Word: sandinistas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...political battle, rather than from Honduras, the scene of the real one. On Monday the White House leaked word that some 1,500 Nicaraguan troops had pushed across their northern border into Honduras to attack bases of the U.S.-backed contras who have been waging civil war against the Sandinista regime. At first there was skepticism. Not only did Nicaragua deny the report, but so did Honduras. But the next day a terse statement from the Honduran government confirmed that the Sandinista army had crossed the line and noted that the day had brought "new incursions" into Honduran territory...
...greater and far more plausible threat is that of Sandinista-sponsored subversion. The democratic governments of the region are understandably nervous that the Sandinistas will seek to export their own revolution. "The Central American countries don't dislike the Sandinistas because of their Soviet connections, but because of their connections with homegrown radicals," says a senior U.S. diplomat...
There is solid evidence that Nicaragua is actively supporting insurgencies in neighboring countries. The country maintains warehouses of arms that are available to every Communist insurgency in the region except Peru's Maoist Sendero Luminoso, according to Alvaro Baldizon, a former key official in the Sandinista regime who fled to Honduras last year. To minimize their involvement, says Baldizon, the Sandinistas require neighboring guerrillas to ferry their own arms shipments. Visiting guerrillas are trained at bases in Nicaragua, he further claims, and are even provided with free plane flights on Cubana Airlines to Havana for more specialized instruction...
...governments of the nearby Latin American democracies--Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama--have tried not to get caught in the cross fire between Managua and Washington. So far their policy has been to maintain passable relations with the Sandinistas and to keep the U.S. at arm's length. In Guatemala, for instance, newly elected President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo describes his policy as "active neutrality." Some Central American leaders are worried that the U.S. will send in the Marines to overthrow the Sandinistas and thereby plunge the whole region into a conflagration. The Sandinistas...
...contras, like the Sandinista troops, have been widely accused of committing atrocities against civilians. The facts are difficult to know; in a brutish guerrilla war, it is sometimes hard to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Although the U.S. military is currently barred from advising the contras, the Administration plans to send U.S. advisers to train them in their Honduran camps as soon as Congress passes an aid package. By instilling better discipline, U.S. advisers have been able to improve the behavior of Salvadoran troops; it is hoped that they would do the same for the contras...