Fiery Leader Quits Nicaragua to Embrace Contra Cause

For seven years, Azucena Ferrey helped to lead Nicaragua’s civic opposition of political parties and business groups that are committed to fighting Sandinista rule from inside the country and within the law.

Ferrey, a leader of the Social Christian Party, was considered one of the few opposition figures who could stir a crowd, and she made her appeals to women in particular with such issues as compulsory military service.

This month, Ferrey left the internal opposition and Nicaragua to join the contras. She is the only woman on the seven-member board of directors of the Nicaraguan Resistance, an expanded coalition of groups making up the U.S.-backed insurgency fighting to oust the Sandinista government.

Seeking More Legitimacy

The new coalition is the most recent effort to broaden the contras’ political base and to add legitimacy to their cause in anticipation of a vote in Congress, expected in September, on $105 million in new aid for the rebels requested by the Reagan Administration.

Contra leaders say the presence of Ferrey and of Alfredo Cesar, a moderate Sandinista dissident, on the new coalition’s board signals a true political opening in the anti-Sandinista movement, which up to now has been dominated by such ultra-conservatives as Adolfo Calero, head of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force.

But some contra critics doubt that Ferrey will have any power on the board, where Calero also sits together with Aristides Sanchez, also of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. Calero’s is the largest guerrilla group within the coalition.

Critics say that Ferrey’s departure from Nicaragua is part of a continual “decapitation” of the internal opposition. They say she is repeating an error made by former contra leader Arturo Cruz when he abandoned his opposition candidacy in the the Nicaraguan presidential elections of 1984.

Repression Feared

Opposition elements still inside Nicaragua seem to resent Ferrey’s decision to leave. They say that her move to the contras weakens their cause and could subject them to repression by the Sandinstas, particularly since she made the switch after making a trip with other opposition leaders to discuss a Central American peace plan with the presidents of Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador.

“It is a fact that her departure contributes to the image in the Sandinistas’ eyes that the civic opposition is linked to the insurgent opposition,” said lawyer Roger Guevara, head of the Confederation of Professional Assns. in Managua.

“That makes us more vulnerable and it weakens the internal opposition to take away its leaders. . . . It is an erroneous policy to believe the solution to Nicaragua is outside of the country,” he said.

The Sandinistas have largely ignored Ferrey’s departure. So far, her home has not been confiscated, as usually happens to those who go into exile, and only two articles have appeared about her in the official press and in pro-Sandinista newspapers.

Bourgeois Title

In both articles, Ferrey was referred to as Dona Azucena, a Spanish title of respect that the Marxist-led Sandinistas consider bourgeois and have replaced with companero (comrade).

Lea Guido, leader of the Sandinistas’ mass organization for women, said the opposition parties are small and that Ferrey’s departure was “irrelevant” to the political life of the country.

“She’s just a senora who left. . . . Women haven’t been following her out of the country,” Guido said.

Ferrey, 42, has a son, aged 12, whom she moved to Costa Rica two years ago to keep out of the Sandinista school system and, ultimately, conscription into the Sandinista army. She is described by admirers and critics alike as a forceful and determined leader who felt the internal opposition should use confrontational tactics to put pressure on the government.

Removing a ‘Headache’

Virgilio Godoy, leader of the opposition Liberal Independent Party, said Ferrey’s departure removed “a headache for the Sandinista government,” which may have wanted to quiet her but would have found it difficult to arrest someone with such a high profile.

On her resume, Ferrey lists years of work with the Social Christian Party--affiliated internationally with the Christian Democrats--and active opposition to the late dictator Anastasio Somoza, who was ousted by a Sandinista-led popular uprising in 1979.

Among her activities in the late 1960s, Ferrey lists helping to transport Sandinista commander Jaime Wheelock from hiding to the Chilean Embassy, where he sought political asylum.

She became active in the internal opposition shortly after the Sandinistas came to power. Like many other Nicaraguans, Ferrey found her family divided by the revolution, with a sister who is an officer in the Sandinista army and a brother in exile with the contras in Costa Rica.

Ferrey said in an interview that she still believes the opposition parties inside Nicaragua play an important role in trying to keep the Sandinistas from consolidating power. She acknowledges that some critics accuse her of jumping on a sinking ship by joining the contras at a moment when their continued funding is in jeopardy because of the Iran-contra scandal.

‘Stateroom on the Titanic?’

“Am I looking for a stateroom on the Titanic?” she asked with a laugh. “That’s how I felt inside Nicaragua. The ship was sinking for lack of (international) support. . . . I am a fervent admirer of the civic opposition, but I am not stupid.”

Ferrey said that two events persuaded her to leave Nicaragua. One happened last January when President Daniel Ortega, upon signing a new constitution, reimposed a wartime state-of-emergency law, restricting civil liberties.

The second occurred in March during a march that Ferrey organized for International Women’s Day. The march, held without a permit and therefore illegal, was disbanded by police, who arrested three people at the scene after a woman hit an officer with her placard. Ferrey said police also arrested five other activists and two passers-by. All were later released.

“The Sandinistas have no disposition to open political space,” she said. “They repress all that is dissension. I fought against Somoza and, likewise, I fight against these people.”

Anti-Somoza Credentials

Ferrey’s anti-Somoza credentials are part of what makes her such an attractive member of the contra directorate. The contras are tarnished in the minds of many by the presence in their ranks of politicians from Somoza’s old political party and former members of the National Guard, which Somoza headed.

The contra coalition, formerly called the United Nicaraguan Opposition, was enlarged and reorganized as the Nicaraguan Resistance after Cruz resigned as a director, complaining that Calero and his top military commander, Enrique Bermudez, a former National Guard colonel, had control of the movement. Cruz was popular among liberals in the U.S. Congress, a role that the contras and their U.S. advisers hope now will be filled by Cesar, a former Sandinista Central Bank president.

Others on the new board, in addition to Calero and Sanchez, are Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Jr., son of the slain founder of Nicaragua’s now-shuttered opposition newspaper La Prensa, and Alfonso Robelo, founder of the Nicaraguan Democratic Movement, a political party. A representative of Nicaragua’s Indians who oppose the Sandinistas is still to be named.

Contra leaders say the expanded lineup dilutes Calero’s grip on the movement. However, some critics say they doubt that in the long run Ferrey and the others will achieve an effective share of authority because Calero has the backing of the CIA, which helps direct the contras’ military operations, and Sanchez is close to Bermudez and his guerrilla fighters.

“Azucena doesn’t have any real power within the contra bureaucracy and the military doesn’t know her,” one former contra activist said.