Word: guardia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Newark and Jersey City, much of the state retained a rural character until the opening of the George Washington Bridge in 1931. New Jersey suited the underworld's needs perfectly. The Hudson River separated its members from the tough law enforcement of New York racketbusters like Fiorello La Guardia, Thomas Dewey and, more recently, Frank Hogan. Neither police forces nor local government had caught up with the state's sudden population growth. To make matters worse, officials were only too eager to accommodate the free-spending gangsters...
...plot seemed to have been stolen from O. Henry's Cabbages and Kings. The action was confined mainly to the Guardia Nacional, the swaggering 5,000-man force that defends, polices and -nowadays-governs the tiny country of 1.3 million. Until problems of pride and suspicions of graft arose, Torrijos had been close to the two rebellious colonels. One of them, mustachioed Colonel Ramiro Silvera, 42, had spent much of his career as Panama's top traffic cop before becoming Torrijos' No. 2 man in the Guardia. The other plotter, popular Colonel Amado Sanjur, 38, was Silvera...
...tossed aboard a plane to Florida, where he now works as a filling station attendant. Evidently fearing similar treatment, Silvera and Sanjur decided to move first. With Torrijos out of town, they summoned the puppet provisional President, Colonel José Pinilla, and his Vice President, Colonel Bolivar Urrutia. to Guardia headquarters. Torrijos was finished, they announced. His crime? He had indulged in personalismo (building a "personality cult...
...might have been a textbook coup. The obvious dissidents were carted off to jail. The radio stations broadcast the news calmly, and there was no panic in the streets. But the colonels had miscalculated in one vital area: most of the Guardia remained loyal to the tough, personable 40-year-old general, who had promoted many of the junior officers...
Even as the colonels reshuffled Torrijos' Cabinet, rival Guardia officers prepared to bring their chief back. Next day, word came from Mexico City: 'Torrijos is returning." On that signal, 14 truckloads of Guardsmen roared out of a garrison at outlying Tocumen Airport. Some fanned out over the country, others sped into Panama City and pulled up at the dingy, Victorian Guardia headquarters. After a bit of harmless shooting, Sanjur and Silvera were led off to jail...