Somoza Debayle

American  

[saw-maw-sah the-vahy-le, suh-moh-zuh duh-bahy-ley, -moh-suh] / sɔˈmɔ sɑ ðɛˈvaɪ lɛ, səˈmoʊ zə dəˈbaɪ leɪ, -ˈmoʊ sə /

noun

1. Anastasio 1925–80, Nicaraguan army officer, businessman, and political leader: president 1967–72, 1974–79 (brother of Luis Somoza Debayle).

2. Luis 1922–67, Nicaraguan political leader: president 1957–63.

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Example Sentences

Reichler considers Ortega “even more effective” at stifling opposition than Anastasio Somoza Debayle had been.

From Washington Post • Apr. 13, 2022

In the nineteen-seventies, he and Ortega were comrades, leaders of the insurrection against the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, whose family had run the country for four decades.

From The New Yorker • Aug. 27, 2018

Further investigation might reveal that Estelí is a city in northern Nicaragua, and that in early 1979, a popular struggle by the Sandinistas to unseat the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle was gaining strength.

From New York Times • May 24, 2018

Lawrence Pezzullo, an American diplomat who brokered the 1979 resignation of Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle, whose family had ruled the country for more than four decades, died July 26 at his home in Baltimore.

From Washington Post • Aug. 3, 2017

He likened Najibullah's situation to that of Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, shortly before the ruler was overthrown.

From Time Magazine Archive