WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?

In the early 1980s, perturbed because the US had sided with England in the Falkland Islands war, Argentinean, Hector Frances, went on Mexican TV to reveal the name of the war that was being waged against Nicaragua. He revealed that it was called "the secret war, strategy of terror" in which the "contras" (contra, means against in Spanish, so, against the revolution) would carry out a low intensity conflict crossing over the Honduran border from where they were stationed, staging hit and run attacks, maiming and killing, destroying schools and entire communities along the way. Frances, a defector of the CIA, described that the several point plan included an all out US invasion of Nicaragua, once the contras failed, and once they failed to instigate a war between Honduras and Nicaragua.

US troops were also stationed in Honduras, waiting to see if the contras could draw the Nicaraguan army across the border, and as one marine who was stationed in Honduras as an interpreter said, "the Sandinistas were just a phone call away from a US invasion."

Once some people from "Witness for Peace" boarded a small boat and went of Nicaragua's shores, to confront a US warship intruding in Nicaraguan waters, and pled with them to "get out of there."

The mining of Nicaraguan harbors took place at Port Corinto, with their main oil refineries having been set fire to. This threw some in Congress into an uproar, because many of their constituents were vehemently protesting the war by then.

The Sandinistas took their name from Sandino, Cesar Augusto Sandino, who fought against the presence of the US marines in Nicaragua fifty years earlier. The Sandinistas, FSLN, (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) took much of the credit for toppling Somoza, having taken up arms against the hated National Guard, installed after Sandino was tricked, and then murdered, in the early 1930s, when the first Somoza ordered his murder, after peace talks expired.

If you went further back in history, the marines also occupied Nicaragua for years at the turn of the century, and decades earlier an American filibuster, William Walker, even declared himself president. Long before the "Panama" Canal was built, the US Marines were digging through Nicaragua, harassed by mosquitoes, and sickened by disease, the project was abandoned.

So one can understand why, after ridding itself of the Somozas, why they wanted little to do with Uncle Sam. But that didn't stop Ronald Reagan, zap.

Who were the contras? After crushing the right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, one of the bloodiest in the history of Latin America, many of Somoza's famed henchmen, the national guard,(many schooled at fort Benning's, the "School of the Americas, in Georgia) fled to Honduras, later rounded up by the CIA, to conduct a war in which some 30,000 Nicaraguans were to perish. (Worse than Vietnam for Nicaragua, since it has only roughly the population of Chicago, though the size of Illinois.) Over 50,000 died in the war to dethrone the Somoza dictatorship, so one can see why many said genocide was taking place.

Former editor of the Prensa, Dr. Pedro Joaquin Chamorro,(late spouse of President Violeta Chamorro) one of the few, courageous enough to stand up to the Somoza family,(that is, when the Prensa wasn't being censored) described the half- century long Somoza dynasty well in his book, "Estirtpe Sangriente" (Bloody Grip). Chamorro was murdered by henchmen, shot in his car, on his way to the newspaper office early one morning. This only united the masses against the dictatorship.

Another work by Pedro Joaquin was "Richter 7,"about the 1972 earthquake that rocked the capital, Managua. In it Chamorro describes how he circled the city on his motorcycle witnessing how the aid was squandered, and given to the haves instead of the have nots. Thousands perished, and thousands more disappeared, in a quake that destroyed a fairly modern looking city. This is the same earthquake in which Puerto Rican hero, Roberto Clemente, attempted to take aid directly to the Nicaraguan people, not trusting Somoza's style of distributing the aid, only to sadly have his plane go down at sea.

In "Diario de un Preso" (Diary of a Prisoner) Chamorro describes the struggle against the dictatorship from behind bars, when Somoza had had him jailed.

After Somoza was toppled,(first ordering gasoline bombs to be dropped from planes on the people in Managua) he and his likes fled to their back yard in Miami, where not even there, was he wanted, having been involved selling Nicaraguan blood in the US at discount prices, in a sleazy bloodbank business. The Somozas then appropriately went to take refuge under the wings of right wing dictatorship of Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, also noted for having scum, like ex-Nazi doctors, living freely in Paraguay. The old saying "one who lives by the sword, dies by the sword" certainly held true for West Point graduate Somoza, as he was bazookaed in his car by some Argentinean revolutionaries, blown away in a similar fashion to the way he had had Dr. Chamorro murdered.

The contra war against the Nicaraguan revolution was also revealed in the Iran-Contra affair, where it was found that arms were traded for hostages in Iran, and the proceeds from the arms sales were given to the contras, even though the Boland Amendment in Congress had made it illegal to continue giving aid to the contras, who were revealed to have been committing hideous atrocities.

Patty Reagan says it very well, in herbook, "Deadfall" in which she describes the obsession her father, President Reagan had, with overthrowing the Nicaraguan Revolution. If you don't like her, glance at Judge Lawrence Walsh's thick book about the investigation he conducted,(special consul appointed by Reagan) calling it a cover up, constantly referring to the lies that were told.

The movie "Cover-up" behind the Iran Contra affair, details everything you always wanted to know about Central America, including drug trafficking, but were afraid to ask.

The downing of American Eugene Hasenfus's aircraft inside Nicaragua, where he was captured and admitted tasking arms to the contra, and taking cocaine back into the US further scandalized the Reagan / Bush war effort, against Nicaragua.

Though the Nicaraguans won their case in the World Court, (a branch of the UN) the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, represented by an American lawyer, and Washington was found guilty of reeking havoc to a tune of $17 billion ($17,000,000,000 dollars) to the Nicaraguan countryside, the case was withdrawn when Violeta Chamorro won the presidency. The Nicaraguans voted against the war, and voted out the revolutionaries in power.

There were other victims of this Central American conflict including American engineer Benjamin Linder shot dead by the contras while implementing a hydroelectric project in a community that had once been destroyed by the contras. Linder was loved by Nicaraguan children, often dressing up like a clown for fiestas, and often seen peddling his one wheel bicycle down the street.

Before throwing out Somoza, on television around the world, ABC reporter Bill Stewart was seen kneeling in the streets of Managua before the insurrection, shot point blank by the National Guard. This along with the murder of Pedro Joaquin also helped persuade Jimmy carter to cut off aid to the dictatorship. The question remains: Who are the terrorists?

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by Jack Stewart, a former Peace Corps volunteer and newsletter editor for volunteers in Costa Rica, who married a Nicaraguan while there,visited Nicaragua before the revolution, and lived there after the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, July 19th, 1979)