There is no country in Latin America that has not survived the rule of military juntas. True, the dictators were different - from the relatively liberal Juan Peron in Argentina to the pro-fascist Chilean Augusto Pinochet. But, perhaps, Nicaragua acquired the most notorious fame, where the Somoza clan ruled for more than forty years ...

"Our son of a bitch!"

Magazine: Riddles of History No. 7, 2012
Category: Villains

The Nicaraguan dictator fed the beasts to his enemies!

Pedigree of seven handkerchiefs

The first dictator of this small country reluctantly recalled his genealogy. Still would! His great-grandfather, Anastasio Bernabé Somoza, nicknamed the Seven Handkerchiefs, was a thief and robber. He got his drive partly from covering his face with a handkerchief during the raids, partly from the Latin American tale that says: "Half a dozen handkerchiefs are not enough to wipe off the blood." In the end, the bandit was seized and hanged, forbidding other criminals to remove the corpse for three days as a warning.
Alas, this act of intimidation had no effect - Bernabe's two sons followed in their father's footsteps. Luis and Anastasio (this name was inherited in the family) became thieves and cheaters. Even in their youth, they contracted syphilis, which, as you know, leads to brain damage. And on a fateful day for them, because of a trifle, the mentally unbalanced brothers got into a fight and, as a result, inflicted mortal wounds on each other. Yes, and the father of the hero of our story, who led an unrighteous lifestyle, died in a psychiatric hospital for the poor, again due to syphilis, having managed to give birth in 1896 to the heir of Anastasio Garcia Somoza, who began his working biography with a trip to the USA.
The young man was not going to study or work. His goal was to make counterfeit dollars. True, Anastasio turned out to be a useless counterfeiter, and was arrested during the sale of another bill. But the court, taking into account the sincere repentance of the fraudster and his age, sentenced him to only two months in prison, followed by deportation to his homeland. Subsequently, the head of state will mention that on the way home he robbed some wealthy lady, so he returned with pockets full of money, which, alas, ran out very quickly. Taught by bitter experience, Somoza decided not to engage in criminal affairs yet, but to increase his well-being through a profitable marriage. And such a girl was found. Salvador Deboila, a representative of a clan of large landowners and financiers, became his life partner. And soon influential relatives first arranged a son-in-law in the Rockefeller Foundation, and then achieved his appointment as the "political chief" of the city of Leon with a monthly good salary of 700 cordobas ($ 1 - 26 cordobas).

Rapid career

And in 1927, an uprising of liberals broke out in the city of San Marco, supported by the Deboile clan. It is clear that Anastasio immediately joined the rebels and immediately received the appointment of "commander of the southern flank." But when government troops launched an offensive, Somoza decided not to tempt fate and went over to the side of the enemy. The betrayal of the young "commander" and his desire to serve the government were appreciated and even awarded the rank of general. Soon Anastasio met the truly honored General Moncada, and since he needed an interpreter to communicate with the American military, on whose bayonets the power in the country was held, Moncada approved Somoza for this position, subsequently making him his personal secretary. The Americans went further, offering to appoint the young general as commander of the National Guard, the largest military group in the country. And he longed to get to the top of the political Olympus. And such an opportunity presented itself to him in 1936. By that time, the army of the leader of the national liberation movement, led by Augusto Cesar Sandino, was suffering one defeat after another from government troops. And then the rebel leader decided to end the armed struggle. To this end, in February 1934, together with his brother Socrates and two associates, he went for negotiations to meet with the country's president, Sacasa.
That's just his hopes for the nobility of the enemy did not materialize. The revolutionary did not know that, at the suggestion of Somoza, it was decided to liquidate him. As a result, the parliamentarians were shot from a machine gun, and the next day the national guards attacked the stronghold of the Sandinistas - the village of Vivili. As a result of the organized massacre, all of its more than four hundred inhabitants were killed - men, women, children. This is how the bloody path to sole power was laid. And two years later, Somoza, with the tacit approval of the Americans, carries out a coup d'état and sits in the presidential chair for twenty years.

"Hitler" from Managua

First blood intoxicates, so it is not surprising that, having become the head of the state, the dictator began to crack down on dissidents. In record time, on Tiskapa Hill in the center of the capital, the “Closed District” complex was erected - the presidential palace, the buildings of the police department and the command of the National Guard with barracks attached to them. A little later, the underground headquarters of the head of state and a prison will appear. In the meantime, Somoza identified the right wing of his palace as a prison. The cells in it were shaped like a coffin placed vertically, so that the prisoners could only stand in this room. And at night, from the chambers intended for torture, the cries of the tortured could be heard. Moreover, Somoza took a personal part in the development of both methods and tools for extracting evidence. With a wooden spatula with holes (it turned out more painful), sadists thrashed bare buttocks, forced prisoners to stand barefoot on cut cans, attached bare wires to the most sensitive parts of the body for electric shock or dripped sulfuric acid on them. Moreover, Somoza himself was a frequent guest at these executions.
But his twisted fantasies didn't end there. On the personal instructions of the dictator, a zoo was built on the territory of the "Closed Area", in the cells of which not cute little animals lived, but predators: lions, tigers, hyenas and wolves. And as a daily ration, they received the meat of prisoners who died during torture or were still half-dead. Watching his pets eat was a special pleasure for Somoza.
But his pathological hatred of communism sometimes reached the point of absurdity. Someone close to him told the patron that tango is the dance of the proletarians of Buenos Aires. And the very next day, a decree was issued, in which it was prescribed, under pain of death, to hand over records with tango melodies to the police stations. In addition, during this procedure, law-abiding citizens were still required to pay a fine of 10 cordobas for each disc, which was immediately smashed on the owner's head. Moreover, during this execution, three old women went to the next world, and the owner of the cinema, in which they showed a film where the characters perform tango, disappeared in the Somos dungeons. Cultural figures who, in the opinion of the dictator, created “wrong” works were also persecuted. The blacklist, for example, included abstract artists after Somoza found out that the famous Pablo Picasso was a communist.

Favorite tyrant of President Roosevelt

Of course, the Americans, though unsuccessfully, tried to reason with the Latin American "Napoleon". After he, in a conversation with US President Franklin Roosevelt, said: “Democracy in my country is a child. Try to give a baby a hot pie with meat and pepper, and you will kill him, ”a little later, in the circle of his own, Roosevelt uttered a phrase that became winged:“ Somoza is a son of a bitch, but this is our son of a bitch!
But in vain did the executioner, on whose instructions more than 170 thousand people were killed, hope to rule forever. In 1956, a group of young revolutionary poets were preparing an armed uprising against the regime. The signal to him was to be the assassination of the dictator, but for a number of reasons the speech had to be postponed. However, one of the participants in the conspiracy decided to carry out the death sentence. On September 29, Rigoberto Lopez Perez fired six bullets at the tyrant at the ball. True, the sons of Somoza ruled the country for another two decades - until 1979, when the dictatorship was overthrown by the fighters of the Augusto Sandino National Liberation Front.

Nadeen V.

Events in the Middle East have made clear a number of patterns that determine the rise, rise and fall of new personalist regimes. This is how political science defines the possessions of an alpha male, limited by established state borders. If the power of the male is strong to the touch and to the tooth, then he is also lovingly called "our son of a bitch."

Looking at Wikipedia, you can easily see that the famous expression "He is, of course, a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch" is a product of legend. Neither Franklin Roosevelt, to whom the saying is attributed, nor his colleagues ever said anything like it. Neither about the Dominican satrap Trujillo, nor about the Nicaraguan autocrat Samosa. Both dictators, rogues and sadists, were equally disgusting to the gentlemen of the White House.

However, the very term "our son of a bitch" has survived the legend. There was a great political need for successful adventurers, firmly straddling their own countries. Yes, shaking hands with similar types in public is only a disgrace. But pushing away a dirty hand studded with stolen diamonds is bad business. If honor is too expensive, then cost savings can be achieved with precisely dosed dishonor.

With the fall of communism, the need for sons of bitches seemed to disappear. There were even scientific works, as if forever. Ours, yours - all mixed up in the triumphant world of free enterprise. But the charm of guest capitalism did not last long. To replace Samosa and Trujillo, replenishing the ranks of Gaddafi, Assads and Mubaraks, Aliyevs and Kerimovs, Nazarbayevs and Niyazovs, Lukashenkas and Putins crawled out of the mud into princes. Fathers, Turkmenbashi, preziki, national leaders.

The new elite was created rapidly, spontaneously and consisted, for the most part, of marauders. The leaders were put forward by chance, in a short bandit attack. They were distinguished by low morality, ignorance, adventurism, fear. But as soon as the adventure was crowned with success, all inferiority complexes quickly grew into monstrous conceit and painful narcissism. They all liked themselves very much.

Unlike the dictatorships traditional for most of the last century, the new regimes proved to be ideologically fruitless. Attempts to fill spiritual voids with religion, nationalism, patriotism turn into failures, often frankly comical. The only idea that the new dictators manage to take over society is the personal good. But arbitrariness lies at the heart of the regime, and it is incompatible with fair competition. The golden gates of enrichment open only to the elect and only at the whistle of the highest authority. Corruption captures the entire society, it is omnipotent and easily breaks the backs of all hopes for a decent life in the conditions of general decay.

The huge gap in the incomes of the richest and the poorest strata, the complete separation of the elite from the lives of ordinary people, the destruction of the institutions of law and justice, the cynical manipulation of elections, embezzlement from the bottom to the top, the usurpation of the media and, above all, the main channels of television - all this leads to a colossal imperious demand for lies. New dictators are sitting on a needle of lies. They lie to their own people, lie to strangers, lie to themselves, and every day they need growing drug doses.

All these patterns, which have clearly shown themselves in the ruins of the Middle Eastern dictatorships, are fully applicable to most of the regimes that have developed on the territory of the Soviet Union that has died in the Bose.

Putin has ruled for 10 years, Lukashenka for 16 years, the younger Aliyev from Baku for 12 years, Nazarbayev and Kerimov (Uzbekistan) for 22 years each, Ben-Ali from Tunisia for 21 years, Mubarak for 30 years, Gaddafi for 42 years. They all work hard like slaves in the galleys, but do not have time to get tired. They all like what they do and how they do it. Just now, Sechin, Putin's oil oprichnik, said in an interview with an American newspaper that "we have one of the highest political stability in the world." To which the correspondent, unable to resist, remarked: "Mubarak probably said the same thing." But to all of them, whether dictators or dictatorial lackeys, to lie is like eating a cherry. “I don't know,” Sechin said. - Didn't hear it.

Heard. In April 2005, during the visit of (then) President Putin to Cairo, guest and host boasted to each other about the special forms of democracy that are equally inherent in Egypt and Russia. And Sechin was sitting in the front row at that press conference.

Self-governing rule over peoples is an ancient occupation, going back thousands of years. The last century has presented history with a terrible constellation of tyrants of unsurpassed ferocity. But these murderers, no matter how much blood flowed from their axes, were distinguished by a special relationship with banking assets. It is ridiculous to assume that it would have occurred to Hitler, Stalin or Mao to surreptitiously accumulate millions in foreign currency and offshore. They could lose the idea of ​​the purchasing power of the ruble or yuan, but procrastinate sweaty foreign banknotes in their pockets - the tyrants could not allow this shame.

The main difference between the new sons of bitches and old-fashioned tyrants is just irrepressible greed. Everything is revealed in the hour when they are persecuted. Marcos from the Philippines, Suharto from Indonesia, Bakiyev from Kyrgyzstan, Ben-Ali from Tunisia, Mubarak from Egypt. Every time it turns out that the fathers of the nation, who had just shone with diamond impeccability, are thieves. With billions in the West and a hot plane at the porch, the now reigning marauders hope to deceive fate.

But before screwing into the cold sky, they all become democrats. Yesterday they shot at the opposition - today they promise to sit down at the welcoming negotiating table. Yesterday it was arrogantly declared that they know better than anyone else their temporary shortcomings, but also the ways of correcting them. Today they promise to settle everything in a week or two. Long decades were not enough for them to show in the TV window anything but their shiny hari. Now they are praying for another three days, so that freedom reigns throughout the Mandatory territory, inaccessible to Franklin and Jefferson.

Pay attention: subordinate services spread rumors about every son of a bitch, as if the owner is about to be imbued with the spirit of freedom and raise the temperature of domestic liberalism either by half a degree, or by the entire thaw. They whispered about each one with the hope that, if not to us, then to our children ... Let not the children, but certainly the grandchildren ... But now the children are decrepit, and the grandchildren have turned gray, and the son of a bitch is strengthening stability for yourself.

Peace and grace would have settled forever in the luxurious kennels of sons of bitches, if not for the party, not for the secret police and not for the army. An improvised party, is it United Russia, is it United Egypt, is it United Jamahiriya or whatever, everything, in fact, is rubbish. How much they applauded enthusiastically, how much they swore on bibles and korans, how much they stole and carried them around Europe - there was no case that they took at least the first battle and did not run away at the sounds of the first protest. The police are scoundrels, the army are traitors, and the people don't care at all. Yesterday unanimously approved, now unanimously torn to shreds. Element.

But the biggest disappointment of the supreme fugitives is the eternally cursed West. On the one hand, without it - nowhere. Even if you yourself do not take it, but there are children, uncles, the Suez cooperative. Money flows to the top of power by gravity, contrary to Newton and Marx. You have to be a complete idiot to keep your hard-earned billions in hryvnia, drachma or tenge. But Geneva is good too. You are still in the fire of battles for their own stability, and they have already frozen your assets. So believe after that in democracy.

And yet the main, guiding and defining feature of all sons of bitches is their unbending optimism, which does not yield to any reason. Nero was stabbed to death, Hitler shot himself, Stalin spent the night on the floor in his vomit. Trujillo was blown up, Ceausescu was shot, Saddam was hanged. But no, each of the new dictators imagines that he will escape his Egypt and slip by a happy express train from his kennel to his mausoleum.

Our son of a bitch

Our son of a bitch

To begin with, I will give an anecdote that has recently been circulating on the Internet:

“Somoza, of course, is a son of a bitch, but whose son of a bitch? President Nixon said. "Our son of a bitch!"
30 years have passed.
“I looked into the eyes of my friend Vladimir,” President Bush said, “and I saw in them a Democrat, a true Democrat in the spirit of George Washington and the Founding Fathers.
“The great thing is political correctness,” thought Kissinger, who wrote both speeches.

Of course, Kissinger did not write speeches for Bush Jr., nor, for that matter, for Nixon. And Nixon said nothing of the sort. It is sometimes claimed that US Secretary of State Cordell Hull was the first to speak about “our son of a bitch” (in reference to Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo) or Secretary of State Dean Acheson (in reference to Communist Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito). There are other versions. But still, it is generally believed that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first to utter this phrase, and it referred to Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Sr.

On May 5, 1939, Somoza and his wife got off the train at Union Station, Washington's railroad station. He was met by Roosevelt and his wife, the Cabinet of Ministers almost in full force and the leaders of Congress. Along the entire route of the cortege were troops dressed in full dress and a lot of military equipment, including thirty tanks. A month later, they also met the English King George VI with Queen Elizabeth, and before that no one was met in Washington. At the White House, Somoza presented Roosevelt with a complete collection of Nicaraguan stamps and offered to dig a new inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, for the greater security of the continent.

Three days later, Somoza addressed Congress. Congressmen were less friendly, and Republican Hon Schafer even called the guest of honor a "South American dictator." It was rumored that on the eve of the visit, Roosevelt's adviser Sumner Welles presented the president with a report in which Somoza was portrayed in an extremely unattractive way. After carefully reading the report, Roosevelt remarked: "AS A NICARAGUAN WOULD SAY, HE IS A SON OF A BITCH, BUT IS OURS."

But who and when reported these words? Time weekly reported them in an unsigned article about Somoza, "I Am a Champion," published in November 1948, ten years after Somoza's visit and four years after F. D. Roosevelt's death. No evidence that he really said so has not been found to this day.

But they discovered that this is exactly what they said about him. F.D.R. was nominated for the presidency in July 1932 at the Chicago Democratic Convention. His candidacy passed with a significant majority, but not all party bosses were happy with this. One of Roosevelt's most stubborn opponents, General Hugh Johnson, was asked how he viewed the results of the vote. Instead of answering, the general told an "old joke" about a provincial Democratic convention. When the delegates elected a dubious candidate, one of the participants exclaimed in their hearts: “Damn everything! It was impossible to allow the election of such a bastard!” The other paused, sighed, and replied: "After all, he's not so bad: after all, he's our scoundrel."

The “old joke” by that time had indeed grown a beard: it appeared in print in 1868 and since then, with various variations, walked through the pages of American newspapers. Often he was associated with the name of Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), an associate of Lincoln; during the Civil War, he was the leader of the left wing of the Republicans. It was said that one day, when choosing a person for a position, Stevens asked colleagues which of the two applicants was better. “Both big rascals,” they answered him. "YES, BUT WHICH ONE OF THEM IS OUR CHANNEL?" Stevens clarified his question.

I foresee another question: what and when did Bush Jr. say about V.V.P.'s eyes? At a joint press conference with him in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on January 16, 2001, Bush said, “I looked this man in the eye. I think that this person is very direct and trustworthy. (...) I understood his soul, the soul of a man devoted to his country and the interests of his country.”

But phrases from jokes are much more likely to fall into history.

Konstantin Dushenko.

Western support for the Uzbek regime shows a dangerous trend - reliance on tyrants and despots

Let's call it the foreign policy tradition of "relying on sons of bitches." Franklin Roosevelt is said to have been asked how to deal with the many atrocities of his ally, the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. The President replied, "He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch."

Today, 60 years later, the phrase is a perfect fit to define US policy, and therefore Britain's, toward the Tashkent tyrant Islam Karimov, who has ruled the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The fact that Karimov is a son of a bitch is an indisputable fact. Like many of his despot predecessors, he borrows the most brutal methods of suppressing dissent from the dark times of the Middle Ages. As a result, a cauldron of boiling water appeared in his torture arsenal: in 2002, Karimov boiled two of his critics alive. The number of political prisoners in Uzbekistan is 6,000, independent economic activity is suppressed, religious freedom is severely restricted, there is no free press, and the Internet is censored. On December 26, when the whole world admired Ukraine's "orange revolution", Karimov held elections, the outcome of which was clear in advance - after all, he banned all opposition parties.

But what does "some human rights violations" mean when it comes to a friend. And Karimov is undoubtedly our friend. Shortly after the events of September 11, he allowed the US to establish a military base in Khanabad, thus making a useful contribution to the preparations for the war against Afghanistan. Since then, he has been happy to play the role of a reliable guarantor of oil and gas supplies from Central Asia - so coveted by the US, which seeks to reduce oil dependence on the Persian Gulf countries. In addition, he readily agreed to provide his services for the action, which is shamefully called "transfers": people suspected of involvement in terrorism are taken for interrogation to countries where torture is less scrupulous than Britain or the United States.

It was because of this that (Craig Murray), the former British ambassador in Tashkent, fell out of favor with his superiors: this brave man claimed that England was "selling his soul to the devil" using information obtained in such a disgusting way.

Brushing aside the doubts expressed by Murray, London and Washington still have a sense of gratitude towards Karimov. High-ranking officials of the Bush administration flocked to Tashkent to thank the dictator for his services. Donald Rumsfeld - apparently not satisfied with having already been photographed with Saddam Hussein in 1983 - lauded Karimov for his "excellent cooperation", and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil (Paul O) Neill expressed admiration for the "powerful intellect" of the autocrat and his "passionate desire" to improve the lives of ordinary Uzbeks.

However, this egregious example of "relying on sons of bitches" would have passed almost unnoticed if not for the events of recent days. After all, you can only make friends with disgusting subjects when others do not get too accustomed to your friend - and this week the whole world saw the Karimov regime in action. When his opponents took to the streets last Friday, the dictator ordered troops to shoot demonstrators. Uzbek official sources speak of 169 dead; human rights organizations estimate the number of victims at 500-750 people: most of them were unarmed people.

Mass demonstrations in Lebanon, Georgia and Ukraine were hailed by the Americans as a manifestation of the "will of the people." However, they reacted differently to the bold popular uprising in Uzbekistan. Washington urged both sides to "restraint", thus putting the peaceful demonstrators on the same level as those who shot them. However, over the past two days, Washington's tone has changed slightly. Now the State Department is demanding that Tashkent "carry out real reforms" and address "human rights issues." At the very least, one cannot rule out the possibility that Washington will soon decide: Karimov has become too odious a figure, and he should be replaced by another, more "digestible" - but no less reliable - leader. In other words, to be the same "our", but not such a son of a bitch.

"Reliance on sons of bitches" has always been a bit of an inconvenience, even in Roosevelt's time; it, of course, does not fit well with the self-perception of America as a kind of "beam of light in a dark kingdom." But today this contradiction - some would call it hypocrisy - is greater than ever. After all, this is happening in the Bush era, and the main postulate of the Bush doctrine is the spread of democracy and the "unstoppable flame of freedom" everywhere, right up to the farthest corners of the planet. Such rhetoric is difficult to reconcile with practice, such as funding a dictator who boils his enemies alive.

Maybe Bush should break with the traditions of the past and conduct his fight for democracy with pure, democratic methods? But this option scares him. If free elections are allowed to take place in countries that today are considered reliable US allies - for example, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco - who can vouch for the consequences? Washington is afraid that even dubious but friends will be replaced by irreconcilable enemies: Islamist radicals, who, most likely, will emerge victorious from any democratic competition in many countries of the Arab world.

The question is, of course, a difficult one. Nevertheless, there are many arguments in favor of America, and Britain, not just talking about democracy, but also behaving like democrats - and not only idealistic, but also pragmatic.

First, despots are unreliable allies: they too often turn from friends into enemies. Let us recall two people who once played the role of "our sons of bitches" for America. In the 1980s, the US supported Saddam against Iran and Osama bin Laden against the USSR. It was the United States that supplied them with weapons that they eventually turned against America itself.

Second, pragmatic "deals with the devil" are essentially ineffective. The fact is that by oppressing their own peoples, tyrannical regimes do not suppress, but provoke terrorism. Moreover, such deals, made in the name of democracy, tarnish the very purpose they are intended to serve. That is why it is so difficult for liberal reformers in the Middle East today to convince Arab peoples who suspect that the word "democracy" really means American occupation, cheap oil sales and torture at Abu Ghraib.

Third, if democracy, as the Bush Doctrine claims, is indeed the panacea for all ills, then why not let it work its magic? In other words, a government (whatever its political coloring) that truly represents the people cannot fail to bring to their country the freedom and stability that Washington longs for. Perhaps Western leaders should be reassured by at least this fact: in the Middle East, even the democrats themselves do not call for an immediate revolution - they understand that under authoritarian regimes, the only space for public activity in their countries, besides the state, is the mosque. That is why, if free elections are held tomorrow in the same Egypt, the Islamist group "Muslim Brotherhood" will certainly win them.

But if the West ties the gigantic financial and military aid it provides to these regimes to, say, a three-year program of gradual liberalization—repeal of emergency laws, removal of bans on normal funding of political parties—then the public space will soon expand, and this new “territory "It will not be despots and not mullahs, but completely different forces. Various parties and movements will be able to start preparing for future elections, where they will now have a real chance of success.

From the point of view of the spread of democracy, such a policy undoubtedly seems more logical and consistent than the current controversial course of "reliance on tyrants." And it may well prove its effectiveness - even in such a gloomy place as Uzbekistan.

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