Many Find Refuge in Honduras : Nicaraguans Flee Draft; Some Join Contra Ranks

Young men in steady numbers are fleeing the draft in Nicaragua, either to join the ranks of anti-Sandinista rebels or to hike across the border into neighboring Honduras seeking refuge.

Often, those who join the rebels are rural youths who just want the government to leave them alone and would rather fight voluntarily with the guerrillas than under duress for the Sandinistas.

The ones who seek refuge in Honduras don’t want to fight anyone. Some are city youths who have paid high fees to guides to lead them through rugged mountain passes. Others are country boys who know the frontier paths well and have escaped on their own.

Most reach the border on foot, pockets empty, with the clothes on their backs their only possessions. All say they refused to join the Popular Sandinista Army, the military arm of the Marxist-led government of Nicaragua.

The Sandinista army is fighting an insurgency by rebels widely known in this region as the contras, an abbreviation of the Spanish word for counterrevolutionaries. Until last summer, the contras were covertly financed by the United States through the CIA, and the Reagan Administration is now pressing Congress to renew that assistance.

Warfare between the contras and the Sandinistas, which has claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in three years, prompted Nicaragua to impose conscription, an unpopular measure.

Ironically, the draft--designed to bolster government forces fighting the contras--is nourishing the rebel ranks as well and is depriving Nicaragua of manpower needed for civilian pursuits.

The drain of young men into rebellion or exile is just the latest sign of draft-related disruptions, which have included pitched battles between parents and draft authorities and the creation of a youth underground, hiding out from the government.

There are also reports of young men of draft age fleeing into Costa Rica, Nicaragua’s neighbor to the south.

Visit to Jungle Camp

During a weekend visit to a jungle guerrilla camp on the Honduras-Nicaragua border, scores of escapees told a reporter they joined the contras because they were soon to be carried off by Nicaraguan draft officials.

“The Sandinistas had already come to my house to take me by force, but I hid,” said Martin Castillo, a farmer and recent rebel recruit from Matagalpa. “Sure, I have joined an army anyway, but at least this is of my own will.”

The draft evaders were part of a group of 120 new recruits joining the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, largest of the rebel groups operating from Honduras. The rebels are said to number 12,000 to 15,000 men under arms.

Most of the green troops were in their teens and 20s, but there were a few boys as young as 12 and one man was 44 years old.

Both the youngest and the oldest said that the Nicaraguan draft drove them to the insurgency.

“They’re making people up to 60 years old join (the Sandinista army),” asserted Mauricio Rivas, 44, as his companions laughed. “I figure I would be tapped soon.”

A skinny 12-year-old at his side said, “My father told me that because I was old enough to hold a rifle, the Sandinistas would get me.”

The draft has encouraged other youths to seek refuge in Honduras even though they resist joining the contras.

Arrivals at Transfer Point

About 30 recent arrivals, ranging in age from 13 to 23, were gathered at a Red Cross collection point in Choluteca. All had crossed into Honduras, surrendered to police and were awaiting transfer to a U.N. refugee camp.

Jose de la Cruz Cortez, 19, who came from Managua more than 90 miles to the south, talked with a reporter about his experience in avoiding the draft.

“I don’t want to be sent to the mountains to die like a dog,” he said.

He said that he had paid 80,000 cordobas to a man who smuggled him out of the country. On the black market, 80,000 cordobas is about $200, a large sum in impoverished Nicaragua. At the official exchange rate, it is about $2,857.

“My mother had to sell her refrigerator, television set and blender,” he said. “It was a sacrifice.”

Like most of the refugees interviewed, Cortez, who is a Mormon, expressed an aversion to war in general and to the Sandinista government in particular.

“The Sandinistas closed my church,” he said. “Now they want me to fight for their interests.”

Fierce Job Competition

According to U.N. officials, the number of young men fleeing Nicaragua to avoid the draft is increasing. U.S. officials say, however, that perhaps no more than 1 in 10 declares himself as a refugee. Others come in legally and still others--no one knows how many--come in secretly and neglect to report to the police. They hide out with relatives or sympathizers or, sometimes, with employers who take them on at substandard wages. The competition for jobs has become a sore point with Honduran authorities.

On Nicaragua’s southern border, Costa Rican authorities estimate that 20,000 Nicaraguan youths have crossed into Costa Rica in the past three years--legally or illegally.

Their prospects are no brighter in the south than they are in the north. Jobs are scarce. The few who reach the United States find that U.S. authorities do not regard draft evasion as grounds for political asylum.

The young men who have come to Choluteca live in tents in a dusty compound while waiting to be transferred. One of them, Fabio Alberto Hernandez, 22, a fisherman from Nicaragua’s Pacific port of Corinto, said his family paid a guide 6,000 cordobas to lead him out of the country.

“My mother is a maid, and it was hard to raise the money,” he said. “But she didn’t want her son sent to war and returned in a box.”

Neighborhood Pressure

The draft aside, Hernandez had other complaints about conditions in Nicaragua. He said he resisted pressure to join a Sandinista neighborhood vigilante groups. These groups--Sandinista defense committees--dispense government information, control rations and look out for anti-government activity.

“They withheld our family’s rice ration because I wouldn’t stand guard at night,” Hernandez said.

In nearby San Marcos de Colon, the police were holding two draft evaders who had arrived the day before.

“We had just sent four to Choluteca when these two showed up,” Florentino Larios, chief of the National Investigations Directorate in San Marcos, told a reporter. He said that in the past month, 26 draft dodgers have turned themselves in at his office.

The two youths he was holding had come from Matagalpa, a coffee town in north-central Nicaragua.

“We don’t want to be communists,” one of the two, Irvin Riguera, 18, a truck driver, told a reporter. His companion, Jovani Almendares, said that he was in danger of being drafted even though he is only 13 and the minimum draft age, officially, is 17.

‘Hide in the Hills’

“It is better here,” he said. “In Matagalpa we would have to hide in the hills.”

In San Marcos, three newly arrived refugees were working in a factory where hats are made. It is owned by a relative. Two of the three said they left Nicaragua not only because of the draft but because there is no raw material there for their hat factory. The third, an auto mechanic, said there are no spare parts, either.

At a nearby farm, a group of Nicaraguans was at work clearing bush. They had been hired at 75 a day, compared to the customary $2.50. Despite the low wages, they said, they prefer working to being sent off to a refugee camp.

Despite the anti-Sandinista tone of the refugees’ remarks, none said he would join the contras.

“We have our families to think about,” Alvaro Marin, 19, said. “To join the contras would put them in danger.”

Most said that they hope the United States will intervene in the fighting.

The Nicaraguan draft took effect in October, 1983, and Sandinista officials say they have been able to meet the army’s manpower needs. The law makes no provision for conscientious objection to military service.

Conscription is traditional elsewhere in Central America but relatively new to Nicaragua. During most of the 40-year dictatorship of the Somoza family, volunteer armies were the rule.

As the Sandinista regime’s war with the contras heated up last summer, recruiters raided schools and workshops in search of draft dodgers. Some students and workers promptly fled into hiding.

Mothers March to Protest

Young people began to stay away from movies and dances, where Sandinista agents made a practice of conducting raids to round up conscripts. In some towns, mothers marched to protest against military service. And, on occasion, parents clashed with recruiters. An irate father in a town near Managua attacked Sandinista agents with a machete.

Perhaps the most violent incident occurred last month in the town of Nagarote. Sandinista troops surrounded the town with trucks while recruiters moved in and began picking up draft dodgers. They broke down doors and shattered windows. Citizens fought them in the streets and attacked with sticks the trucks that were carrying away their sons.

An incident last fall, during an observance of Independence Day throughout Central America, was comic rather than violent. By tradition, students in the region’s five countries carry a torch through their country and pass it on to youths in the neighboring country at the border. When Nicaragua’s dozen torch bearers reached the frontier with Costa Rica, they kept right on running.