U.S. POLICY ON INDIANS IN NICARAGUA DAMAGES ANTI-SANDINISTA EFFORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340003-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 2, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340003-8
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE I
Flawed Approach
U.S. Policy on Indians
In Nicaragua Damages
Anti-Sandinista Effort
CIA Stresses Control, Unity
At Expense of Winning
Support of Local Populace
Impeding Weapons Delivery
`-~/- By FREDERIC K-KE-M
v An LIFFORD KRAUSS
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Only three
years ago, more than 100,000 Miskito,
Sumo and Rama Indians on Nicaragua's
Caribbean coast were rebelling against the
government, offering the U.S. its most
promising anti-Sandinista front.
Today, whole units of Indian warriors
are giving up the fight. Indian leaders
blame the U.S. for undermining their
struggle. They charge that the Central In-
telligence Agency supporTed_on those
Taders that it could control and forced-
them to unite with the U.S.-backed Contra
rebels, who are hostile toward the Indians'
traditional aspirations. Many Indian
fighters have defected and are being
armed and paid by the Sandinistas to fight
the Contras; others sit despondently in
Honduran and Costa Rican refugee
camps.
It would have been a totally different
situation now if the United States had been
wiser." says Capt. Ricardo Wheelock, the
chief of Sandinista army intelligence. "The
U.S. mistake was militarily pursuing a
Miskito policy without understanding Mis-
kito politics."
A Bigger Threat
The Sandinistas once considered the In-
dians a threat, but now ''the police in New
York have bigger confrontations than we
have with the Miskito Indians," Capt.
Wheelock says.
Washington's handling of the Caribbean
coast Indian war is one of the big failures
of the U.S. policy of backing the Contras.
CIA and other government operatives-in-
cluding some who are involved in the Iran-
Contra arms transfer scandal-stressed
Contra unity and overall CIA control at the
cost of winning political backing within the
country behind popular leaders. The CIA
also didn't fully recognize that the Indians
were struggling for autonomy for their re-
gion-something that both the Sandinistas
-nd many Contra leaders oppose.
WALL J LL.LLL JUL
R.VAL
2 March 1987
"Even though 'hey are fighting each
other, the Contras and Sandinistas agree
on the suppression of Indian rights," says
Bernard Nietschmann of the University of
California at Berkeley, a leading U.S. ex-
pert on the Nicaraguan Indians and an ad-
viser to one Indian political faction. "Indi-
ans are not about to fight for goals that are
against Indian interests."
The breakdown of the Indian war effort
is a serious blow to the anti-Sandinista
cause. The Indians were the first to take
up arms against the Marxist regime in
Managua in 1981, and their home base in
the isolated pine savannas on the east
coast would be the easiest spot for anti-
Sandinista forces to hold territory and
form a provisional government.
Strategically Important
The region is also strategically impor-
tant. Nicaragua's most important supplies
of lumber, minerals and fish are there.
The vital supply line with Cuba crosses the
region as well. Defending such resources
against a serious military challenge would
disperse the Sandinista army, but that
hasn't been necessary.
Inhabitants of the Caribbean coast,
which was settled by the British in the
1600s and was unified with the rest of Nica-
ragua less than a century ago, have long
felt animosity toward those they call "the
Spaniards" of the Pacific coast. The Indian
area's English past has left its people with
a religion, traditions, features and names
distinct from other Nicaraguans. For ex-
ample, the two most popular Indian lead-
ers are named Brooklyn Rivera and Stead-
man Fagoth. The Indians took virtually no
part in the Sandinista insurrection that
overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio So-
moza, and they were among the most re-
sistant to the revolution's changes. Rela-
tions turned particularly bitter when San-
dinista troops forced thousands of Indians
to migrate from the strategic Coco River
in 1982.
Most Popular
Yet senior U.S. officials say that the
CIA early on drummed out the most popu-
lar Indian leader, Mr. Rivera, because of
his willingness at one time to negotiate
with Managua and his refusal to give up
his codes and communications network
and work only through CIA-created chan-
nels. A senior administration official says
that even after Congress provided for Mr.
Rivera's organization, Misurasata, to get
$5 million in U.S. assistance last year, the
CIA impeded the delivery of weapons to
him. (CIA officials declined to be inter-
viewed for this article.)
"The Indians want to fight-but freely,
not under the leadership of any other or-
ganization." says Mr. Rivera, who is wait-
ing in Costa Rica for a promised U.S. pol-
icy change that will bring him back into
the active struggle. "The CIA cowboys
want us to be their little Indians."
One of the officials responsible for U.S.
policy toward the Indians concedes that
"we have made mistakes," but he says
that "now we are going to be smarter than
we've been in the past." He says that the
administration plans to support any Indian
group that is willing to fight instead of just
the faction that the CIA helped create in
1985.
But the change may be too late. The
Sandinistas have done much to improve
their treatment of the Indians. They have
helped to rebuild villages they earlier de-
stroyed, and they have begun social pro-
grams. These measures-along with mili-
tary intimidation like the recent aerial
bombing of several still-resistant areas-
have convinced many Indians that peace
with the Sandinistas is a better alternative
than fighting for bad leaders who are lead-
ing poorly disciplined and badly supplied
men.
Indians charge that one of the CIA's
major blunders was to set up an Indian
group, called Kisan, that excluded Messrs.
Rivera and Fagoth, the Indian leaders with
the largest followings. The CIA hoped to
marry Kisan with the major Contra group,
the Nicaraguan Democratic Front, but the
relationship has been marred by fights
over arms and money. In addition, without
strong leaders Kisan hasn't been able to
build a popular following. As a result, the
Indian opposition force has withered.
Setting up Kisan "was a direct maneu-
ver of the CIA to create an obedient Mis-
kito group," says Jimmy Emery Hodgson,
an Indian political chief and former Rivera
ally who in January surrendered to the
Sandinistas.
Marc Rangel, a native of Nicaragua's
Indian region and the publisher of a news-
letter on the Miskitos, says that the CIA's
operatives "didn't know what they were
doing, so they botched it." He explains that
"Indians have always been a cohesive peo-
ple who tended to trust their leaders. This
is the first time they have had a divided
message from above," he says, and he
mainly blames the CIA.
Vietnam Veterans
Administration officials say that the
CIA fielded more than 200 agents and con-
tract workers to support the anti-Sandin-
ista war. Many of them had military expe-
rience in Vietnam but lacked political
savvy.
"These CIA men who failed in Vietnam,
what can they do for us?" Mr. Fagoth
complains. "They wouldn't leave us in
peace to fight. The Sandinistas have con-
solidated their power thanks to the CIA.
It's been a disaster. The CIA smelled of de-
feat; they were men of Vietnam."
Mr. Fagoth himself, however, ac-
counted for some of the agency's prob-
lems. Early architects of the Contra policy
latched on to him because of his daring,
charisma and willingness to ally himself
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340003-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340003-8
with the former Somoza National Guards-
men who took up arms against the Sandin-
istas in 1981. Between 1982 andlI84, most
U.S. aid to the Indians was channeled
through him.
But according to Indian leader Roger
Hermann, a former Fagoth ally, the U.S.
made "a great mistake" forming such an
exclusive alliance. No other Indian leader,
for example, had access to the CIA station
in Honduras. "This caused much friction,"
Mr. Hermann remembers, "because there
were people, especially the young, who
didn't want so much concentration of
power in the hands of one man."
Mr. Fagoth's ruthless consolidation of
power also created problems and cost him
political support in Washington. In 1984, for
instance, he shocked two U.S. Senate staff
members on a fact-finding trip to the Car-
ibbean coast by showing them 'a "death
list" of 12 Indian leaders who were oppos-
ing him. He claimed to have finished off
five of them already. Mr. Fagoth confirms
this story.
Rumors About Fagoth
"Despite the rumors that I am a psy-
chopath, a killer and a kidnapper, I'm the
leader the people follow," Mr. Fagoth. 33
years old, said during a recent interview in
Miami.
Mr. Fagoth says he consented to work
with the CIA in 1982 because his Indian
fighters needed arms, supplies and instruc-
tors. ''When I the CIA 1 said, 'Accept our
control,' I said, 'No. I am the boss.' They
said my soldiers would die of hunger in
that case.''
His problems didn't stop then, he con-
tends. In March 1982 the CIA asked him to
sign a receipt saying that he was receiving
1,800 modern Belgian FAL assault rifles.
Instead, he says, he received 30-year-old
M-1 carbines. He also complained that the
CIA wanted his men to fight a conventional
war from bases in Honduras rather than
the guerrilla war he wanted to fight inside
Nicaragua.
But he says that he kept working with
the agency because "they need me like I
need them."
Mr. Rivera, the other major Indian
leader, took a different course. He wants
Indian independence, and he will team up
with whoever appears to advance that
goal. This has made him an unreliable ally
for both sides. He supported the Sandinista
revolution but switched to the resistance
after concluding that the new regime
wouldn't support Indian autonomy. Then
he worked with the U.S. but refused to
agree to the CIA terms Mr. Fagoth ac-
cepted.
In 1984 he began negotiations with the
Sandinista government for regional Indian
autonomy. After about six months, the ne-
gotiations broke down. The Sandinistas
said that Mr. Rivera was demanding too
much independence for a region that
covers nearly half of Nicaragua and that
he wanted too much of a leadership role
for himself.
A Three-Day Meeting
Mr. Rivera then decided to rejoin the
resistance. In May 1985, Fagoth and Ri-
vera forces met for three days in Miami
and forged an alliance called Asia, which
means "together" in the Miskito language.
They planned a general assembly in Hon-
duras.
But Asia was short-lived. Robert Owen,
an aide to Lt. Col. Oliver North, the Na-
tional Security Council staff member who
was fired for his role in the Iran arms-Con-
tra financing scandal, was in Miami to
keep tabs on the meeting. According to
Alejo Teofilo, a former Fagoth ally, Mr.
Owen told Fagoth followers that they
would lose U.S. support if they brought Mr.
Rivera into the fold. Mr. Fagoth says that
Mr. Owen told him that he considered Mr.
Rivera "dangerous," and a CIA agent
known as "Jorge" later told Mr. Fagoth
that Mr. Rivera would be kept out of Hon-
duras.
_C
Mr. t agoth says that Jorge then gave
him the equivalent of $20,000 for his cam-
paign to gain leadership of Kisan, the new
Indian organization that the CIA was pre-
paring to set up at an assembly in Rus
Rus, Honduras, in September 1985. A CIA
operative in Costa Rica named Max M r-
gan dispersed travel expenses to at least
'[!Tree anti-Rivera Indian leaders, while 10
leaders loyal to Mr. Rivera were denied
funds, according to Mr. Hodgson.
But Mr. Fagoth's efforts to consolidate
power apparently went too far for the
agency. He was arrested by the Honduran
army shortly before the meeting for kid-
napping 12 of his opponents. He denies the
charges and claims that he was taken at
the instruction of the CIA. Whatever the
case, the assembly to create Kisan was left
without its two most popular leaders.
Some officials in the State Department.
which has taken control of Contra policy,
charge that the CIA discredited Mr. Rivera
in order to protect its own chain of com-
mand.
Mr. Rivera has some support in Con-
gress as a nationalist, and the State De-
partment says that it wants to work with
him. But Mr. Rivera is skeptical. "There is
still a chance to reverse things, but not if
the agency keeps pushing the same pol-
icy," he says. "We have been spending
more of our time defending ourselves
against the agency's actions than fighting
against the Sandinistas. I am so sad be-
cause it is our people who suffer."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340003-8