Word: pastora
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...days earlier, an assassination attempt had rocked one of the less successful pillars of U.S. policy in Central America. Eden Pastora Gómez, the redoubtable leader of one flank of the CIA-sponsored contras, had invited about 15 reporters to his headquarters inside Nicaragua. The group was driven from San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, to the San Juan River, which serves as the border between the two countries. There the reporters climbed into two long dugouts with outboard motors and chugged up the river for two hours, until they reached a two-story wooden building. Ushered...
Seven people were killed, including Linda Frazier, 38, an American journalist who worked for an English-language newspaper in San Jose. Among the 28 injured was Pastora, who suffered first-and second-degree burns on his face and shrapnel wounds in his legs. Seriously hurt was Susan Morgan, a Newsweek stringer whose legs and arms were fractured. Some could crawl out of the building, but others lay moaning in the wreckage for nearly an hour before being pulled out. Two hours passed before a doctor and two nurses arrived...
Helicoptered to San José, the guerrilla leader was taken to the city's most exclusive hospital. His men immediately turned Pastora's floor of the Clinica Biblica into a fortress, sealing off elevators and stationing heavily armed guards in the stairwells. Costa Rican authorities, anxious about their country's neutral status, placed Pastora in government custody; on Friday he was flown on a stretcher to Venezuela...
...Pastora's men sifted through the wreckage looking for clues, the guessing game about who was responsible began. "It could have been the extreme right or the extreme left," said Adolfo ("Popo") Chamorro, spokesman for the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE), the contra group that Pastora commands. Especially curious is the timing of the explosion. Since last year, the CIA has been pressuring ARDE and its 4,000 guerrillas to join forces with the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (F.D.N.), the 8,000-strong contra group based in Honduras. ARDE's political leaders, notably Alfonso Robelo Callejas, favored the alliance...
Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge implied that the Sandinistas might be responsible for the bombing, but ARDE leaders insisted that the camp area was clear of Nicaraguan soldiers. More logical culprits include ARDE members with access to the base, some of whom may have been angry enough with Pastora's decision to kill him. In the aftermath, Pastora's colleagues quickly down-played their disagreements, but the episode promised not only to delay ARDE's alliance with the F.D.N. but to strengthen Pastora's resolve against any union under conditions other than...