Philadelphia, July 29 (RHC)-- Anastasia Somoza, the great granddaughter of Nicaragua's U.S.-backed dictator, attended the Democratic National Convention to support Hillary Clinton's nomination.

Anastasio Somoza Garcia and his family governed Nicaragua for more than 40 years while Washington supported Somoza's repression and political persecution of opponents, resulting in his family becoming one of the wealthiest in Latin America.

The dictator was overthrown in 1956, but his family dynastay continued to rule the country until the Sandinista Revolution took power in 1979.

The Sandinista government was soon faced with a violent, U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution in the country, which carried out more than 1,300 terrorist attacks and engaged in widespread human rights violations.

Somoza's regime oversaw widespread human rights abuses including torture and extrajudicial killings. The family fled to Miami, and later to Paraguay, where the last ruler Anastasio Somoza DeBayle was assassinated in 1980.

The Somoza family was also directly involved in a company called Plasmaferesis that bought blood on the cheap from poor and desperate Nicaraguans, separated and froze the plasma, and sent it to Europe and the United States receiving high profits.

The Somoza family even peddled Nicaraguan blood abroad when the poverty-stricken country needed donations after a devastating earthquake hit the capital city of Managua in 1972. The disaster left some 6,000 people dead, 20,000 injured, and over 250,000 homeless.