The Champ is Dead

"I'm a goner," said President Anastasio Somoza to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Whelan the night Somoza was shot down by a 27-year-old gunman (TIME, Oct. 1). "They got me this time, Tommy," he added. Rushed from Nicaragua to the Canal Zone, the 60-year-old strongman withstood a four-hour bullet-removing operation and later a windpipe incision to ease his labored breathing. But he never fully regained consciousness in the U.S.-owned Gorgas Hospital. Late last week, just seven days after the shooting, he began to sink fast. A few hours later, as he had foreseen, Tacho Somoza was a goner.

He died, as Nicaragua's Ambassador to the U.S. Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa curtly put it, "of four bullets." A man of great personal charm, Somoza was also a no-nonsense dictator with many enemies; he was well aware of the danger of assassination, and usually went about well guarded. But in mixing with the people at a political rally and dance in the town of Leon, Tacho provided the fatal opportunity for a young Nicaraguan who was in appearance an innocent dancer but at heart an assassin bent on what he conceived to be glorious tyrannicide and a martyr's death. (He was riddled on the spot by Tacho's aides.)

Brother Act. The rule of Nicaragua fell on Tacho's sons even before their father's death. Plump, self-effacing Luis, 34, who by grace of a push from his father was First Designate (Vice President), took on Tacho's executive duties and--after Tacho died--the blue-and-white sash of office. West Point-educated Anastasio Jr. ("Tachito"), 32, commander of the 4,100-man Guardia National, jailed something like 3,000 suspected enemies of the regime, personally tested many of them with a newly imported lie detector,*soon freed all but 300. He unearthed no plot--but the arrests doubtless discouraged any enemy attempt to cash in fast on the assassination.

The token political opposition, headed by a pair of oft-jailed oldsters, was unlikely to make trouble anyway. But many a veteran Guardia officer, serving the brusque, quick-tempered Tachito only because Tacho said to, might feel that loyalty had gone far enough. That would be Tachito's headache.

King of the Hill. Tacho Somoza ruled Nicaragua for 22 years by king-of-the-hill toughness. "I'll give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to get it," he announced just after the U.S. Marines, ending their occupation in 1933, turned over the command of the Guardia to him. The Guardia shot scores --and brought peace. Meanwhile, by "buying from heirs" Somoza acquired coffee fincas and cattle ranches, parlayed them into a fortune estimated at $60 million--some $20 million more than Nicaragua's annual budget. He reputedly owned one-tenth of the country's farmland, plus interests in lumber, liquor, soap, cement, power, textiles, cotton-ginning, sugar-milling, air transport, merchant shipping, even a barbershop--an estimated 430 properties. "You'd do the same thing yourself if you were in my place," he used to explain. Nicaragua advanced a little; e.g., more than 600 miles of all-weather roads were built to connect the Somoza properties, but it remains a poor (yearly per capita income: $245), dusty, undeveloped country.

A burly, outgiving 200-pounder, Tacho delighted in shooting, swimming, poker, dancing (he was fast-stepping through the Cha Cha Cha shortly before he was shot).

He could gallop along a picket fence and pick off every sun-basking lizard with a pistol. "I'm the champ," said he. and jovially charmed nearly everyone he met. Seven early years of work and study in Philadelphia--he never stopped rooting for the Phillies--gave him close U.S. ties. President Eisenhower, who sent his own surgeon. Major General Leonard D. Heaton, to try to save Tacho, noted in a message of condolence that Somoza "emphasized, both publicly and privately, his friendship for the United States."

If Tacho's sons can somehow reproduce his rare blend of ruthlessness and charm, Nicaragua may see another era of tomblike peace. If not, the country is probably in for a tumultuous power scramble.

*Old Tacho used to test his foes' veracity with a magneto-powered shocking device, la maqui-nita (the little machine), wired to the victim's testicles. "Hell," Tacho once said, "the damned thing isn't so bad. I've tried it myself--on my hand."

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