Call All Trulls

A procession of dignified, black-clad women streamed through the streets of Managua last month. Elderly mothers, respectable wives and daughters thus protested the mass arrest of more than 600 opponents of Dictator Anastasio Somoza. But ingenious "Tacho" Somoza broke up their demonstration with a more effective one.

Out of the Managua slums rushed mobs of prostitutes. They pressed around the horrified women and girls, slapped them, spat at them. Male relatives came to the rescue, dispersed the screaming trulls. Then, from an official Government auto jumped skinny, blue-eyed Nicolasa Sevilla, owner of a cut-rate brothel. Threatening the older women with a knife, she spluttered filth at the prettier girls.

Tacho having gained his point, the harlotry receded into the slums. But the President invited Nicolasa to the Palace, called her "his very good friend," introduced her to outraged callers. She invaded the Chamber of Deputies, slapped a speaker. Given the run of two pro-Government newspapers, she flooded their columns with signed obscenities vilifying Managua society.

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