Nicaragua Rebel Leader Seeks Aid at South Coast GOP Session

The crowd in Alfredo’s Taverna, a South Coast Plaza bar, was quiet Thursday evening as a stocky man in a white three-piece suit stepped to a microphone.

Eden Pastora came quickly to the point.

“I am not a man of the microphone. I am a man of the gun,” he said. “I believe dictators should be handled with the guns, especially when the dictator has the support of the Soviet Union.”

Pastora is a Nicaraguan rebel leader known as Commander Zero.

For the last three days he has been touring Southern California seeking money, food, medical supplies, clothing--and more guns--for his 5,000 troops who are fighting the Sandinistas in the mountains of southern Nicaragua.

Thursday night he made a hastily scheduled appearance at a Republican fund-raiser in Costa Mesa at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel’s “taverna.”

Republican Night

It was “celebrity bartender night,” and about 100 Republicans gathered for cocktails served by Republican assemblymen and state senators who donned white aprons and collected tips, all contributions for the party.

Pastora arrived late--half an hour after the party was supposed to have ended and after most of the guests had left.

Still, about 30 Republicans listened and sometimes broke into applause as Pastora made his plea for aid.

He was clean-shaven though previous pictures have shown him with a full beard. He spoke in Spanish and Rauol Silva, an aide to Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) interpreted.

“Our freedom fighters need very desperately your support at the moment,” the rebel leader said.

Although the United States has sent about $27 million to the Contras, the money has gone to rebel leaders in northern Nicaragua and not to his Democratic Revolutionary Alliance in the south, Pastora said.

He asked his audience to contact friends and pressure the U.S. government into diverting some of the $27 million to his “democratic revolutionaries.”

“Give us the guns, and nobody will say it was the government of Ronald Reagan that overthrew Nicaragua. Give us the guns, the medicine, the food and the clothing, and we Nicaraguans will gain our freedom,” he said.

After his speech, Pastora stood quietly with several friends who had accompanied him to the party.

One Contributor

John McDowell, 29, of Newport Beach rushed up to Pastora and wrote him a check for $20. McDowell appeared to be the only contributor, although one Republican worker said she would probably donate some clothing. As the guerrilla leader talked quietly with reporters, a small band began playing again, and the cocktail party resumed.

Pastora was asked how much money he had raised on his latest fund-raising trip. “At this point we haven’t received anything,” he said.

This was Pastora’s fifth trip to the United States in the last three years, said Rick Schorling, a Long Beach businessman who accompanied Pastora. Pastora needs $50,000--enough to pay his troops’ expenses for one month--but most Americans have assumed the Contras have plenty of U.S. aid and so haven’t been willing to contribute, Schorling said.