Word: sandinistas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...decade-long civil war between the U.S.-backed contra rebels and the Sandinistas is supposed to be over. It has been 18 months since a coalition led by President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro ousted the Sandinista National Liberation Front in free elections, and 14 months since about 27,500 contras voluntarily surrendered their weapons. But harassment by the army and police, which remain under Sandinista control, has driven about 1,000 so-called recontras to rearm, threatening a recrudescence...
...officer Bobby Inman resigned in protest against it. But there was criticism from inside the CIA as well. According to a former senior estimates officer for Latin America, David MacMichael, the CIA in late 1982 issued a classified report concluding that Marxist rebels in El Salvador depended largely on Sandinista arms. One of the few pieces of hard evidence cited was the fact that a Nicaraguan customs officer had allowed an arms-carrying Volkswagen to cross into Honduras. The report, says MacMichael, whose CIA contract was not renewed in 1983, was "a laughable document...
Ortega is still living in a house seized from Jaime Morales Carazo and valued at $950,000, including antiques and an art collection. Last April Ortega paid a token $2,500 to the former Sandinista government for the deed to the house, which is protected from prying eyes by a high wall decorated with festive murals. Other top Sandinistas also retired in style. Miguel D'Escoto, the rotund priest and ex-Foreign Minister, paid only $13,000 for one of the capital's plushest mansions...
...countryside the Sandinistas grabbed ranches and farms. Wilfredo Lopez Palma, an assembly deputy, took 2,650 acres in the department of Rivas. Luis Felipe Perez, the Sandinista mayor of the city of Leon, acquired a 600-acre farm. Mario Hurtado Jimenez, who headed the state Corporation of Aviculture, leased a chicken farm to himself on easy-to-pay terms. His rent: 500 dozen eggs a month...
State-owned enterprises became private overnight, with former Sandinista Cabinet ministers and army officers listed as executives. Chamorro's government is attempting to evict Ortega and a handful of other Sandinista squatters from their mansions. But for the most part, it has decided to ignore "la pinata." Says Antonio Lacayo, Chamorro's right-hand man: "In this country, political reality has more weight than...