Daily Lobo columnist
Twenty years ago, the United States took steps in a policy that would later shake the Reagan administration and generate questions of why and how our government took the steps it did.
This policy was to give aid and training to Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting with the leftist Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega.
The issue of the Contras has been oversimplified over the years, from those on the right who said they were purely freedom fighters and those on the left who believed they were nothing more than an arbitrary CIA creation - paid mercenaries hired to destroy social democracy in Nicaragua.
In 1979, revolutionaries led by the Sandinista front overthrew dictator Anastacio Somoza DeBayle, a member of the long-time Somoza family dictatorship supported by the United States, particularly during the Cold War period. Immediately after the fall of the Somoza regime, factionalization within the new government began to occur.
Many revolutionaries saw the top Sandinista leaders as replacing one dictatorial clique with another, except the new regime was communist. In the spring of 1980, Central Highlands peasants formed anti-government militias, especially after the confiscation of peasants' lands and a Soviet and Cuban presence in Nicaragua, which they felt was part of a plot to make their country part of a greater Soviet or Cuban bloc.
Other Contra armies sprouted, especially those formed and led by former members of Somoza's National Guard. The Nicaraguan Democratic Force, which became the main Contra unit, was led by former Guard colonel Enrique Bermudez.
So, how did the United States get involved? In August 1980, the Carter administration began authorizing covert actions to aid the initial Contra forces inside Nicaragua. In 1981, Ronald Reagan cut off aid and economic relations with Nicaragua. Then, the CIA began to train Contra forces and direct a lot of Contra action with various Latin American military personnel in Honduras. This would create a series of controversies for the rest of the decade.
The controversies chiefly revolved around the leadership posts of people connected with Somoza, along with the objectives of the Contra effort.
Some in Congress felt that aiding the rebels could lead to a Vietnam-type of situation, where the Contras would be destroyed by the government troops and the United States would have to introduce combat troops into the fray.
In 1984, Congress banned aid to the Contras under the Boland Amendment. This would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, in which individuals inside Reagan's National Security team sold arms to Iran for the release of hostages in Lebanon, and then the money from the arms went to support the Contras.
Why did the United States get involved in a local conflict between various factions?
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
l Cold War politics. The United States acted to counter perceived Soviet and Cuban penetration of Central America. It may have believed that the Ortega regime was part of a larger communist syndicate, which could then affect U.S. security concerns within its own neighborhood.
l Fear of a spreading conflict, which may have affected U.S. allies near neighboring states, such as Honduras, Mexico and Guatamala.
l Protecting potential access to markets and resources in the region. However, this also goes to show that issues such as these came about because of long-time U.S. support for a corrupt and repressive dictatorship.
The failure to address fundamental social concerns and inequalities fostered a mass movement to try to change the framework of their society, with the logical outcome being a Marxist-oriented vanguard, which may have attempted to do good - the Sandinistas promoted literacy and health care programs - but also curtailed certain inherent democratic rights.
This is an issue that will be debated by people interested in Central American history and policy for quite some time.
Was it right for the United States to get involved in a local dispute as part of a larger global game with the Soviet Union? No, because that means that the Contras were just pieces on a chessboard used to achieve a larger goal.
But if it was a policy to actually assist the original revolutionaries recapture their original idealistic program, then yes.
But, the presence of former Somoza Guardsmen in the picture muddies this point. There are no clear answers here, but there's some gray between the black and white, and maybe there are some semblances of answers there.
