EDEN PASTORA: A WAY OUT IS BEING WASTED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880030-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: August 20, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880030-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE I Y A____
MIAMI HERALD
20 August 1984
Eden P~stora:
A way out
is being, wasted
l
By SANFORD J. UNGAR
S HORTLY before the Fourth of
July, Eden Pastora, the hero
of the Nicaraguan revolution
who feels it has been betrayed by
Sandinista extremists, came to
Washington. ; He was seeking
American support - more politi-
cal and rhetorical than material -
for his democratic program for
Nicaragua's future, a middle
ground that is neither pro-Soviet
nor pro-American.
Pastora, recovering ''from
wounds he suffered in May when
a bomb exploded at his clandestine
camp in the jungle along Nicara-
gua's southern border, seemed a
shadow of his former charismatic,
macho self. He was We, his voice
was weak, and he leaned heavily
on a cane. His news conference
was well-attended, but the jour-
nalists there either found little to
report or treated him as a curiosi-
ty. He saw officials at the State
Department, members of Congress
and their staffs, but there was no
obvious, or even subtle, benefit for
Pastora's cause.
A FEW days after the Fourth of.
is
July, astora had to __O, av M.
de arture from Washington- for
)=`uro w gee buLLw Planned to__
spread his_messggg. because he
could not scrape together enough
money to pay the hotel bill for
.himself and his entourage The
_Centralln1e1fl nee Ag n y ( IAZ
bating long cis nce decided that
Pastora was too independent, had
no interest in helping_
Finally Pastora asked one friend
in the capital where he might go to
pawn his fine gold watch - an
especially poignant symbol, since
the watch had once belonged to a
relative of dictator Anastasio So-
moza and the Sandinista director-
ate had presented it to Pastora as a
trophy of victory.
Pastora's experience in Wash-
ington is a metaphor for the
problems of U.S. policy in Nicara-
gua and perhaps all of Central
America.
It is no secret that the leftist
Sandinist government has become
unpopular among many of the
same people who helped over-.
'throw the repressive, feudalistic
Somoza government in 1979. Even
if the current Managua regime is
not guilty of all the offenses that
the Reagan Administration has
charged - such as being the main
arms supplier to leftist guerrillas
in El Salvador - by many
accounts, it has pursued ideologi-
cal purity at the cost of economic
decline. Nicaragua's free press has
been virtually squelched. and
many citizens live in fear of party
militants. It is not clear whether
elections scheduled for the fall
will be meaningful and democrat-
ic.
But the guerrillas fighting the
Sandinistas in the northern part of
Nicaragua, until recently with
substantial American help, have
hardly emerged as a viable alter-
native. Because of their leaders'
ties with the despised Somoza.
many of them are feared and
distrusted by ordinary Nicara-
guans, and some of their more-ex-
treme, American-supported tac-
tics, such as mining Nicaragua's
harbors, have been condemned the
world over.
Under the circumstances, Pasto-
ra would seem to e t e i eal
solution, theperfect "third force"
who might achieve a historic
Comp_romise in Nicaragua, aw-
less he is not but he has great
credibility from the days when. as
"Commander Zero," he la yed a
kev roe in the insurrection t at
roux t omoza s downfall. Ever
since breaking with the Sandinis-
tas, he has refused to cooperate
with the Contra forces in the
North, a stance that cost him CIA
support.
Pastora's own military effort in
.the southern part of Nicaragua has
apparently lost momentum, but
the political platform he embraces,
in conjunction with other former
Sandinista officials and support-
ers. such as Arturo Cruz and
Alfredo Cesar, is reasonable and,
from an American standpoint,
appealing. It criticizes Nicaragua's
military buildup, urges the remov-
al of Eastern-bloc and Cuban
advisers from the government and
economy, and advocates political
plura
ism at home. It has the
support of leading Latin American
intellectuals and statesmen, in-
cluding former Venezuelan Presi-
dent Carlos Andres Perez.
Yet Commander Zero seems to
score zero on the American politi-
cal scene. Conservatives shun him
because they think he is too
revolutionary and because he re-
fuses to make the obligatory,
obsequious pro-American state-
ments characteristic of those who
usually get aid from Washington.
Liberals are afraid to support him
because his achievements are pri-
marily military. The liberals con-
fuse his motives with those of his
Sornocista counterparts, and they
are understandably worried about
being accused of meddling in
another country's affairs.
WHAT is more, Pastora suffers
from a bad sense of timing. He
came to Washington while Con-
gress was in recess, and every
would-be foreign leader is sup-
posed to know'that nothing impor-
tant is allowed to happen then.
Eden Pastora thus is left very
much out in the cold, a tragic
figure who seems unlikely to
attract the American and other
external support he needs if he is
ever to achieve his objectives. But
he is proud and defiant. As he told
one gathering that he addressed in
Washington, "If necessary, we
will go back to'the jungle, and if
necessary we will die with our
boots on."
If that is the case, Pastora and
his cause will not be the only
losers. For he represents just the
sort of alternative that Americans
ought to be able to support and
encourage openly in the Third
World, without necessarily under-
mining our own system and val-
ues. Finding a way to do so is a
real test of our political maturity.
Sanford J. Ungar is editing a
collection of essays on postwar
American foreign policy at the
Carnegie Endowment for Inter-
national Peace.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880030-5