A political killing touches off another Managua earthquake
Five years after the earthquake that killed 10,000 people and sent office buildings tumbling into one another like falling dominoes, the downtown area of Nicaragua's capital city of Managua is still a semi-ghost town of empty lots and damaged structures. But the streets are passable again and often clogged with traffic. Thus Newspaper Publisher-Editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, 53, was driving at a leisurely pace last week as he headed from home on one side of the city toward his office on the other at La Prensa, the country's largest newspaper (circ. 30,000). Because he was driving so slowly, Chamorro was unable to escape when another car that had been following his Saab suddenly drew abreast. Shotguns were poked from the window of the car, and a series of blasts struck Chamorro. His car went out of control, jumped a curb and struck a lamppost. Rushed to a hospital by medics who first assumed he had been in an auto accident, Central America's best-known newsman died on the examining table.
For 30 years Chamorro had been a relentless critic of Strongman Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza and his family, who have ruled the nation for more than four oppressive decades. His death caused a political earthquake in Nicaragua, and his funeral quickly dissolved into a political event. A crowd swelling to 40,000 followed the coffin from the hospital mortuary to Chamorro's home and then to La Prensa's office. The angry marchers moved on to burn a Somoza-owned textile mill and a commercial blood bank that Chamorro had exposed for selling Nicaraguan blood abroad at a lucrative profit. Some stoned a police station; the cops responded by lobbing tear gas into La Prensa's building. The crowds shouted "Death to Somoza!" and "Down with Yankee imperialism!" Among a score of buildings set afire was an American bank. To forestall further rioting, the government pressured Chamorro's family to bury him ahead of schedule.
Chamorro's supporters blamed Somoza for the shooting. They had good cause to suspect him. Ever since the two were eight-year-old schoolboys, Chamorro and Somoza had been enemies. In those days, Somoza told TIME last week, they fought because Chamorro's family paper "kept attacking my dad, and I couldn't stand for that." Dad was Anastasio the elder, who took over the country in 1936. After his assassination in 1956, his son Luis became Jefe, and after Luis' death in 1967, Tacho succeeded him. Those childish schoolyard battles were merely the start of Chamorro's lifelong crusade to unseat the dynasty he would one day describe as "permanent parasites, stealing and corrupting everything in sight." Chamorro became a student agitator at the University of Managua, followed that with a brief adventure as a guerrilla leader who tried to take on Luis Somoza's Guardia Nacional with a thin band of insurgents. He was sentenced to a nine-year prison term for his abortive rebellion. After serving 18 months, he was released in a general amnesty.