Bracing for the Aftershocks

Even as smoke still curled above the ruins of Managua, Nicaraguans were already beginning to contemplate recovery from the devastating pre-Christmas earthquake that flattened 80% of the city. Restoration of the country's capital--the home, until the quake, of 400,000 of Nicaragua's 2,000,000 population--now poses both problems and opportunities for the family that had dictator ially governed the country for 40 years. TIME Correspondent David DeVoss toured the ravaged city last week and sent this report:

"GODDAMMIT!" shouted a handsome figure in tailored army fatigues at Managua's Las Mercedes Airport. "What I need is some concertina wire. The U.S. gives me everything but concertina wire." The impatient young man was Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, 22, a senior at Harvard University, son of and heir apparent to Nicaragua's ruling strongman, General Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Debayle, 47. Summoned from a Manhattan debutante party to help with the relief effort, young Somoza stood atop a stack of Sears camping tents, surrounded by crates of Canada Dry, boxes of baby food and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

There is no shortage of food in Managua; the only problem last week was that most of it was piled up in an airport hangar far away from the hungry and homeless of the city. A bevy of Red Cross volunteers and unctuous army officers waited to do young Somoza's bidding; for the moment, he had other things on his mind, namely his misplaced automobile. "Where is my car?" he demanded. "I want the person who took it arrested immediately," he said, and ran off in search of the culprit. Silence. Since nothing could be done without a Somoza signature, all relief activity stopped for a while.

The scene was much the same at Tachito Somoza's hilltop estate in Managua's El Retiro section. Nicaraguan generals, journalists and crew-cut American hucksters panting to sell prefab housing units milled about one day last week waiting for an audience with the general. Somoza's American wife Hope, a striking woman dressed in a red bandanna, print blouse and tight black slacks, directed Red Cross activities from beneath a shade tree. The mood was relaxed and restrained--even though 3,000 Managuans are known to be dead, another 4,000 were buried alive when the earthquake struck, and hundreds lie wounded. More than 120,000 still cling to their shattered homes in Managua despite the absence of water, food and electricity.

The scope and spontaneity of the relief effort has been astonishing. Nicaragua has received food from Europe, medical supplies from Latin America and aid of all kinds from the U.S. Government and private American contributors like Pittsburgh Pirates Outfielder Roberto Clemente, who died in the crash of a relief plane bound for Managua from Puerto Rico (see SPORT). In some cases, the U.S. effort has not been as effective or as widely noticed as it might be. While a 185-man Army medical team from the 21st Evacuation Hospital based in Fort Hood, Texas, operated in a barbed-wire-enclosed compound in a meadow in front of Somoza's El Retiro residence, a team of 50 Cuban doctors and paramedics worked in the densely populated Managua barrio of Maximo Jerez. The result was that while U.S. medics were seeing 250 patients per day, Cubans were treating about 1,000.

Though minor tremors continue almost daily, Nicaraguans are beginning to wonder and worry most about the possible political aftershocks of the big quake. Since Franklin Roosevelt pulled out the Marines in 1933, ending 25 years of more or less direct U.S. intervention in the country, Nicaragua has lived in reasonable contentment under the strong but benevolent and relatively progressive rule of the Somozas--first Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Garcia, an adventurer who was cut down by an assassin in 1956, then his son Luis (who died in 1967) and now Luis' brother Tachito.

Tachito is one of the richest men in Central America. He has extensive holdings in, among other things, cotton, coffee, shipping, fishing, Nicaragua's Lanica airlines and neighboring Costa Rica, where he is the largest foreign landowner. He is a regular contributor to American political campaigns; this year his cattle ranches will export 25 million lbs. of meat to the U.S. Before the quake hit, Tachito was hoping to spend the next two years or so on his country's political sidelines. Because Nicaragua's constitution bars him from immediately succeeding himself to a second five-year term as President, So moza last spring relinquished power for 2 1/2 years to a three-man junta. Though the junta is headed by a compliant mem ber of the Conservative opposition, it is in fact controlled by its two Somoza loyalists, both members of his Liberal Party. They would keep the general's place warm until 1974, when he was to come down from the bleachers and run for another five-year presidential term.

Managua's tragedy has forced Tachito to re-emerge far ahead of schedule. As boss of the 5,000-man national guard, which is running the country under martial law, he is fully visible. Once again, he has become the target of rival politicians, restive students and even some businessmen who resent his one-man rule. "He has everything now," complains Javier Zavala, editor of a pro-Conservative paper. To a large extent, Somoza's future now depends on how he deals with the problems of reconstructing the city.

When Managua was first built in 1858--over the same 30-mile-wide fault area that was to shake it to rubble three times in the next 114 years--it was a creature of compromise. The site was chosen to end a stalemated battle between what were then Nicaragua's two principal cities, Granada (pop. 48,000) and Leon (pop. 80,000), for the honor of serving as the capital. After the city was wrecked for the second time in 1931, the old Granada-Leon battle resumed, but government planners argued successfully for Managua's reconstruction. Their principal argument:

Lake Managua, 38 miles long, was perfect for a big city's sewage.

Parochialism. The pre-Christmas quake has revived the old rivalries. To illustrate its contempt for the efficiency of Somoza's Managua-based administration, Granada sent out its own ham radio call for aid; sure enough, a few days later a plane from Houston landed at Las Mercedes loaded with food and medical supplies marked for transshipment to Granada. On a less parochial level, many Nicaraguans agree with Managua Architect Samuel Barreto that a new capital should be located elsewhere if only to "spread the life of the nation throughout the country."

The odds are that the new capital will be built--perhaps with wider streets and lower, quake-resistant buildings --on the rubble of the old. Survivors are already starting to return to their jobs; 70% of the Managua area's industry survived the quake. Somoza's dreams of a $1 billion reconstruction effort may not be farfetched; the first trickle of what promises to be a torrent of foreign aid began last week with a $12.5 million loan from the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. Says Wendell Belew, Commercial Affairs attache in the U.S. embassy: "We might even see an economic boom in a few months with all the construction that will be going on."

Perhaps. But the operative fact now, as Nicaraguan Public Works Minister Cristobal Rugama describes it, is simply that "everyone here loves Managua, especially now that it is a shrine." That apparently goes for General Somoza too. "I'm not moving," he told me late one night. "I built my house according to specifications so that it would stand up in quakes. There's only one crack in my house. Why should I move?"

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