered yet another plan, and also changed its tactics. Still hoping to balance better the five-member junta, Washington dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Viron Vaky to Venezuela, a country that would welcome the downfall of Somoza. Officials in Caracas compiled a list for Vaky of five respected Nicaraguans.

They were General Julio Gutierrez, 65, a national guard officer now serving as military attache at his country's embassy in Japan; Dr. Emilio Alvarez Montalvan, 57, a Conservative Party politician and ophthalmologist; Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, 46, an engineer, and brother of the late anti-Somoza newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, whose widow is already a member of the junta; Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren, 45, rector of the University of Nicaragua; and Ernesto Fernandez Holmann, 38, a banker and economist. The names were intended for San Jose, where junta members would be asked to add as many as four of the people to the provisional government; meanwhile Vaky, hoping to build support for the proposal among other Latin American nations, visited Colombia and the Dominican Republic to persuade them to recommend the plan to the junta. "We're willing to talk about expanding the junta," said Sergio Ramirez Mercado, one of its five members, "but this should be done directly between Nicaraguans."

In trying to forge a compromise between Somoza and the junta, State Department negotiators found themselves watched closely by the dictator's congressional supporters, in one case literally. Two weeks ago, when Ambassador Pezzullo called upon Somoza to press for his resignation, the diplomat was surprised to meet New York Democrat John M. Murphy in the bunker office. Murphy, who first befriended the Nicaraguan 40 years ago when they were classmates at a Long Island military academy, is the dictator's staunchest supporter in the House. Murphy went to Managua at his friend's request and attended the meeting between Pezzullo and Somoza. "The issue isn't Somoza," he told TIME last week, "but Nicaragua and the security interests of the U.S. This Sandinista uprising is a Cuban, Venezuelan, Panamanian, Costa Rican operation. It's another Viet Nam, and it's in this hemisphere."

Whatever the composition of a post-Somoza government, it will inherit a ravaged country. Nicaragua today is a wasteland plagued by food shortages and looting, and only time and hundreds of millions of dollars will revive it. The country's major industries, located primarily on an eight-mile stretch of the Pan American Highway near the capital, have been destroyed by the government bombings directed against the guerrillas who were camped there two weeks ago. More serious is the destruction of Nicaragua's crops: agriculture normally provides 80% of the country's foreign exchange. This year's harvest of the country's leading farm export, cotton, has been all but lost, and planting for next year's crop has been curtailed by the fighting. The picking of coffee beans, Nicaragua's second largest export, has also suffered.

The human toll makes the civil war even more tragic: Red Cross sources estimated that deaths could run as many as 15,000; there are about 600,000 homeless, living in overcrowded refugee centers in cities or camping out in the countryside. If a Nicaraguan can afford the airfare, he is likely to leave the country, if only to find work elsewhere. Thousands of wealthy Nicaraguans have been filtering into the U.S. on tourist visas. Many of them are living in Florida. An informal meeting of the board of one of Nicaragua's largest corporations was held in Miami. Most say they are only waiting out their country's crisis and plan to return to Nicaragua when the country is calm again and run by a democratic government.

That will not be for a while. Junta Member Ramirez estimates that the provisional government will stay in power for two to five years, "the time it takes to establish the basis of a genuine democratic development in Nicaragua." Most of the junta's other prescriptions for the country are vague, save for one pledge repeated over and over by rebel leaders: the lands and holdings of the Somoza family in Nicaragua, estimated at up to $500 million, will be confiscated and administered by the new government. qed

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