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Spokesmen for Somoza insist that the bishops' charges are grossly exaggerated. Many campesinos, they explain, have not been killed, but simply fled their homes to avoid the fighting. U.S. Ambassador James Theberge, however, takes the reports seriously: "We have reason to believe that some of the allegations of human rights violations are accurate, and our concern has been made clear to the Nicaraguan government on various occasions in the past year."
Critics of the Somoza family's corrupt, baronial, four-decade reign hope that the Carter Administration will make that concern more explicit. Says a leading opposition member: "Nicaragua is a case where Carter can show that his advocacy of human rights is not just words. That is why Somoza is so nervous." Should the Administration choose to act, it has substantial leverage. Nicaragua's National Guard relies on U.S. weapons and is scheduled to receive $2.5 million in military sales credits in fiscal 1977. Loss of that aid is something that the American-trained Tachito Somoza (West Point, '46) would surely like to avoid.
* Named for Augusto Cesar Sandino, a guerrilla leader who fought against occupying U.S. Marines in the late 1920s and was executed in 1934 by the founder of Nicaragua's ruling dynasty, Tachito's father Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Garcia.