CENTRAL AMERICA: Wings over Tacho

The general sailed his flat-brimmed, Pershing-style khaki campaign hat on to a table, and sagged into a chintz-covered chair. Scowling across the parlor of his Managua, hilltop mansion, Nicaragua’s Dictator Anastasio (“Tacho”) Somoza grumbled: “I did everything I could to prevent what is coming, but there’s no way to keep the peace in Central America. For years Nicaragua’s Guardia National has stood like a Chinese wall in Central America, stopping trouble from going north and south. God knows I’m a patient man, but there is nothing I can do now. The fireworks may start any time—maybe tomorrow.”

Tacho shifted his paunch and glowered at the is-foot stuffed alligator across the room. “The man responsible for this mess is Arevalo, up in Guatemala,” he growled. Tacho had heard that Arevalo was making jokes: “Let him talk about sending me flowers. I’ll send them over to him first. He plans to attack Honduras and Nicaragua. He has just made a pact with Figueres of Costa Rica, Prío Socarrás of Cuba, and the Caribbean Communist tramps to destroy the peace of Central America. He is responsible for Central America’s coming war.”

Lend-Lease. It was not only Guatemala’s President Arevalo who was prodding Tacho Somoza last week. There was also a variegated group of political exiles, self-appointed enemies of tropical dictators, who called themselves the Caribbean Legion. Last spring they had flown at least 21 planeloads of arms from Guatemala right around Tacho’s Chinese wall and landed them in Costa Rica—where they helped General José Figueres install a government that bears no love for Somoza.

Since that victory, the Legion’s Dominican colonels and generals have been drilling 150 Nicaraguan youths on Figueres’ Rio Conejo farm, just outside San José. For Figueres (who knows that Costa Rican counter-revolutionaries are also drilling on Tacho’s side of the border), the situation has been a little embarrassing. The Caribbean Legion and its friends have been looking for a way to get on with their business without leaving Figueres on the spot.

Last month they went to Guatemala City for strategy talks with Arévalo and Nicaraguan exile leaders. Last week they made their first move. Guatemalan-registered air transports began landing in Costa Rica to take aboard the Legion’s khaki-clad recruits. Once again, the airlift was on; again it bypassed Tacho’s wall. This time the recruits and gear were headed for an encampment at Poptum, in the remote Guatemalan province of El Peten. Even though the move was no surprise this time, Tacho could do nothing about it: Arevalo’s air force was bigger than his.

Between Two Fires? The airlift’s destination suggested that the Legion might be turning its attention for the moment to Honduras, where Dictator Tiburcio Carias had just won a carefully staged election.

But last week Tacho swore he would not be flanked again. “You think I’m going to let them put me between two fires? No! The battle for Managua will be fought right over there in Tegucigalpa. When the first Legionnaire pokes his nose in, the Guardia will be there to pot him.”