NO. U.S. RECOGNITION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22362, 21 June 1947, Page 5

NO. U.S. RECOGNITION

NICARAGUA COUP D'ETAT WASHINGTON, June 19. The State Department has announced that the United States will refuse to recognise or maintain diplomatic relations with the new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua, which seized power after a bloodless revolution last month. A State Department spokesman said informal discussions on this with the other American Republics had been concluded, and he understood that the United States’ views on this matter were generally shared. Nicaragua’s perennial dictator Anastasio Somoza, aged 51, who reappeared last month, had been president-dictator from 1937 to May this year, but did not seek re-eiection. Instead he backed Dr. Leonard Arguello’s certain election. Within a couple of weeks Dr. Arguello disclosed hitherto closely-guarded ambitions and went so far as to suggest that Somoza should leave the country. Somoza beckoned up the army, seized Arguello and established a military government. Somoza installed one of his wife's relatives, Benjamin Sacassa as provisional president. A Sacassa had been president in 1936 when Somoza overthrew him. _ The United States stepped in and appointed a provisional president until the elections. Somoza was elected without opposition. The Meddlers It was the second time that .the United States had meddled in Nicaraguan affairs. President Calvin Coolidge had sent marines there to quell a revolution in 1925. The marines stayed until 1933. and as a consequence, Nicaragua became the most Americanised of all the Central American countries. Somoza, who describes himself as a benevolent dictator, and is assessed as •‘the cleverest politician between the Rio Grande and the Panama Canal,” rules his 750,000 subjects, 60 per cent, of them illiterate peons, from a pscudoMoorlsh palace above sweltering Managua. In his benevolence, he has occasionally tossed a bone to the peons, granted workers shorter hours and better conditions (a peon’s pay is still about is a day).