Tropic Lightning, an AK-47 blog series

     I've done it again! I've sunk my resources and time into another project that I may never recover from! This time I fell for the classic conflicts of the Cold War and the charm of the AK-47 rules by Peter Pig. With some of my colleagues all fighting a campaign in an alternate, Balkanized Africa, I decided to jump in with my own Latin American/Caribbean dictatorship. Small, insane, and a totally fun banana republic, Tropicaña is my version of Tropico from the famous pc dictator sim of the same name. El Presidente seeks to extend his brand of rule around the world, starting with the task force he sent recently to Africa to aid some his brother dictators (*COUGH!* I meant "Presidentes por Viva"), which required the entire Tropicañan Navy to transport (all 3 ships!).

                           TROPICAÑA

 

     La Republica de Tropicaña is a small island nation located halfway between Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean basin. Beginning as a Spanish plantation colony in the mid 1600's, Tropicaña was known for its export of sugar cane and later in the century became a noted pirate haven to rival Tortuga. After the Age of Piracy, Tropicaña entered the 18th Century as a valuable colony of the Spanish Crown before being lost shortly after the Napoleonic Wars to a Revolución begun by Irish emigré turned governor of the island, Patricio O'Donnell. Using defected Spanish soldiers and colonists turned militia, O'Donnell threw out the Spanish Royalists and established the Republic of Tropicaña with himself as "Presidente por Viva", President for Life. Giving huge land grants to the American, and British plantation owners, the true sponsors of the revolt.

 

     When Patricio died in the mid 19th Century, his son Ambrosio was appointed "Presidente" by the government and acclaimed by the Guardia Nacionale (the Army composed of a small number of professionals and militia conscripts) and the Guardia Revolucionaria (now the Presidential Guard). Ambrosio turned Tropicaña into an agricultural and production powerhouse exporting tons of bananas, pineapples, sugar, and coffee alongside iron ores and even coal and gold. He built railroads and modernized Tropicaña's navy (two Spanish frigates and a ship of the line captured during the Revolución were replaced by two new ironclads and a torpedo launch from France.). Unfortunately for Ambrosio, he overstepped his authority when he sold half the island to the newly formed American owned Columbia Fruit Company, which dispossessed the landed plantation elites without compensation as Ambrosio pocketed the money for extensions to his Presidential Palace. His assassination at the hands of the "Planteros" ignited a decade long civil war on the island between the surviving O'Donnell clan and their fellow Spanish/Irish immigrant followers and the native Tropicañans under the leadership of the equally mixed and foreign Planters Coalition. Even the Navy was split with one ironclad going to the Planteros and the other sunk by the O'Donnell Loyalist torpedo launch. With help from the Columbia Fruit Co. (mainly through hired guns from the American West, and arms and money) the O'Donnells managed to put down the revolt and execute the bulk of the traitorous Planteros, while many others fled the island for Cuba or Brazil.

 

     Fast forward to the mid 1950's. With the end of WWII, Tropicaña found itself the gambling tourist capital of the Caribbean, second only to Cuba in popularity. The capital of Santa Corona was a bustling center of tourism, trade, and presidential pomp and splendor. Amidst which the current Presidente, Augusto O'Donnell, came of age. Upon the death of his father in 57, the O'Donnells were ousted by a Communist backed coup d'etat. Rather than flee the island like any sensible dictator, Augusto chose to stay and fight the rebels. Backed once again by Columbia Fruit, and by the CIA, Augusto swiftly crushed the Communistas, capturing much of the old tanks and equipment gifted to the rebels by the Soviets. He then gave many of the Communistas he captured a "helicopter ride", tossing them out over the Caribbean or shooting them and tossing them out over the harsh Tropicañan jungle. 

 

     In gratitude for recapturing the valuable sugar and banana fields for them, the execs at Columbia Fruit expected these plantations to be returned to their rightful control. They were taken entirely by surprise when Augusto "nationalized" the company's former possessions and made it his privately owned "mega plantation" making the O'Donnells the largest landowners on the island if not in the Caribbean! After surviving several assassination attempts by the CIA (out of rumors he would suddenly side with the Soviets) and an unsuccessful economic embargo lobbied by the now dispossessed Columbia Fruit Co., Augusto turned his political alignments away from the superpowers and decided to strike out on his own and partner with other non-aligned small dictatorships, or as the CIA now classed them, "rogue nations". 

 

     As a "Fascista" Augusto built a cult of personality around his family dynasty and was almost a king in all but name. He built up the military and kept the people dependent on his benevolent rule. Now with war erupting in West Africa, Augusto O'Donnell sent a task force to support fellow struggling dictators in a blind thrust at foreign diplomacy with the Third World. He also sought to use the funds from his newly created Coca leaf fields (most of the yield of which is purchased by a certain American manufacturer of carbonated beverages.) to extend Tropicañan influence beyond the Caribbean and onto the world stage as a true power. Trained by the Irish Republican Army, and armed with tanks and aircraft bought, stolen, or gifted (including a long lost flotilla of Nazi submarines who needed a place to lie low after the Weltkrieg.) this motley force, the Guardia Presidencial, is a force to be reckoned with in West Africa.