NationStates Jolt Archive

San Rosado, 1966

A brass band kicked out a merry tune under falling confetti as the troops marched by in uniforms crisp as their step and somebody called, "Eyes right!" in Spanish. President Agapito Pizzi, clad in brilliant white military-style uniform, saluted from his balcony as the men passed.

"Ah, what a day!" He said with only a slight accent, "Sixty years of co-operation between the Republic of Costa Paz and your United States! Sixty years of my people sitting upon an artery of international commerce! Sixty years of the Panama Canal, and may sixty more happy years follow!"

The Quinntonian ambassador was handed another ridiculously fruity cocktail and a second waiter appeared with a platter of fresh shrimp.

"Whatever is that?" Pizzi asked of his attendant as he looked towards a column of smoke rising from the outskirts of his capital city. "The fireworks aren't due to start for two hours." He sounded extremely quizzical!

102nd Company Barracks, Southern District, San Rosado

"...by the Army of the People and in the name of the Revolution!" Crack! a .455" round departed its cylinder home and buried itself in the skull of Lieutenant Amor, the only officer left at the barracks after Captain Ortega marched three-quarters of the company's strength into the city centre to take part in the day's festivities.

"All of you may go. Go on! Don't make me reconsider!" The revolutionary waved his revolver at a line of twelve semi-naked men stripped of their army uniforms and weapons, and shouted again as they jostled through the gates in disorder, unsure of where to go but certainly keen to escape Amor's fate.

Five olive-clad citizens followed them out after a few moments and made for the trees, weighed-down with rifles and boots taken from the barracks and dragging a typically uncooperative mule bearing two crates of ammunition.

The Army of the People of Costa Paz had made itself known. The 102nd's barracks was burning and five upstarts -two of them women- had humiliated an entire company and killed one of its officers before getting clear with twenty Garand rifles and several hundred rounds of .30" ammunition, plus a bag of grenades, a couple of M1911 automatics, and three Tommy Guns.

Apparently there are some in the Republic who are not enamored of the investment that President Pizzi's administration has brought to the Costa Pazan elite, nor satisfied with his authoritarian government's relaxed attitude to use of profits from the Panama Canal. Posters in the capital soon explained this. How strange that seems to the premier of the coast of peace!

Port Royal

His Majesty's Ship Ark Royal was the last of a dying breed. She had been laid down in 1943 to wipe the Nazi fleet from the seas, and managed to require exactly seven years of construction time. She flew the White Ensign of the Royal Navy in an age when the Stars and Stripes symbolized power and the Union Jack stood only for decay.

Even so, the Ark Royal and her task force spent a fair bit of time showing the flag across the globe. Port Royal was only the latest stop on a trip that had included New York, Brest, Gibraltar and Port Said. The small fleet was slated to visit St. Paul, Australasia and then begin the long trek across the Pacific ocean that would end in Singapore. Southeast Asia was about to blow wide open once again, and the Lords Admiral in Their eternal wisdom desired that the Ark and her fleet be present to get in the way of the Quinntonians.

The King's representative and Officer Commanding, one Commodore Stephen Trewett, was enjoying a pleasant afternoon in one of the more upscale Port Royal bars, smoking a cigar with a Roycelandian captain and trading stories of Imperial police actions past. He was a tall, lanky man who looked good in RN whites, and seemed to be emblematic of the Royal Navy in this new era. Trewett had joined the Senior Service as a young man, expecting to fight a Second Trafalgar against the Soviets one day. Much to his surprise and indignation, the navy that he joined was rather more mundane than all that, and seemed to exist only to provide the United States with North Sea patrol capabilities.

So when he was approached by a harried looking aide with a manila folder, Trewett rather expected to be presented with an over-budget bill for the Ark's stores. Much to his surprise, it was a coded dispatch from the Lords Admiral in Their Eternal Wisdom. Said message detailed that he was to recall all off-duty personnel and proceed to Costa Paz, Panama Canal for possible peacekeeping duties.

Hmph! And he'd been looking forward to finishing his cigar!

Had it come at any other time the attack on the 102nd would likely have brought about little response from the authorities. Pizzi was used to watching over a country defined by corruption, inequality, and all the strife that these things fostered. The death of a single low-ranking officer was not amazing, nor was the theft (more usually illegal sale) of a few firearms.

But the smoke of the barracks ablaze had drifted over the high-profile Canal Day parade with all the Quinntonian press attending. It was horrible publicity and had knocked a few hundred thousand dollars off Costa Paz's tourism takings for 1966, and caused US-owned United Seafood and Roycelandian-owned Imperial Mahogany to question the security of shrimp sorting and rifle-stock shaping plants in the country.

President Pizzi quickly outlawed the Army of the People and all advocation of the group, its actions, and its aims, and several pamphleteers were gaoled in the weeks following Canal Day.

The rebels did little else for some days, retreating to the uplands of the north-centre and hiding out in hopes of lulling the authorities back into a false sense of security, or else maddening them with frustration and provking over-reaction that would worsen their image in the eyes of the masses. That was what Captain Baltasar Soto believed and keenly espoused to his quartet of comrades as they waited halfway up a volcano for the national army to come looking.

To hear Soto speak one would believe him commander of two tank divisions and a couple of airborne brigades, not two downtrodden peasants and two middle class malcontents, for he seemed unquestionably certain of impending victory and the liberation of Costa Paz from the corrupt misrule of government after vote-rigging government.

Most of the population was unhappy with its lot, but the Army of the People had a lot to do if it wanted them to rise up in arms...

The captain of the Roycelandian Dreadnought IRNS James Bond had been rather enjoying the cigar with his Australasian counterpart when an aide had discreetly sidled in, placed a manila folder next to his bourbon glass, and slipped out again, all in a manner so discreet as to make the casual observer wonder if the folder hadn't always been there.

Both Captains made their apologies and returned to their respective ships to supervise the taking on of stores and preparations for sailing to Central America.

The aviation crew were loading one of the Seafire Turboprop fighters onto the catapults positioned over the forward and rear gun turrets as the Captain arrived.

"Make sure the catapult safety is on! The securing pin is a bit loose, so don't engage the retaining arm unless..." Before the quartermaster could finish, there was a loud hiss of steam and the unpiloted Seafire was launched off the forward turret catapult, sailing gracefully for over a kilometre out into Port Royal Harbour, before splashing spectacularly into the water not all that far from an unsuspecting steamship. The photo made the front page of the Port Royal Times, although all anyone present at the time could muster was a hearty, solid, and simultaneously uttered "FUCK!".

Fortunately, both the Emperor and the Imperial Maritime Air Service saw the funny side of it (after all, it's not every day that a fighter plane gets catapulted into the capital city's harbour!), and the replacement Seafire arrived that afternoon with an oilskin raincoat on the pilot's seat, much to everyone's amusement...

Golfo de los Mosquitos

Santa Clara, second largest of the Republic's modest fleet of merchant vessels, out of New Orleans and bound for Panama City. She wasn't making great speed and had radioed ahead to indicate a problem with her propulsion. The captain had ordered half the usual revolutions but assured Panama that he would arrive, just a little late.

Good fortune for the Army of the People, which had decided to attack the Santa Clara even before the problem arose. In fact they almost missed her, and wondered for a time if she'd passed them in the night.

The attack was lead personally by Baltasar Soto, partly because the Army of the People still contained only seven people and that didn't leave much room for anyone to stay behind.

A speedboat, seven rebels with sub-machineguns and pistols, some lifeboats, and a fire that would gut the merchant and send her, gradually, to the bottom.

Soto's gang got away with more than twelve million dollars worth of brand new military hardware just purchased from the United States. M1 Carbines and BARs, rifle grenades, ammunition, radio sets, it was a disaster for Pizzi and his Coast Guard failed to arrive in nearly enough time.

The President, declaring a national emergency, ordered four companies of the national army to converge on the coastal area near to which the Santa Clara was attacked, sending two over land and two in amphibious landings.
A do or die moment for the Costa Pazan revolution?

OOC-I really want to get in on this, as it seems cool, but I don't really understand what is happening, could someone give me a once over?
WWJD
Amen.

OOC: Well, it appears that, in the 1960s, Costa Paz, consisting presumably of Costa Rica and Panama, under a right-wing election-stealing government friendly to the US and Roycelandia, is facing an attempted insurrection that as yet is having success beyond its proportions but is failing to court popular support. The Soviets would take an interest, but they haven't even over-thrown Llewellyn, yet, and Llewellyn would take an interest but he's busy fighting the INU.

OOC-Just wanted to establish what elements I would have in the area.

IC-Captain R. L. Johnson was in command of his aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal (CV-59). He had been ordered to move into Roycelandian territory with a small escort, and proceed to Port Royal, where he would meet with a small Carrier and Dreadnaught Group of the Imperial Roycelandian Navy for “interoperability maneuvers.” You never knew when the Ruskies were going to try and swallow half the planet in one of their damn fool quests, after all. And it would not do to not be able to act as one with your allies at that time. So, he gathered up his escort around him off the coast of Louisiana, and after ordering only a symbolic CAP into the air of two F-4 Phantoms, he butted out his perpetual cigarette in the ashtray that the designers had so thoughtfully placed in the Command and Control station of the bridge and took the radio, “All escorts are hereby placed under my command for the duration of this exercise by the order of the Minister of Defense, and the Commander of the Navy. You are to proceed with tarps covering your guns into Roycelandian territory and head for Port Royal at a speed not exceeding 20 knots. That is all. God bless.”

Well, it was time once again for this old girl to show the flag at a foreign capitol. And so she steamed forward surrounded by her small escort, with two of her 90 birds in the air.

1 Forrestal Class Aircraft Carrier (90 aircraft, mostly F-4 Phantom IIs)-USS Forrestal
1 Fletcher Class Destroyer-USS Stephen Potter (commissioned in 1943)
1 Charles F. Adams Class Destroyer-USS Henry B. Wilson (commissioned in 1960)
1 Baltimore Class Cruiser-USS Los Angeles (commissioned in 1945)
1 Bronstein Class Frigate-USS McCloy (commissioned in 1963, October)

Of course, when it came to naval exercises with the Rioks, they were only impressed by one thing, big gunships, and so the USS New Jersey, an Iowa Class Battleship, was going to loiter in the area in case the Riok commander and his government relented and allowed the big lady to come and play on their operations.

And so, this small, but powerful fleet moved towards the Roik territory, oblivious of the goings on in Central America.

WWJD
Amen.

OOC: Might as well post my 'fleet', just so we're clear.

1 Audacious class CV, HMS Ark Royal (R09)
1 County class DD, HMS London (D16)
3 Leander class FFG, HMS Euryalus (F15) HMS Ajax (F114) HMS Phoebe (F42)
2 Oberon class SSK, HMS Oberon (S09) HMS Onslaught (S14)

Baltasar Soto and his revolutionaries had been running, and hiding, for four days, barely eating or sleeping as they, fourteen strong, tried to evade and wear-down two hundred of Pizzi's soldiers. The Army of the People had barely enough resources to ensure the safe storage of the loot from Santa Clara.

One of the men was badly wounded, his handicap, in light of the numeric mismatch, rather negating the slaying of two soldiers and crippling of a third by revolutionaries who split into two tiny squads in an effort to confuse and chip away at the larger enemy.

The revolution was fundamentally troubled.

And then a Cecilia Campos took charge of the effort to save the Costa Pazan revolution. "The people don't rise up because they don't even know what we stand for!" that, simple as it may be, was her most important observation.

1967 and arresting Baltasar Soto was starting to seem like a bad idea, in hindsight.

"You should have killed him, Agapito!" The shrill voice of Cecilia Campos, speaker for the revolution, now broadcasting from some remote jungle reach of Limon, mocks the President's once gleeful decision to parade and then cage the leader of the Army of the People, repeating the claim each week to a few more radio listeners than the last time.

She was probably right. During the time that Pizzi had spent gloating over his long-time-coming defeat of a band of hardly more than a dozen clueless rebels Campos -one of only a few to escape capture- had got the movement into some sort of organisation. She was almost drawing up a revolutionary constitution of a sort, letting people know that the Army of the People wanted to kick-out Roycelandian mahogany, Quinntonian fruit, and Elian mineral prospecting companies, to engage in land reform, to remove Pizzi as head of the military as well as the government, and a few other vague things.

People tended to approve, and were inclined to see Pizzi's childlike glee at such a sorry victory as a sign of a further character flaw.

Now Soto was a bit of a folk hero and it was too late to execute him.

Pizzi was spending more and more time wringing his hands and wondering if he should call Port Royal or Washington. "Well, what could they suggest, anyway, that I haven't already thought of?" he wondered.

Port Royal is taking a keen interest in the current situation- there seem to be rather a lot of europeans in white suits and fedoras in town lately, after all...

OOC-Did we just jump a year?

WWJD
Amen.

Baltasar awoke with a wince and a groan, moving slowly to sit up and orient himself. He was cold, but that was usual for a prisoner such as he... the damp was a new one on him. His face showed the pain in his head as he righted himself. Ah! And suddenly he leaps to his feet, flailing wildly and tearing at his shirt. Soto, having thrown whatever creepy-crawly it was from his collar to the ground, takes a moment to laugh at himself before staggering and looking, wide eyed, to the earthen ground across which the creature scrambles.

"Jesus." He whispers, almost afraid that a guard might hear and ruin it.

"I'm outside!"

A paper in his pocket... wait, it is his pocket, his old shirt, not his prison-issue fatigues. It reads... in fixed type... it reads strangely indeed. Baltasar Soto, you are hear-by pardoned... hills west of... on condition that... and don't come back. What on earth?

Better start walking... one direction or another.

In months to come there is some fuss over Soto's release, but the fact that he was driven out at night and exiled to the countryside in which his bandits ran wild robbed the country of a chance to celebrate on the prison steps. Soto's revolution became a curiosity once more, a few reporters tracking him down for a picture, but to a result less grand than might have been the case. The fickle cities haven't quite got their kind of hero, yet, and the Army of the People can continue to cause a bit of trouble in the hills and forests if they must.

Agapito Pizzi is content to let the Roycelandians continue logging and the Quinntonians to continue canning seafood and managing the canal, satisfied that, as yet, the AoP has never attacked a major foreign concern. He keeps his soldiers bottled up in the cities in numbers greater than the rebels ever dared to attack, and lets Royce police the forest and Washington the waterways. The President lives a little more Roycelandian every day, and keeps his troops happy with new Quinntonian submachine-guns and Roycelandian COIN aircraft (with which to occassionally punish pro-rebel sentiment in the sticks).

In fact, Agapito is so keen to see his big foreign friends prepared to take-up the slack left by his unwillingess to send forces where rebels may shoot at them that he has recently told the Roycelandian ambassador of the true depth of his nation's support for the struggle against communism in Indochina and of his desire to contribute.

Life for the middle class gets boozier, and for everyone else remains exactly the same.

"Don't give me that. The AoP were just thugs. This isn't about your violent vanguardism, we said at the meeting: this time, it's my way!"

Vasquez was on a high. Amongst his peers he had finally gained some influence. Likely this was his only chance to prove the validity of the theories he espoused.

President Agapito Pizzi was presiding over an economic crisis in Costa Paz. His spending on defence against a resurgent Army of the People and on composing some ridiculous pipe-dream force meant to back Port Royal in Indochina had gone too far. The government really couldn't afford it. The crisis had been growing for a good year in a nation already troubled by corruption and the fact that most resources and well-paid jobs were in British, Quinntonian, Roycelandian, and Elian hands.

Local capitalists, then, were cutting their losses, many selling-up, and more recently just selling-off remaining goods and equipment then absconding with the cash and leaving gutted businesses locked-up, people out of work and of pocket.

The crisis was new enough that it was only just coming to the widespread notice of foreigners, but, in some districts, it had been months since major employers hit the road, leaving many communities quite desperate. Tokenistic governmental welfare and recovery packages here and there only worsened the crisis by further increasing the magnitude of the state's over-spending.

Gabriel Vasquez hailed from one such desperate district.

Klunk!

Finally! The chain breaks and the heavy padlock falls to the floor.

"That's it, comrades! We're in! She's ours!"

Gabriel was the only one in full voice, the rest whispering hoarsely as fifteen former employees of Benitez Furniture broke into the locked and abandoned factory complex.

Once inside and mustered on the old workshop floor, now almost without equipment, Vasquez's hand rested, as he spoke, in the pocket containing a copy of the text from which he quoted. Gadar! On revolution abandoned, and how to rescue it- G.Igo.

If only that young firebrand could be here, Vasquez lamented, it would be so much easier to convince these people. He regretted their sloth and blamed it upon his own inferior oratory skills. Still, they were in, now, and Gabriel was determined to stay.

"Worry not, comrades! The first step is taken! We have occupied! We shall resist! Now, we must produce! We have stopped asking, we have taken what is ours!

"We six will take the first shift" he said, indicating some colleagues, "Maria and the southsiders can relieve us tomorrow, and you three are good for Sunday?"

Gasps! This, "Igovian" wants us to work on Sunday?..