Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero (born 1 February 1951) is a Nicaraguan American colonel and businessman.
Early life and education
Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero was born on December 18, 1951, in Miami, Florida, United States. A member of the Somoza family, he is a son of former Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza Debayle and Hope Portocarrero; he is also a grandson of Anastasio Somoza García. Also known as El Chigüín—"The little child”—Somoza Portocarrero had been the heir apparent to the Somoza family regime prior to the ouster of his father by the Marxist Sandinistas in 1979. By early 1978, Somoza Portocarrero had reportedly taken on the appellation "apprentice dictator" and assumed full control of the Somozas' estimated $1 billion business empire, however, by mid-1979 the family had fallen from power and would be forced into exile.
He was educated in the United States, including at Kent School in Kent, Connecticut, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in England, at Sandhurst. His sister, Carolina, is married to James Minskoff Sterling, son of New York real estate developer Henry H. Minskoff.
Career
He became a colonel in the Nicaraguan military, which was run by his family. and a June 1981 trial that convicted nine people of the crime implicated him but did not go as far as naming him as a defendant in absentia. In 1980, Sandinista officials also issued a warrant for Somoza Portocarrero's arrest on charges that he embezzled $4 million in governmental funds (via dummy corporations) while his father was still in power. He was living in Miami at the time,
False reports that Somoza Portocarrero might return to Nicaragua in 2000 after over twenty years in exile led to an uproar in that country. Former Sandinista President Daniel Ortega suggested that Somoza Portocarrero "will be able to enter Managua, but I doubt he will be able to leave because I will confront him with gunshots." Sitting President Arnoldo Alemán—whose own political party in part grew out of the old Somoza party—said that Nicaraguans "reject the announced visit of Somoza Portocarrero, whom public opinion considers one of those principally responsible for the destruction, suffering, violations and spilling of blood dramatically suffered by Nicaraguans throughout their history."