Word: pastora
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last April a fourth contra group, the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE), opened a second front along Nicaragua's border with Costa Rica. ARDE is a coalition of four organizations led by Eden Pastora, a Sandinista war hero who quit as a member of Nicaragua's government in 1981 and left the country because he thought the Sandinistas had "betrayed the revolution." Pastora's army has grown from 300 last April to about 2,000. Unlike the northern contras, who do not have any sizable base within Nicaragua, ARDE currently controls a 30-mile-long stretch of land...
...Pastora claims that he has not directly received "one penny" from the U.S. But TIME has learned that Israel has been supplying him with arms captured from the Palestine Liberation Organization. The CIA may also be channeling funds and equipment to Pastora through El Salvador, which last month may have served as a base for ARDE air attacks on Nicaragua...
Members of some of the rival groups met in Caracas, Venezuela, last month to discuss the possibility of future military coordination, but the momentum toward unity has not continued. The main stumbling block appears to be Pastora, who insists that the F.D.N. purge its military leadership of all former National Guardsmen. Pastora also wants to be recognized as undisputed leader of the contras. As he told TIME, "The other organizations have to join us, operate by our laws and under our political beliefs...
...officials of Nicaragua's Sandinista government inspected the damage, the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (A.R.D.E.), a group of anti-Sandinista rebels based in neighboring Costa Rica, claimed responsibility for the air raid. The rebel group is led by Edén Pastora Gómez, "Commander Zero," a hero of the revolution that overthrew Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 and now a bitter opponent of the Sandinista government. Dozens of people were in the terminal at the moment of the attack, but only four people were injured, mostly by shrapnel and flying debris. One, a young military reservist, died...
...Muller, an air force deserter. Nicaraguan authorities said that flight plans and other documents found in the wreckage showed that the two aircraft had taken off from a small airport near San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Spokesmen for both the Costa Rican government and Pastora's rebels denied that the planes had come from Costa Rica. A.R.D.E. sources claimed that the flights had originated at a dirt airstrip that the rebels had recently captured in southeastern Nicaragua. Nicaraguan leaders placed the blame for the attack not on A.R.D.E. or Costa Rica but on the U.S., calling...