Nicaragua Jittery Mood

By Michael S. Serrill

As he waited for a traffic light to change in Managua, a hotel driver named Andres Garcia idly furled and unfurled a tiny American flag that he had been given while making a delivery to the U.S. embassy. A passing policeman, seeing the flag, pulled Garcia, 45, over to the curb and searched him. He discovered U.S. dollars in the driver's pocket and promptly threw him in jail.

Garcia's fate is a telling sign of the nervous mood in Managua these days. The Sandinista regime is repressing any activity that may be construed as disloyal. In the process, the nine-man Sandinista Directorate does not hesitate to trample on civil rights, as a report released last week by the New York City-based International League for Human Rights makes all too clear. The government has also embarked on a military buildup, based on its insistence that the country is now on a virtual war footing with the U.S. The rationale for a buildup was strengthened last month when the U.S. House of Representatives appropriated $100 million in aid for the anti-Sandinista contras. The extent of the military escalation is not clear. U.S. intelligence sources report that Sandinista troops have begun to mass across the border from the Honduran bases where 10,000 to 15,000 contras are encamped. Military exercises now appear to center on the Soviet-built attack and transport helicopters that have proved to be the most effective weapons against the contras. Analysts believe that the Sandinista army may now have as many as 45 of the aircraft, many of them delivered in recent months. The newest arrivals are Mi-17s, advanced transport helicopters that can be equipped with air-to- ground rockets and machine guns.

The campaign to suppress dissent is unmatched since the Sandinistas took power in 1979. Two weeks ago, Roman Catholic Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega, a critic of the regime, was forced into exile in Honduras. The move drew sharp criticism of the Sandinistas from Pope John Paul II during his pastoral visit to Colombia last week. The Pontiff delivered a speech declaring that he found Vega's expulsion a "nearly incredible act" that was reminiscent of the "dark ages," when priests in Latin America were persecuted. Vega, the second-ranking Catholic prelate in Nicaragua, was taken to the Honduran border by Sandinista police on July 5.

The antichurch actions followed closely on the heels of the June 26 shutdown of La Prensa, the only remaining opposition daily in Managua. The 60- year-old newspaper's campaign against Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle once helped to put the revolutionary regime in power. Even so, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega Saavedra insists that La Prensa has become a vehicle for CIA propaganda and will remain closed until the "war" is over.

The blistering attack on the record of the Nicaraguan regime by the International League for Human Rights was based in part on a weeklong fact- finding trip to Nicaragua in February led by Patricia Derian, former President Jimmy Carter's human rights chief. It catalogs dozens of Nicaraguan violations, including torture, denial of due process to thousands of political detainees, and refusal to allow labor unions to strike or engage in collective bargaining. "The recent actions of the government to expel two Roman Catholic priests and the closing down of the newspaper La Prensa are not new," concedes Nina Shea, a lawyer who wrote the report. "They are part of a pattern of repression against dissidents that has been going on for many years." And given the jangled nerves of the Nicaraguan leaders, the repression seems likely to grow even worse.

With reporting by June Erlick/Managua