‘Hands Off the Americas’ Rally Raises Southland Funds for Nicaragua

More than 1,000 people gathered Sunday at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles to raise money to help rebuild a war-damaged Nicaragua and to mobilize against U.S. aid to Nicaraguan guerrillas.

The second annual “Hands Off the Americas Festival,” held in the grassy quad at the high school, marked the eighth anniversary of the Sandinista government’s revolutionary victory over Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza.

Spokeswoman Rhoda Shapiro said the sponsoring Southern California groups--including the Nicaraguan Task Force and the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador--are raising money to pay for emergency food and relocation of Nicaraguans displaced by warfare between government troops and the contras . The money also will be used to help rebuild hospitals damaged by the fighting, she said.

Donations of $3 were solicited at the entrance to the festival, as well as $10-per-month pledges to pay for non-military aid to Nicaragua. But equally important, Shapiro said, is that President Reagan and the lawmakers in Washington see opposition to U.S. policy in Central America.

Politicizing Effort

“We’re trying to politicize a humanitarian campaign so we can show (that) the people of this country don’t want Nicaragua destroyed with their tax dollars,” she said.

As speakers, singers and a poet lashed out against U.S. influence in Central America, an estimated 200 people demonstrated outside the festival in support of aid to the contras.

The demonstrators chanted “Ollie! Ollie!” and carried signs that read “Yes Contra Aid” and “Russians Out of Nicaragua.”

The chanting referred to fired National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who ran a secret campaign to funnel to the contras money derived from arms sales to Iran.

A spokesman for a group called the Nicaraguan Resistance accused the Sandinistas of selling out the revolution.

“We believe we are the true revolutionaries,” spokesman Benjamin Cuadra said. “The counterrevolutionaries are the ones in power.”

Shouting Matches

Festival participants engaged in shouting matches with the demonstrators, and there were reports of pushing and shoving, but no arrests were made, a Los Angeles police spokesman said.

Shapiro estimated that about 4,000 people attended the festival, while police put the number at about 1,000.

Festival speakers included the brother of Benjamin E. Linder, an American who was killed by the U.S.-backed contras April 28 while working on a rural electrification project in Nicaragua. Linder, a 27-year-old volunteer, was the first American civilian killed in a contra attack.

John Linder, 32, of New Orleans, called on the United States to stop all aid to the contras and to lift its trade embargo against the Central American country “so the people of Nicaragua can determine their own future.”

Death Threats Pointed Out

As the six-hour festival progressed, more than one speaker made mention of recent death threats against Salvadoran activists in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles police and the FBI are investigating the threats, including one against Father Luis Olivares, pastor of Los Angeles’ largest Latino parish, who also spoke Sunday and called on the United States to cease military aid to the contras.

Olivares’ parish, Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles at Olvera Street, is a sanctuary church that has hidden undocumented Central American immigrants to protect them from deportation.

The priest shrugged off the threats against him and said, “It’s the work of the church. Whatever happens to me, that’s going to go on. It makes no difference.”