NICARAGUA MAKES IT'S CASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505330002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 3, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505330002-5
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1~., P..E;D
NATION
3 APRIL 1982
rM `THE THREAT TO OUR REVOLUTION'
.XInkes .its Case
These remarks of Sergio Ramirez Mercado, one of the
three n;einbcrs of z! e governing junta of ,'N'icaragua, were
delivered to an assen:bl)' of Latin American intellectuals in
Managua on Marc;. ', two weeks before the government de-
clared a "state of e'nergencv. " They were translated for The
Nation by Darwin J. f'lakol , author of a book on the San-
dini:r revolution, ,vho is now living in :'N'icaragua.
SERGIO RANI IREZ MERCADO
uring the past months we in Nicaragua have
witnessed an increasing number of actions and
threats endangering our country and our revolu-
tion. It is not only imperial rhetoric that is being
used a.':.rinst Nicaragua; terrorism, military preparations,
the innmidation of our neighbors and the most aggressive
political weapons such as blackmail and sabotage are also
being employed. We can enumerate a series of events in the
past few weeks alone that enable us to clarify this menacing
picture.
? The creation of the ,io called "Democratic Community"
of Honduras, E1 Sal der and Costa Rica, a North
American maneuver ru :gitimate the use of an intervention
force in the Central American area, linked to the Inter-
American Treaty of );usual Assistance. More recently, this
"community" has been joined by the United States; Colom-
bia, which has also authorized the establishment of Yankee
military bases; and Guatemala. The intent to establish a
political and military wall around Nicaragua is clear-cut.
? The establishment of U.S. military bases on the island
of Amapala in the Gulf of Fonseca and on San Andres
island in the Caribbean, both of them within the continental
shelf waters of Nicaragua. These naval and air bases are
designed to involve Nicaragua militarily along both its
coasts.
The presence of North American warships, equipped
with the most sophisticated communications apparatus, in
the waters of the Gulf of Fonseca, an operation which the
president of the Salvadoran junta, Jose Napoleon Duarte,
admits having authorized.
? The supply of money, training and arms to the bands of
former Somoza National Guardsmen operating from Hon-
duran territory, as part of a clandestine operation run by the
Central Intelligence Agency. The existence of this operation
was admitted by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-
American Affairs, Thomas Enders, before the intelligence
committees of both houses of the U.S. Congress during the
,.course of a secret session held last December.
In addition, President Reagan's ambassador at large,
retired Gen. Vernon Walters, has been charged with m?'-
preparations throughout the Caribbean area, and veterar.
C.I.A. officer Nestor Sanchez, now Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Inter-American Affairs, %%as placed in charge of
the operation.
The U.S. National Security Council has approved a
$19 million budget to finance military, political and
economic destabilization actions against Nicaragua. It hay
also approved an eight-point plan of action to carry out this
destabilization operation using military officers from South
American countries, principally Argentina, to train former
National Guardsmen and to infiltrate Nicaraguan territories
as mercenaries. v
As a consequence of all this terrorist activity, bands of
former National Guardsmen, in alliance with Steadman:
Fagoth, a former Somoza security agent, were able this
past December and January to organize their "Red Christ-
mas" operation, which destroyed indigenous communities
along the Coco River between Nicaragua and Honduras
and created a beachhead in Nicaraguan territory. Before
the revolutionary government re-established absolute con-
trol of the zone, Red Christmas resulted in the murder
of nearly sixty Nicaraguans, including civilians and
members of our frontier guards, army troops and secu-
rity forces. Red Christmas also provoked the forced exo-
dus of a considerable number of the indigenous communi-
ties into Honduras. National Guardsmen tortured and
raped residents of the communities as well as local medical
personnel.
The revolutionary government %, as forced to relocate the
riverside communities in more secure areas of the national,
territory, where our Miskito brethren will have, for the first
time, access to systematic medical assistance, education,
adequate housing, electricity and cultivable land. This
relocation has given rise to a ferocious, slanderous cam-
paign of lies mounted by the C.I.A. and the State Depert-
ment against our revolution.
State security organs of the Ministry of Interior have un-
covered a plot, mounted in Costa Rica, Honduras and the
United States, to blow up Nicaragua's national cement fac-
tory and petroleum refinery. Huge quantities of explosives
were smuggled into the country for this purpose. One of the
principals implicated in the plot confessed that he had
received S50,000 from officials of the Argentine genera!
staff and had learned that a special Argentine commando
unit was to be located in Tegucigalpa to direct sabotage
operations against Nicaragua. -
A commercial airplane of Aeronica, the Nicaraguan na-
tional airline, was blown up in the airport of Mexico City by
a time bomb that was supposed to have destroyed the plane
in midflight, killing its 100 passengers.
A suitcase containing explosives blew up in the Sandino
Airport terminal, killing three baggage handlers. The suit-
case had been placed aboard a plane in Tegucigalpa, and
this act of terrorism was designed to force cancellation of
the visit of President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico to
Goan'-JvuEJy'
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Nicaragua. It %sas only by fortuitous accident that the explo-
.ion failed to kill the dozens of passengers who were waiting
nearby for their luggage.
As can be seen, all weapons of terror, aggression and
iharefaced international propaganda are being activated.
Former National Guardsmen are being used for assassina-
non and massacre after haying been armed and trained on
North American territory as well as in Honduras and
Guatemala. No scruples were permitted to stand in the way
of bringing Steadman Fazoth to Washington, D.C., where
he appeared before Congressional committees and human
:-fights groups so that State Department spokesmen might
repeat his lies. Freedom House and the Institute of Religion
and Democracy, both of which are C.I.A. fronts,* were used,
as well as Le Figaro and Radio 15th of September, located in
Honduran territory. Ne?.v-spapers and radio stations in Cen-
tral America and throughout the entire continent are fed a
steady diet of all these lies.
Faced with this increa:nc aggression, faced with the im-
minent peril of an escala:: of this aggression, our revolu-
tion has respondent %sith maturity and- serenity. We are a
firmly committed 1%,ope. We will never retreat in the face of
any threat, but we have gig en evidence-and we will con-
* When . ontacted by The .1'ation. both Leonard Sussman, executive direc-
tor of I recdom House. and Penn Kemble, a member of the executive com-
mittee of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, denied this charge.
tinue to do so-that we desire a global understanding in
favor of peace in Central America, bringing stability and
security to our region....
An ordinary North American fattier wrote to President
Calvin Coolidge in 1927 after his son, a Marine, had died in
the mountains of Las Segovias in Nicaragua in combat with
the Army for the Defense of National Sovereignty, com-
manded by Gen. Augusto Cesar Sandno. In his letter to
Coolidge he said that his son had died unjustly in
Nicaragua, fighting unjustly against a people who had never
offered a single offense to the United States and, what was
worse, fighting to defend interests that were not even his
own: the interests of Yankee bankers, hegemonical interests
that were of no concern to the North American people. And
General Sandino said in 1928 to a correspondent of The Na-
tion, Carleton Beales: "If the American people had not
been dulled to justice and the elementary rights of humani-
ty, they would not so easily have forgotten their own past,
when a handful of ragged soldiers marched through the
snow, leaving bloody tracks behind them, to gain their liber-
ty and independence. If their consciences had not been
hardened by materialistic enrichment, the Americans would
not have forgotten so easily that a nation, sooner or later
and however weak it may be, will obtain its liberty, and that
each abuse of power hastens the des:fuction of those who
employ it.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/30: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505330002-5