1980

political events

The shah of Iran leaves Panama for Cairo March 23 at the invitation of President Sadat,
surgeons remove his enlarged spleen and part of his liver March 28, and the cancer-
riddled shah dies July 26 at age 60, ending the Pahlevi dynasty that ruled Iran from 1921
until last year.

A U.S. attempt to rescue the 53 hostages held at Teheran since November ends in disaster
April 24, and the Ayatollah Khomeini threatens to kill the hostages if another "silly
maneuver" is tried. Six U.S. C-130 transport planes from a base in southern Egypt have
landed 90 commandos in the desert 300 miles southeast of Teheran; mechanical problems
and a sandstorm knock out three of the operation's eight helicopters, the mission is
aborted, eight men are killed as a fourth helicopter collides on the ground with a C-130,
and the survivors beat a hasty retreat. The hostages remain in custody at year's end as
negotiations proceed for their release, but they will not go free until January 20, 1981.

Iraqi planes hit 10 Iranian airfields September 22 after months of border skirmishes,
troops cross into Iran September 23 and besiege the huge oil refinery at Abadan,
beginning an 8-year war over the Shatt Al-Arab estuary (see 1975). Iraq's new president
Saddam Hussein launches the first of his military adventures (see 1979; 1981).

Turkey has strikes, terrorism, inflation, and rising unemployment that bring the country
to the verge of anarchy until a military government takes over September 12 in a coup
d'état, bans Süleyman Demirel from involvement in politics for 3 years, and establishes
some order (see 1971; 1987).

India's former prime minister Indira Gandhi regains power January 6 in an election
victory engineered by her son Sanjay, 33, only 33 months after a humiliating defeat.
Called ruthless and autocratic for pushing slum clearance projects that left thousands
homeless and family planning programs that included forced sterilizations, Sanjay has
been convicted on one of more than a dozen criminal charges that he reaped huge profits
from a state project to produce small, cheap automobiles, none of which ever came off
the assembly line. Sanjay and a flight instructor die June 23 in a plane crash while doing
illegal aerial acrobatics.

Vietnam's president Ton Duc Thang dies at Hanoi March 30 at age 91 after nearly 11
years in power; former Pakistani president Agha Mohammed Yahha Khan dies at
Rawalpindi August 10 at age 63, having resigned in 1971 and been paralyzed since
shortly after his release from house arrest.

South Korean general Chun Doo Hwan makes himself director of the KCIA in April (see
1979), students and other citizens in urban centers demonstrate against another military
regime, Chun seizes power in a coup d'état May 17, declares martial law May 18, and
orders the shutdown of colleges and universities, the National Assembly closes, and Chun
suppresses an uprising at Kwangju in South Cholla Province, a city of 730,000 with a
pan'gol (anti-authoritarian) tradition. Chun's paratroopers open fire May 21, and
demonstrators occupy government buildings; former KCIA chief Kim Jae Kyu says at his
trial that he assassinated President Park Chung Hee last year to prevent a bloodbath Park
had planned for his opponents, but the prosecution says he did it merely to preserve his
own power, Kim Jae Kyu is sentenced to death, and he is hanged May 24 along with four
KCIA aides. Chun sends tanks and personnel carriers into Kwangju before dawn May 27
and his men kill more than 200 unarmed students and workers, wounding or arresting
thousands of others (it will later emerge that top officials in the Carter administration
gave approval to South Korean contingency plans to use military units against the student
and labor protests, having been misled by faulty intelligence that exaggerated the
seriousness of the situation). Armed survivors of the massacre withdraw into the
mountains outside Kwangju, and a court convicts political dissident Kim Dae-jung on
sedition charges in connection with the demonstrations at Kwangju (see 1976); sentenced
to death by hanging, he will have his sentence commuted next year to life in prison, gain
release in 1982, and be exiled to the United States, where he will live for 26 months (see
1984).

Japan's prime minister Masayoshi Ohira dies of a heart attack at Tokyo June 12 at age 70.
Zenko Suzuki, 66, becomes prime minister after elections held June 22.

Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) in the South Pacific gains independence July 30
after 93 years of joint British and French colonial rule.

Poland's premier Piotr Jaroszewicz, 69, resigns under pressure in February after more
than 9 years in office. Accused of corruption and abuse of power, he is held responsible
for the economic mismanagement that plagues the country.

Juliana of the Netherlands abdicates on her 71st birthday April 30 after a 32-year reign.
Her daughter Beatrix, 42, succeeds to the throne, her husband is a onetime member of the
Hitler Youth, but the demonstrations that rock Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht are
inspired by homeless conditions, not anti-Nazi sentiments.

Yugoslavia's president Josip Broz Tito dies May 4 at age 87 after a 35-year rule in which
he has used his political finesse to keep his country's various ethnic groups working in
some degree of harmony. Tito's death leaves a power vacuum that raises fears of a
breakup of Yugoslavia into her former components (Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia,
Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) (see 1987).

Italy's political struggles erupt in violence August 2, when 85 men and women are
massacred at the Bologna railway station; some 200 are wounded (see Aldo Moro, 1978).
The perpetrators remain unknown, but evidence points to neo-Fascists.

Former Portuguese premier Marcello Caetano dies at Rio de Janeiro October 26 at age
70.
Iceland elects Reykjavík City Theater director Vigdis Finnbogadottir, 50, "President
Vigdis." Divorced in 1963, she adopted a baby daughter as a single parent in 1972, and
she is the first woman anywhere in world history to be elected head of state. She will be
reelected in 1984 and again in 1988.

Polish shipyard workers at Gdansk quit August 14 to protest the August 9 dismissal of
forklift operator Anna Walentynowicz, who collected the remains of candles from graves
in a local cemetery to make new candles for a memorial to workers shot in the 1970 food
riots. The strike at the Lenin Shipyard spreads as some 350,000 workers demand the right
to strike and to form self-governing unions independent of Communist Party control.
Other demands include wage raises, release of political prisoners, a curb on censorship,
and meat rationing. Led by electrician Lech Walesa, 37, the strikers do not stage street
demonstrations as in 1970, when they gave authorities an excuse to use force and kill at
least 55. Party leader Edward Gierek agrees to the demands September 1, he releases
dissidents who have been arrested, and the labor union Solidarity, created September 22
with 10 million members, becomes the first independent labor union in a Soviet bloc
country. Gierek is succeeded by Stanislaw Kania, 53, as Moscow masses 55 divisions on
Poland's frontiers, fearing the deviation from orthodox Marxist-Leninist philosophy will
spread to other Soviet satellites and even to Soviet Russia.

Premier Aleksei Nikolaievitch Kosygin dies at Moscow December 18 at age 76; former
German naval commander Karl Doenitz of a heart attack near Hamburg December 24 at
age 89.

Former Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau regains office in March following
the election defeat February 18 of Prime Minister Joe Clark's Progressive Conservative
Party after less than 9 months in office (see 1979). Trudeau will remain in office until
1984.

Puerto Rico's first popularly elected governor Luis Munoz Marin dies at his native San
Juan April 30 at age 82.

Surinam Army sergeants overthrow the government of Premier Henck Arron in a coup
d'état that begins before dawn February 25 with an attack on army headquarters and the
main police station at Paramaribo (see 1975). President Johan Ferrier is deposed in
another military coup d'état August 13 after 5 years in office and replaced by Premier
Chin A Sen, who announces on television that he is assuming the office of president at
the request of the nation's military commander Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse. The new military
council's chairman Sgt. Chas Mijnals and another council member are arrested August 17
on charges that they are planning a Cuban-style takeover; Mijnals is succeeded by Lt.
Ivan Graanoogst, who becomes in effect the country's leader, albeit subject to the will of
Bouterse (see 1981).

Peru elects Fernando Belaunde Terry to a second presidential term May 18 after 12 years
of military rule (see 1968). Now 67, Belaunde Terry returned to Peru in December 1970
after 2 years in exile, was exiled again in January 1971, returned in January 1976, and has
defeated 14 other candidates. Strikes, economic problems, and terrorist insurgency
continue as in so much of the world; Belaunde Terry heads one of the few remaining
civilian governments in Latin America (see 1985).

Former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is assassinated at Asunción, Paraguay,

September 17 at age 54. Gunmen firing a bazooka and machine guns hit Somoza's
Mercedes-Benz, killing also his driver and a financial adviser.

Uruguayan voters reject a new constitution that would institutionalize the role of the
military in a "restricted democracy" (see 1976). President Aparicio Méndez announced 3
years ago that elections would be held in 1981 but indicated that political liberties would
be secondary to economic recovery; the November 30 referendum is a setback for
Méndez, who will lose his office in September of next year.

Guyana adopts a new socialist constitution that gives her a presidential form of
government (see 1966). Legislative power is vested in a unicameral National Assembly,
whose 65 members (53 of them popularly elected) elect the president to a 5-year term.
The country's 430,000 registered voters give People's National Congress Party of Prime
Minister Forbes Burnham 76 percent of the popular vote in the December 15 election (the
People's Progressive Party of opposition leader Cheddi Jang receives only 20 percent),
Burnham is elected president for a fourth term, and he will serve until his death in 1985,
but the leader of the 10-member international observer team returns to Britain December
19 and says Burnham's victory was "fraudulent in every possible respect," with voter lists
falsified, opposition parties barred from meetings, and Burnham's political opponents
beaten (see Jagan, 1992).

Mauritania's president Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly resigns in January and is

succeeded by his prime minister Lieut. Col. Mohammed Khouna Ould Haidalla, who will
rule until he is deposed in 1984.

Tunisia's prime minister Hedi Amira Nouira suffers a stroke in March after a decade in
office and has to step down at age 68. He has been the designated successor to President-
for-Life Habib Bourguiba.

Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) gains independence April 17 (see 1979). A new

government headed by Robert Mugabe, now 56, takes power after years of civil war; his
Zimbabwean African National Union Party represents the 70 percent of black Rhodesians
who speak Shona and takes 57 parliamentary seats as compared to 20 for Joshua
Nkomo's Zimbabwean African People's Union, whose members are from the Ndbele tribe
(20 seats are reserved for the white minority). Mugabe appeals to Zimbabwe's 7 million
blacks for fair treatment of the new nation's 230,000 whites, and he makes Nkomo Home
Affairs Minister (but see 1982).

Liberia's president William R. Tolbert Jr. is ousted in a military coup April 12, castrated,
and executed at age 66 after having his ears cut off (see 1971). A 17-member People's
Redemptive Council suspends the constitution April 25 and assumes all executive power
with General (formerly Master Sergeant) Samuel K. (Kanyon) Doe, 30 (approximate), as
president. An ethnic Krahn, he becomes the first chief executive not descended from the
American settlers who have ruled the country since its founding in 1847, and although he
has had no more than an 8th-grade education and knows nothing about governance there
is widespread rejoicing at his assumption of power (crowds in the streets cry, "We are
finally free!"). Doe begins his regime by purging several prominent members of Tolbert's
cabinet, killing 27 high officials, some of them in a public execution by firing squad on a
city beach at Monrovia (see 1990).

Senegal's first president Léopold Sédar Senghor steps down at age 74 after 20 years in
power. He will be succeeded beginning next year by Abdou Diouf.

Uganda holds her first elections in 18 years in December and returns to constitutional
government, putting former president Milton Obote back in power (see 1979).

Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas dies of pneumonia and kidney failure
at Walter Reed Hospital January 19 at age 81. He retired from the bench in 1974 after
having served for 36 years, longer than any other justice, and written more than 1,200
opinions.

A draft registration measure signed by President Carter June 27 requires that some 4
million U.S. men aged 19 and 20 register for possible military service. Congress has
excluded women, despite a request by Carter that they be included.

U.S. voters turn Carter out of office and elect former California governor (and former
film actor) Ronald Reagan, who campaigns with slick, upbeat television commercials that
talk about "morning in America" and quote John Winthrop's sermon of 1630 about a
shining "city on a hill," words quoted in years past by politicians who included John F.
Kennedy in 1961. Now 69, the genial Reagan wins 489 electoral votes to Carter's 149,
with 51 percent of the popular vote (43.2 million) as opposed to 42.5 percent (34.9
million) for Carter, 6.5 percent (5.6 million) for independent candidate John Anderson, an
Illinois Republican congressman. Leading liberal Democrats lose their seats in Congress
as the Republicans gain control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.

English-born U.S. hostess Pamela Churchill Harriman (née Digby), 60, founds
Democrats for the 90s to provide encouragement and financial support for politicians
who will oppose Reagan's policies. Wife of former New York governor and diplomat W.
Averell Harriman and widow of Hollywood producer Leland Hayward, she divorced her
first husband, Randolph Churchill, by whom she had a son, Winston Spencer. Her
political action committee PAMPAC will raise millions of dollars in political
contributions for Democratic Party candidates (see 1993).

Weather Underground activist Bernardine Dohrn turns herself in to Chicago police

December 3; now 38, she has been a fugitive since 1970 and is blamed for several acts of
terrorism by her left-wing group, including some bombings. "I regret not at all my efforts
to side with the forces of revolution," she tells reporters. "The nature of the system has
not changed . . . The system of violence and degradation against women is openly
encouraged."

human rights, social justice

Moscow exiles physicist and human rights leader Andrei Sakharov in January to the
remote city of Gorki and increases suppression of dissent (see 1977). Only 21,147 Jews
emigrate by way of Vienna, the chief exit route, down from a peak of 51,320 permitted to
leave last year.

A sniper murders El Salvador's leading human rights activist Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo
Romero, 62, March 24 while he says Mass in a hospital chapel. Three U.S. nuns and a lay
missionary are killed in December as violence continues in El Salvador between
government security forces and leftist guerrillas (see 1981).

Miami has riots beginning May 17 after blacks hear that an all-white six-man Tampa jury
has acquitted four white ex-policemen accused of beating Arthur McDuffie to death last
year and making it look like an accident. The riots leave 14 people beaten or shot to death
in a 40- by 60-block area—a ghetto of 233,000 where it is generally believed that a black
cannot get a fair trial and a white man can "get away with anything."

The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 July 2 in Fullilove v. Klutznick that Congress has
authority to redress past racial discrimination through the use of quotas in government
contract awards. The Court upholds the constitutionality of a provision in a $4 billion
1977 emergency public works program requiring that 10 percent of the contracts be
awarded to "minority business enterprises."

Mauritania's government issues a decree July 5 abolishing slavery, but the country has
tolerated slavery for centuries, the decree is the third in Mauritania's history, and human
rights observers dismiss it as a public-relations gesture. The sale of a slave woman at Atar
in February has attracted national attention only because she was particularly beautiful, a
well-educated man wanted to marry her, her owner decided she could fetch a large sum
on the open market, and two rival bidders fought over her in the market place. Slavery
continues also in Sudan.

A bomb explosion outside a Paris synagogue October 4 leaves four dead and 10 seriously
injured, raising fears that anti-Semitism is reviving in France. Parisians of all faiths walk
in a great procession demonstrating support and sympathy, President Valéry Giscard
d'Estaing and his ministers ban neo-Nazi meetings and vow to dissolve "racist
organizations" and increase police protection, but the terrorists who planted the bomb
remain unknown and at large.

A Republican rally at Jackson, Miss., for presidential candidate Ronald Reagan

November 2 hears a racially-charged campaign speech by Rep. Trent Lott, 39, who says
that if segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R. S.C.) had been elected president in 1948
"we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." Thurmond, now 78, has been renouncing his
earlier position, but Republican politicians in much of the South use racist appeals to win
local contests, and although Lott will later deny favoring segregation he will continue to
hold racist views (see 2002).

A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rules December 4 that the prosecution's key
witness perjured himself in the 1972 trial of the "Wilmington 10" in North Carolina (see
1971). Amnesty International labeled Ben Chavis and the others "political prisoners," the
Department of Justice in 1978 called for a reversal of the convictions, 55 members of
Congress signed a "friend of the court" brief, but the civil rights workers served up to 4
years before the last was paroled.

Iran grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Iraq, 1948), but Iranian
women demonstrate at the president's office July 8 to protest the Islamic dress code (see
1979).

Japanese feminist Fusae Ichikawa, now 86, wins reelection to the Sangiin, upper house of
the Diet, with more votes nationwide than any other candidate (see 1973). Universally
known and widely respected, she organizes a conference of 48 women's organizations
ranging from radical to conservative, and it is generally conceded that no one else could
have done it.

The pamphlet "Listen, America!" by Moral Majority leader Rev. Jerry Falwell concludes,
"The Equal Rights Amendment strikes at the foundation of our entire social structure."

commerce

Brazilian miners discover the Serra Palada mine in January when a tree falls over in a
rainstorm, baring rocks of gold. Prospector José Maria da Silva, 34, arrives in April,
borrows money for food, finds 22 pounds of gold within 2 weeks, and on 1 day in
September extracts 700 pounds of gold worth $4.75 million. The government bars all but
Brazilians from the area.

Gold peaks at $875 per ounce in January amidst predictions of $2,000 per ounce; it falls
to $600 by year's end.

Former AFL-CIO president George Meany dies at Washington, D.C., January 10 at age
85, having retired in November.

A federal jury at New York convicts Italian financier Michele Sindona March 27 on 65
counts of fraud, conspiracy, false statements, and perjury in connection with the 1974
failure of Franklin National Bank, the 20th largest U.S. bank; it sentences him June 13 to
25 years in prison.

The Banking Deregulation Act signed by President Carter March 31 establishes a

universal system of banking reserves and effects reforms supposedly designed to favor
consumers. South Dakota's 40-year-old Chicago-born governor William J. (John)
Janklow has received a call in January from Citicorp president Walter B. Wriston at New
York expressing interest in the midwestern state's lack of a ceiling on interest rates and
suggesting that if the state legislature were to pass a bill inviting Citibank into South
Dakota the bank could quickly provide 400 jobs. (New York's legislature has refused to
modify the state usury law, Citibank has been lending money at 12 percent while paying
close to 20 percent, it has been losing heavily, and its lawyers help draft a law that the
South Dakota legislature passes with little debate.) Delaware will follow South Dakota's
example next year and attract eastern banks such as Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers
Hanover, and Chemical. The federal Deregulation Act phases out ceilings on interest paid
to small depositors; it authorizes payment of interest on checking accounts and on similar
accounts at thrift institutions. Banks raise their prime rate (the rate on loans granted to
favored customers) to 20 percent April 2 as the Federal Reserve tightens money. The rate
falls to 12 percent by October but peaks at 21.5 percent in mid-December.

U.S. personal bankruptcies jump to 367,000, up from 209,500 last year. A new federal
bankruptcy law that went into effect October 1, 1979, enables individuals to protect much
more of their property against seizure by creditors.

Some 36 million Americans receive monthly Social Security checks, 26 million Medicare
benefits, 22 million Medicaid benefits, 18 million food stamps, 15 million veterans'
benefits, 11 million Aid to Families with Dependent Children funds; millions of students
receive federal scholarship aid; 27 million children benefit from school lunch programs,
and most of these categories overlap. Ronald Reagan promises to reduce the size of
government.

A U.S. recession in the second quarter cuts real output by 9.9 percent; double-digit
inflation continues, fueling opposition to President Carter. Ronald Reagan campaigns on
what his running mate George H. W. Bush has called "voodoo economics" (based on
supply-side ideology) during the primary elections, but Bush drops his opposition at the
Republican Convention. The U.S. economy is on the rise again by fall, but prices have
risen 12.4 percent by year's end as compared to 13.3 percent last year; some countries
have triple-digit inflation.

British unemployment rises above 2 million for the first time since 1935 (when the
workforce was one-third smaller) as recession depresses the economies of many
countries. Unemployment reaches nearly 2.5 million by year's end, up from 800,000 early
in 1975, and industrial production falls 5 percent as the government's monetarist policies
try to stem a new burst of inflation, which again climbs above 20 percent, double the rate
when Thatcher took office.

West Germany has a currency deficit of $14.2 billion, up from $5.4 billion last year
(there was a surplus of nearly $9 billion in 1978) as energy costs climb, interest rates rise,
and consumer spending eases. Imports grow more costly as the mark falls 15 percent in
relation to the U.S. dollar.
Poland's Western debts soar to $23 billion and industrial production falls 1.3 percent as a
result of labor unrest and shortages of fuel, raw materials, and parts. Average monthly
wages rise 20 percent to about $207 (at official exchange rates); personal income,
adjusted for inflation, rises only 1 percent.

More than 52 percent of women aged 15 to 64 in Western countries are in the workforce,
up from 45 percent in 1960. In Japan, 54.9 percent are in the workforce, down from 60.1
percent in 1960 when more women were employed in agriculture.

Only 19 percent of U.S. families headed by women live in poverty, down from 38 percent
in 1970, 50 percent in 1960. Few such families remain in poverty for long; most female
heads of families receiving public assistance are self-supporting women who have
experienced recent divorce or separation. Most will leave the welfare rolls within 2 years.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes April 24 at 759.13 but recovers to
close December 31 at 963.99, up from 838.74 at the end of 1979.