Somoza García, Anastasio Britain returned to the interior in 1920 and began a series of administrative and social reforms that were halted by World War II In 1925 Jubaland, a region in Kenya, was added to Italian Somalia Shortly before World War II Italian-speaking regions of Ethiopia were joined with the Somali territories to become Italian East Africa During the war Somalia saw a great deal of fighting, with the British taking control of the Italian districts and ruling a combined Somaliland Protectorate from 1941 until 1950, when the Italian districts came under the auspices of the United Nations In 1956 Italian Somaliland was granted autonomy, and in 1960 it was granted total independence In the same year Britain gave its ill-prepared protectorate independence At the time, Somaliland had only one secondary school and only a few college-educated individuals An infrastructure was almost nonexistent, and the indirect rule system used by Britain had not trained Somalis for positions of authority For a period after 1960 Somalia and Somaliland were united as the United Republic of Somalia Further reading: Lewis, I M The Modern History of Somaliland: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa New York: F A Praeger, 1965; Turnbill, Colin M Africa and Change New York: Knopf, 1973 Jean Shepherd Hamm Somoza García, Anastasio (1896–1956) Nicaraguan president and dictator Founder of the Somoza dynasty, which ruled Nicaragua for 43 years (1936–1979), Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza García became chief director of the Nicaraguan National Guard (Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua) in November 1932, despite his lack of military experience His rise to political and military prominence can be attributed primarily to his political and family connections and his capacity to charm U.S policy makers with his fluency in English Born in San Marcos, Nicaragua, to a wealthy Liberal coffee planter, in his teens he traveled to Philadelphia to live with relatives There he honed his English skills, taking classes at the Pierce School of Business Administration In Philadelphia he also met his future wife, Salvadora Debayle Sacasa, a member of one of Nicaragua’s most prominent Liberal families Returning to Nicaragua, he engaged in a number of unsuccessful business enterprises, including a stint as a used car salesman With the outbreak of 355 civil war in 1926, he joined the Liberals on the side of ousted president Juan Bautista Sacasa, his wife’s uncle A minor Liberal chieftain who led a failed assault on the Conservative garrison at San Marcos, he gained prominence in U.S military and diplomatic circles by serving as interpreter during U.S.-brokered negotiations between Liberal and Conservative factions Under the administration of José María Moncada (1928–1932), he was appointed governor (jefe político) of Ln department and later foreign minister and consul to Costa Rica Principally by ingratiating himself with U.S officials and exploiting his family ties, by 1932 he had become the assistant director of the Guardia Nacional, whose main task was suppressing the six-year insurrection led by nationalist rebel leader Augusto C Sandino in the mountainous north After being appointed director of the National Guard on the strong recommendation of U.S ambassador Matthew E Hanna, Somoza engaged in a series of unsuccessful peace talks with Sandino On February 21, 1934, in the capital city of Managua, he had Sandino and members of his entourage assassinated, soon followed by a series of massacres of Sandino’s supporters, most notably at the Río Coco cooperative near the Honduran border Tensions mounted between Somoza and President Sacasa, elected in 1932 In June 1936, Somoza orchestrated a coup against Sacasa and in December, in a rigged election, was elected president with over 99.9 percent of the vote The same year he published an important book, The True Sandino (El verdadero Sandino), demonizing Sandino as a criminal psychopath After 1936 his Nationalist Liberal Party dominated the country’s politics His regime can be characterized as a populist, patrimonial dictatorship that ruled through a combination of shrewd co-optation and violent suppression of opposition Amassing enormous wealth through exploiting his political power, by the mid-1940s he had become the country’s largest landowner, in part by expropriating the properties of German nationals A staunch ally of the United States in World War II, he responded to mounting domestic opposition in 1944 by reorganizing his ruling bloc, permitting limited opposition, and orchestrating the passage of a progressive labor code in 1945 intended to defuse opposition among the country’s incipient urban working class In the late 1940s he ruled through a number of puppet presidents elected in his stead (Leonardo Argüello, Benjamin Lacayo Sacasa, and Victor Román Reyes) until his rigged reelection in 1950 On September 21, 1956, the poet Rigoberto López Pérez shot him dead in the city of León He was succeeded by his sons Luis