Challenge from the Contras

By Sara Medina

As disillusionment spreads, the Sandinistas face a new threat

For the celebration of the third anniversary of Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution, the dusty provincial town of Masaya, 18 miles southeast of the capital city of Managua, last week was colorfully decorated with flags and posters. A band played revolutionary songs, and the crowds sang along. But there was little cheer in the speech delivered by Daniel Ortega Saavedra, a member of the all-powerful nine-man Sandinista Directorate. "Nicaragua is undergoing a silent, yet bloody invasion," he declared. Ortega charged that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Honduran armed forces were supporting more than 2,000 rebels who have been operating along the border with Honduras. Since July 4, he told his audience of 30,000, the guerrillas had staged more than 18 attacks on Nicaraguan territory and killed more than 50 government troops. Ortega punctuated his statistics with repeated shouts that "this is not a figment of our imagination."

Indeed it was not. The Sandinistas have every reason to be preoccupied with counterrevolutionaries, or contras. For the first time since the end of the civil war that toppled right-wing Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, the Sandinistas are being seriously challenged by armed groups of Nicaraguans who originally supported the revolution but who have become disillusioned with the regime's strident Marxism, its disregard for individual rights and its increasing dependence on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The contras say they are fighting to fulfill the revolution's original goals: political pluralism, individual liberties and a mixed economy.

The group responsible for much of the military action is the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (F.D.N.), which claims to have 2,000 armed men who make regular incursions into Nicaragua from their sanctuaries in Honduras. Led by Jose Francisco Cardenal Telleria, a civil engineer, the F.D.N. has been especially active since March. Linked to the F.D.N. are many Miskito Indians who resent the Sandinistas for having forced thousands of them out of their homes along the Honduran border and into internment camps. The Miskitos are now in open revolt, and running battles with the Nacaraguan armed forces have been going on for the past three weeks. The Honduran government has mostly turned a blind eye to the activities of the contras.

But the biggest threat to the Sandinistas comes from Eden Pastora Gomez, 46, a flamboyant and popular former guerrilla leader known as Commander Zero. A hero of the Sandinista revolution, Pastora fled Nicaragua a year ago and eventually surfaced in Costa Rica last April. He passionately denounces his former comrades-in-arms as "traitors and murderers" and has called on the Nicaraguan people to "expel [them] from power." For the present, Pastora's strategy is to hope that his re-emergence will lead to the defection of other unhappy Sandinista supporters, and eventually divide the army so that he can come to power in what would amount to a coup.

To combat the threat posed by Pastora and the other contras, the Sandinista government is continuing the military buildup that has given Nicaragua the largest army in Central America. Last March it also declared a state of emergency in order to crack down on internal dissent. So far, according to a human rights organization, 300 people have been arrested for counterrevolutionary activities, and some 300 people have been detained and interrogated about their political activities. Many of them are campesinos, who are picked up in groups of 15 or 20 and may be held for more than a month. The Sandinistas are also increasing pressure on members of independent labor unions, the Roman Catholic Church and opposition political parties. Says a Social Christian politician: "We can't have meetings. Members are threatened with death regularly. Their houses are painted with skulls and crossbones and the legend A CONTRA LIVES HERE. "

Adding to the disillusionment of many Nicaraguans is the worsening state of the economy, which has never recovered from the war's devastation. Fluctuating commodity prices, ever higher inflation (now 30%) and food shortages caused by recent floods have aggravated the situation. An acute shortage of foreign exchange for the private sector, which still accounts for about 60% of the gross domestic product, has crippled industrial production and driven up unemployment.

The Sandinistas blame many of their problems on the U.S. Government, which discontinued most economic aid early in 1981 because it was convinced Nicaragua was abetting the leftist insurgency in El Salvador. Washington has pressured international lenders not to loan Nicaragua money. The U.S. says it wants to improve relations with the Sandinistas, but talks have repeatedly foundered over the question of aid to the Salvadoran guerrillas. Though State Department officials have denied that they are stalling, the U.S. doubts that negotiations with the Sandinistas would achieve anything. The U.S. may also be waiting to see what the contras, who may be receiving some of the $19 million in secret funds the Reagan Administration has earmarked for anti-Sandinista activities, can achieve.

For all its tribulations, the Sandinista regime has made some improvements. The literacy rate has risen from 50% to 87%. Thousands of campesinos have received title to confiscated farm land. But an increasing number of Nicaraguans are beginning to compare the Sandinistas to Somoza. Says a plump, fortyish food vendor, standing in her tin-and plastic-sided stall in Managua's Mercado Oriental: "This is the worst we have ever had it. Everyone is waiting for Eden Pastora." They may have to wait a while. But the spreading disillusionment should put the Sandinistas on notice that political legitimacy does not come from just overthrowing a corrupt regime. --By Sara Medina. Reported by James Willwerth/Managua

With reporting by James Willwerth/Managua

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