THE LONE RANGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880069-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: November 26, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880069-3
?~~-*?? ~, NATION
26 November 1983
Iran er (Alfonso Robelo andfriends) who are his only visible allies.
The Lone Commander Zero's call for defections from the Sandinista
Army has brought a much smaller response than he
The appearance in New York City of Eden Pastors .pected. That-is mainly because his'complaints about a lack
G6mez, the Sandinistas' best-known renegade, was of democracy have little app, al to poor Nicaraguans, who
as tumultuous as some of his other historic perform- feel that they' now have more power over their own lives
ances, though a good bit less lethal. On November 11, than ever before. "People's power" means mass participa-
he stood on the stage of Columbia University's Altschul. tion in local government and in the day-to=day administra-
Auditorium whil e an anti-Pastora claque. screamed and don of civil institutions, which is just-whai the Sandinistas'
chanted abuse X"Traitor" ... "C?I-A" ...' "Hijo ' de opponents would take away. Thus, many workers and.cam-
puta") and a ,pro-Pastore claque screamed and chanted ;pesi>zas fear that elections might mean.not:asore democracy
back ("Comunistas" ... "Pa-sto-ra"). Pastora,. -who but less-especially if they brought to authority groups that
seemed to revel in the confrontation, serenely explained that mould reprivatize industry and restore ?full?decjsion making
he had come to the United States to present his "profound power to the owning class. Besides, at is. difficult to hold
analysis" of "the Nicaraguan crisis" and to make clear why elections while your country is under attack.
his attacks on his besieged homeland are truly progressive, Pastora's insistence 'that elections be held soon is.prob-
while Nicaragua's other enemies are reactionary agents of ably rooted in a belief in fiis own.popularity. In fact, ' jt -is
U.S. imperialism. likely that be would have ban 'elected president of the mew.
Pastora's U.S. visit was sponsored by Freedom House, his .regime had elections been held' in '1979, - since he was the
talk by the Columbia chapter of the Young Social Democrats, most photographed and best known-of'the -rebel comari-
U.S.A.; both groups seem to agree that freedom is essentially :dances. But?now he has killed too many sons and daughters
anticommunism. Pastora is a peculiar kind of anticommu- -of the people, and has allied himself too closely with their
nist, however, one who continues to profess his admiration .class enemies, perhaps even with the C.I.A? to recover his
for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (as well as for Maurice - ':stature as a freedom. fighter. It is a pity that in Nicaragua's
Bishop) while insisting that the Cubans leave his country hour of extreme danger, he has forfeited the right to raise
.forthwith. He directs ' a ragtag army, comprising Costa :his :`_1revolutionaty rifle" in -the -country's defense, and. in-
Ricans, Panamanians and a few Nicaraguans, in raids from stead 'allows himself to be used by right-wing Nicaraguan
.its Costa Rican bases into southern Nicaragua; there they and U.S. groups whose concept of freedom would translate
steal cattle and terrorize peasants. He is fighting, he says, to into more Mercedes-Benzes for the few and far .less power
make the revolution more Nicaraguan and more democratic, for the people:
by which he seems to mean that the Sandinista leaders should .; There. is a legitimate concern .about democracy in Nica-
stop driving Mercedes-Benzes and should hold' elections, ragua, and elections will be an important guarantee against
sooner than 1985, as they had promised. :aliases 'of power. However; elections in themselves do not
. Pastors is a man of considerable military but scant polid- .create popular rule, as the continued state terror in nearby
cal.acumen. like the gunslinger Shane, he is a hero whose El Salvador makes plain. Literacy; economic equali ty and
context has disappeared. He has been a rebel warrior since at 'the experience of broad popular participation give Nicara-
least 1959, first as part of the violent wing of the Conservative guars the chance to develop the most fully democratic j&-
Party, then as a Sandinista and now on his own. In between, eminent in the region, a chance we hope they will seize and
be-took time out to develop a fishing company in Costa Rica defend despite the grave provocations by Pastora and other
and to acquire Costa Rican'citizenship. Like the classic ban- enemies of Nicaragua's revolutionary process.
dit at the dawn of capitalism, he is an extreme individualist GEOFFREY-FQx
who:makes his laws with a gun and binds his followers to
him by' energy and audacity.
But the situation has changed: Somoza is defeated and
dead. Today. Nicaraguans face the difficult. revolutionary
tasks of rebuilding a destroyed society, amid external at-
tacks by C.I.A.-sponsored counterrevolutionaries, and
developing democracy-which, translating directly from the .
Greek, they 'call "people's power." Those tasks require
cooperative and collective effort, which ."Commander
Zero," who earned his sobriquet in the flamboyant attack
on the National palace in 1978, cannot tolerate. In fact, he
not only wars upon his former Sandinista comrades; he is
forever quarreling with the exiled Nicaraguan bourgeois
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880069-3