Word: pastora
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fall and recapture of San Juan del Norte are not so much military struggle as they are psychological warfare. Before the battle, fighting on Nicaragua's southern front had seemed little more than the personal crusade of Edén Pastora Gémez, 47. The charismatic "Commander Zero" of the Sandinista revolution, Pastora went into exile in 1981 when he became disillusioned with the growing Soviet and Cuban influence in Nicaragua. Within months the fortunes of ARDE had reached such a low point that his financially strapped army moved into Costa Rican refugee camps. Critics joked that...
...What Pastora did not say is that ARDE'S new-found muscle is largely due to help that he is receiving through CIA channels. The contra commander had long refused, publicly at least, to accept American "conditions" for aid. But last November he traveled to Washington and since then, food and uniforms are no longer in short supply, and ARDE has even built up a small air fleet of three used helicopters and eight light planes. Pastora insists that he made no deals with the "gringos" and that the funds for the equipment come from private donors in Miami...
...Unlike the large cylindrical mines, these "homemade" devices are not commercially produced. But then" manufacture indicates a relatively high level of technical sophistication. Some are disguised with a rubberized cap that makes them look like rocks, and are set off by the wake of a passing ship. Says Eden Pastora, commandant of the wing of anti-Sandinista rebels that claims responsibility for setting explosives in Lake Nicaragua: "We made all the mines ourselves with simple materials that can be purchased on the worldwide black market." A Nicaraguan military official, however, says that most of the activity is directed...
...column stormed into the settlement of San Juan del Norte, a remote Nicaraguan village of some 950 people that once served as a haven for the 17th century British pirate Henry Morgan. The attackers were part of the 4,000-member Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (A.R.D.E.), whose leader is Eden Pastora Gomez, a famed defector from the ranks of Nicaragua's Sandinista government. A.R.D.E.'S objective in seizing the settlement was twofold: to secure a toehold on the jungle fringes of Nicaraguan territory as the first step toward winning international recognition as a contra provisional government...
...confirm some of Ortega's worst fears, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Democratic Force (F.D.N.) announced last week that it had launched a new "general offensive" against the Sandinista government. Meanwhile, a Nicaraguan radio station claimed that several hundred contras who support former Sandinista Leader Edén Pastora Gómez were massing on the Costa Rican border. The rebels said they were fighting in ten separate locations in southern Nicaragua, though the Sandinistas acknowledged fighting in only one. The rebel announcement came as something of an embarrassment to Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge. Even as the attacks...