TAKING THE SANDINISTAS AT THEIR WORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360011-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: August 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

$1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360011-9
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ARTICLE APPEARED
014 PAGE?L?"
Taking the Sandinistas at Their Word
WALL STREET JOURNAL
23 August 1985
MANAGUA, Nicaragua ? In August
1979, only weeks after the Sandinistas took
over Nicaragua, I was walking through the
lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel at about
10 p.m. when I spotted Tomas Borge in an
intense huddle with a group of important
Latin American diplomats.
Stopping to overhear, I was amazed at
what I was clearly hearing?and what the
tough Mr. Borge, already minister of the
interior, was making no effort to hide.
"Me," he was saying, "I would shoot all
the Somocistas. But we won't because we
The Americas
by Georgie Anne Geyer
do not want to turn the rest of the Latin
American revolution against us. The fewer
problems we have, the more Latin Amer-
ica will be attracted to us. The more prob-
lems we have, the less."
I stood there listening for two full hours,
and the theme was as unmistakable as it
was ungamished. It was that the Nicara-
guan revolution was the beginning of "the
Latin American revolution." Indeed, that
was the phrase that was repeated over and
over and over.
Yet more than six years later, the de-
bate over the Sandinistas' intentions still
goes on with incongruous intensity. Conser-
vatives in America, led by President Rea-
gan, insist that the Sandinistas are indeed
spreading their revolution by subverting
their neighbors. Liberals, most notably in
Congress, discover that the Sandinistas ap-
parently never actually did use the phrase
revolucion sin Iron teras, or a "revolution
without frontiers," and point to that as
proof that the Sandinista revolution is a
self-contained if souring one-party state
with yearnings to social democracy, if only
we gave them the chance.
What is so remarkable about being in
this tumultuous isthmus?with El Salva-
dor's increasingly successful democratiza-
tion and Nicaragua's increasingly Eastern
European kind of national silence?is that
virtually no one here questions the Sandin-
istas' efforts and impassioned intent to
spread their revolution.
The other Central American leaders
simply "know" that there is Sandinista
support for their guerrilla movements.
"No, there is no doubt that Nicaragua is
exporting revolution," El Salvador's Chris-
tian Democrat President Jose Napoleon
Duarte told me in an interview in May in
the Casa Presidencial. " INicaragiran Pres-
ident Daniell Ortega himself said when he
took the presidency, 'I'd talk with Duarte,
but I'll continue to support the guer-
rillas.'"
As early as December 1983, Costa Ri-
can President Luis Alberto Monge, a con-
summate democrat, told me, "In 40 years
of Somocismo, we never had the threat
that we have in four years of Sandin-
ismo."
Specifically, he was referring to the
Sandinistas' internal moves?within the
same Costa Rica whose support had been
the crucial factor to the success of the San-
dinista revolution?to reconstitute the mod-
erate Costa Rica Communist Party as a
radical party designed to overthrow the
Costa Rican government. Since then, not
only have the Sandinistas been attacking
across the border, killing two Costa Rican
police officers, but an ominous series of
kidnappings and robberies in San Jose
bear the stamp of the formative years of
other kindred guerrilla movements, such
as the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti Liber-
ation Front in the early 1970s and the Um-
guayan Tupumaros in the late 1960s.
The amount of "proof" as to Sandinista
subversion?proof in terms of documents
or confessions or intelligence?is massive.
On April 18, the Salvadoran military cap-
tured several leading guerrillas as well as
highly important documents spelling out
even more intimate contacts with Nicara-
gua, Cuba and Eastern Europe than they
believed existed. The intelligence on the
numbers of international guerrillas and
terrorists living in Managua jgroups?Uke
the lethal Colombian -M-19 have ? virtual
compounds here and even ups as ob-
scure as Indip Sikh mlljtants mvegri-
ously. but regularly pass rough) is sub-
stantial.
But these kinds of "proof" are not, to
many Americans, really proof. It is diffi-
cult, nay impossible, to photograph intent
In its historic moment. It is hard for Amer-
icans to grasp the inner whispers of social
process, usually so apparently motionless.
Conspiracy is something compartmental-
ized in "Casablanca," not in a place as un-
likely sounding as Tegucigalpa.
The struggle to figure out what actifally
is happening in this once-simple isthmus?
which now resembles the Balkans prior to
World War I more than anything else??in-
cludes an interview with Nicaraguan Vice
President Sergio Ramirez, who earnestly
said to me: "This is a democracy."
When?if one only studies the structure
and the process that have been set up?one
sees clearly that it is a totalitarian MarXist
structure with all "rights" awarded from
above instead of being innate in man,-one
sees that the process clearly does, and
must, move across borders.
The Sandinistas are serious men and
women. They have the right to create, the
kind of state they want; and they have the
right to spread revolution, if that is their
belief. In the last analysis, one can argue
that one should show them the respect of
taking them at their word and at their
deed?it is somehow patronizing to deby
their seriousness.
Ms. Geyer, a former Latin Ameridin
correspondent, is a columnist for Universal
Press Syndicate and author of "Buying the
Night Flight" (Delacorte Press).
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360011-9