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Though recurrent malaria and stubborn amoebae in his intestines have put Somoza past his physical peak, he still sets a tough pace. At parties he now limits himself to three Scotches & soda, but he can still shake a light foot in the rumba, tango, bolero or samba. If he feels like it, he may dance the whole night through at La Curva, then adjourn the party to a Somoza ranch for another six or eight hours.
Like other successful bullyboys, Tacho has a sort of Falstaffian charm. Said a U.S. mining man in Managua last week. "Nobody can talk to that guy and hate him."
"You Would Do the Same." The person closest to Tacho is his wife Salvadora ("Yoya"), daughter of one of Nicaragua's leading families, who has an astute political brain. After her come daughter Lillian ("She's more like me than any of them"), wife of Nicaragua's ambassador to the U.S.; two sons, Tachito and Luis; and at least one natural son, José, who runs Tacho's Montelimar finca. Lillian's picture is on Nicaragua's one-córdoba ($20) note. Tachito, who has shed the democratic ideas he picked up as a cadet at West Point, is Tacho's heir-apparent.
Somoza runs Nicaragua, and he runs it for Somoza. Tacho has the country's best cattle land, the best coffee fincas; he has cut himself in on the mines, transport, lumber—everything except a few scattered items like General Pasos' textile mill. Somoza is probably the richest man in Central America, with an income estimated at more than $1,000,000 a year. One count puts the number of his enterprises at 117. Somoza himself does not seriously deny that he has a well feathered nest: "You would do the same thing yourself if you were in my place."
Some of his 50-odd cattle ranches and 45 coffee fincas he got by "smart buying." "My father taught me that it was wiser to buy from heirs," he grins. "They rarely know the true value of their inheritance." That, as Tacho tells it, is how he came by the huge British-owned La Fundadora finca. "I offered the heirs the first silly price that popped into my head, $25,000. Then I added $800 to make it look serious. By God, those people in England didn't know what they had. They took my offer, and I'm sure the $800 did it. The first year's crop brought me $28,000."
A Good Racket. One of Tacho's best rackets, smuggling cattle into Costa Rica, was broken up by the Costa Rican revolution. Now he butchers his cattle at home, and flies the meat to Cuba. He corners the supply by a simple expedient: no cattle can be moved in Nicaragua without government permit. A rancher bringing cattle into the capital from the east, for instance, always gets stopped at the Tipitapa River, 18 miles from Managua, and is asked to show his permit. He wires to Managua for it, then waits. Meanwhile, either he pays for pasturage or the cattle grow thin. About the time the rancher gets desperate, one Ponciano Muñoz turns up, offers a ridiculously low price for the critters. The rancher has no choice but to sell. Once he sells, the permit arrives. Muñoz then starts the beef to market. Muñoz is Somoza's top cowhand.