In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx referred to the Napoleonic return to power in the French coup of 1851 as “first as tragedy, then as farce.” There could be no more fitting a characterization of the saga of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's conversion — in about as many years as had lapsed from the fall of the first Napoleon Bonaparte to the coup carried out by his nephew Louis —from a socialist revolutionary to a repressive and corrupt petty dictator.
(Archived document, may contain errors) 281 August 2, 1983 THE" PLO'S GROWING LATIN AMERICAN BASE INTRODUCTION At one time, the Monroe Doctrine shielded Latin America from interference by nations outside the Western Hemisphere. In recent decades, however, the Doctrine has been violated so repeat- edly that in effect it has been repealed. The Soviet Union has established a garrison in Cuba, while Eastern bloc states have joined Moscow in creating a base of ope rations in Nicaragua and Grenada.