In 1956 Anastasio Somoza, who had resumed the presidency, was assassinated. He was succeeded by his son, Luis Somoza Debayle, who first served out his father's term and was then elected in his own right. For four years after the end of his term, close associates, rather than the Somozas themselves, held the presidency. Then, in 1967, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, younger son of the former dictator, was elected president. A military-minded autocrat, he repressed opposition with the aid of the National Guard.
In August 1971, the legislature abrogated the constitution and dissolved itself. In elections to a constituent assembly in February 1972, Somoza's Liberal party won decisively. In May, Somoza stepped down to the post of chief of the armed forces; political control was assumed by a triumvirate of two Liberals and one Conservative.
On December 23, 1972, the city of Managua was virtually leveled by earthquake; about 6000 were killed and 20,000 injured. Martial law was declared, and Somoza in effect became chief executive again. He was formally elected president in 1974.
In early 1978 Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of the Managua newspaper La Prensa and long the most vocal of Somoza's opponents, was assassinated. Somoza was accused of complicity in the act, and the country was plunged into a period of violence that became a virtual civil war. The anti-Somoza forces were led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a guerrilla group formed in 1962 and named for Augusto Sandino.
By April 1979, the country was in chaos. Trying to prevent another Communist regime (in addition to Cuba) in the hemisphere, the United States urged Somoza to resign in favor of a moderate coalition. He stepped down on July 17, flying to exile first in Miami, Florida, then in Paraguay, where he was assassinated in 1980.
The Sandinistas named a junta to govern the country. Facing enormous difficulties, they tried, initially with U.S. aid, to stimulate the economy, but the United States soon became wary of their left-wing policies and, accusing them of abetting rebels in El Salvador, cut off its aid in 1981 and began to support an anti-Sandinista guerrilla movement, known as the contras. In 1982, Nicaragua signed an aid pact with the USSR.
In elections held in November 1984, the Sandinista presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, won by a large margin and totally dominated his opposition. In October 1985, he declared a yearlong state of emergency under which civil rights were suspended. U.S. military aid to the guerrillas was voted down in the Congress of the United States in 1985, and was not resumed until October 1986.
In November 1986, however, it was reported that the contras had benefited from funds diverted from payments made for secret arms sales to Iran by the United States while official military aid to the contras was suspended. In March 1988 at their first face-to-face peace talks, the contras and the Sandinistas agreed to a temporary truce.
This incident relates to the cold war in the way that the United States stepped in to fight Communism. The struggle against Communism was one of the main instigators of the cold war and caused much turmoil in the world. This force against communism leads eventually to tension over arms buildup and the possibility of nuclear war emerges. The death of Chamorro, because he opposed openly the ideals of the government, did not sit well with the general population. The fact that when the US withdrew its economical services from Nicaragua they seek help from US opposition also ties this to the cold war.
