Peasants Supply Food, Care : Secret Rural Network Helps Sustain Contras

Led by a one-armed peasant guide, 40 Nicaraguan guerrillas crawled up the steep jungle trail to the old man’s shack. Word of their arrival spread, and two dozen farmers gathered from nearby hollows.

A gangly, long-haired rebel known as “Sheriff” gave a political speech. He said the Sandinista government had not lived up to its promises under a Central American peace agreement due to take effect today. The Contra war would continue, he declared.

In the audience, a young man said that the Sandinista army had forcibly moved his family and those of 27 other rebel collaborators to a distant collective farm last year. But he had escaped and returned home.

“God willing,” he said, “we shall go forward in this struggle--we as civilians and you as soldiers, working together.”

The meeting last Sunday evening, far from the nearest road or army position, offered a rare glimpse of the clandestine rural network that supplies the Contras with food, medical care and military intelligence, enabling them to roam freely through much of the Nicaraguan countryside.

For the last year, since they were re-equipped with $100 million in U.S. assistance, the Contras have spread virtually all their 10,000 or more troops deep into Nicaragua from base camps in Honduras.

Now, with future U.S. support put in doubt by the peace accord, rebel leaders say the internal network is strong enough to keep their six-year-old insurgency alive and rooted inside the country.

To demonstrate this, a rebel field commander and his men led three American reporters on a three-day march through a small, isolated segment of embattled Jinotega province. It was the first such press trip arranged by the Contras that did not start at a camp in Honduras.

Collaboration Systematic

In interviews at 13 houses along the way, rebel soldiers and the peasants helping them said their once-sporadic collaboration had become systematic during the past two years and would continue. Some Contra supporters said their work had become somewhat easier because Sandinista harassment of them has diminished.

“They used to torture you if the Contras came to your house, but things have changed,” said Maribel, a Contra fighter’s wife who runs messages to the rebel army from her coffee farm. “Before, if you collaborated, someone would inform on you. Now everyone is collaborating, and the Sandinistas know there is nothing they can do.”

It is not clear whether there is such close collaboration in other parts of the country. International human rights groups have accused the Contras of forcing civilians to feed them or join their ranks. But the peasants around here do echo the same complaints--of forced military conscription and statist agricultural policies by the Sandinistas--that, in other places, have fueled what is essentially a rural insurgency.

Reporters who toured the area were escorted by a guerrilla leader called Comandante Ruben and two 20-man rebel detachments. With rare punctuality for Central America, they emerged from the woods at a prearranged roadside rendezvous about 10 miles north of the town of Pantasma.

Sandinistas Nearby

Less than two miles away, Sandinista soldiers flanked the road to protect a construction convoy that was to pass 20 minutes later.

From the main road, the rebels vanished into a maze of footpaths that led east and then south, through jungles, across fields and over hills from one solitary, unpainted farmhouse to another.

Marching for nearly 20 miles, they crossed the Gusanera River and dodged a Sandinista army lookout post before ending up in this hamlet, at the end of another road.

Like much of what lies beyond the highways and dirt roads of rural Nicaragua, it is a hidden world of poor cattlemen and coffee growers with no electricity, no cars or trucks, no medical clinics and hardly a school or store.

Proud of Independence

Politically conservative and proud of their independence, they have stubbornly resisted the only serious Sandinista missions in the area since the 1979 revolution--visits by army patrols seeking recruits and government agents trying to ration their food and set prices for their crops.

From 12 of the 13 farms where Ruben and his men ate and rested, men or teen-age boys had left in recent years to join the rebel army. Their relatives appeared to be at ease with the commander, who greeted them by name and offered cash for food. Some of the farmers refused payment. At one house, a bull was donated and slaughtered.

Along the way, farmers swept away footprints and sent couriers ahead to make sure no Sandinista soldiers were near. Some of these collaborators gave their names to reporters, but others, fearful of reprisals, withheld them.

“If we did not have the support of the people, we would not be fighting,” Ruben said. “They give us information. They care for our wounded. Sometimes they even fight for us.”

Know Enemy’s Moves

Because of this help, he added, “We know when the Sandinistas come, where they go and how they get there. If we do not want to fight, we do not.”

Ruben, the nom de guerre of Oscar Manuel Sobalvarro Garcia, 26, is one of the rebels’ most experienced field commanders. His 700-man Salvador Perez Regional Command has lost 27 dead since the march from Honduras nine months ago, he said, but has gained 36 recruits since August alone.

For more than a week, he said, his men avoided combat while some units went to pick up four planeloads of CIA-supplied munitions, uniforms and boots dropped from planes last month. It may be their last equipment from this year’s U.S. aid package.

The peace accord signed Aug. 7 by five Central American nations calls for a cease-fire, a cutoff of outside assistance to the rebels and steps by the Sandinistas to make Nicaragua more democratic, including press freedom and an amnesty.

Reagan’s Aid Request

Although the Sandinistas have refused so far to negotiate a truce with the exiled rebel leadership, the peace accord has aroused U.S. congressional opposition to President Reagan’s planned request for an additional $270 million in Contra aid.

But rebel morale on the weekend march appeared high. None of the 15 soldiers interviewed expressed any hint of wanting to give up the fight.

At one house along the Contra network, Sandinista soldiers had posted an appeal to the Contras to surrender. “The peace plan gives you two choices,” the flyer said. “Accept amnesty or death.”

“If my boy comes home under the amnesty, they will kill him,” said a peasant woman wearing a denim hat and gesturing with a dried corn cob in her hand. Better that her 25-year-old son, a Contra fighter for three years, “die like a man,” she said.

Trusted Reagan Promise

Some of the rebels said they had heard on the radio a Spanish translation of Reagan’s speech last month promising never to abandon them, and they trusted him.

But many are veterans of the lean years of 1984-86 when their U.S. aid was formally suspended--but secretly continued on a lesser scale--and believe that they can survive another cutoff, in part by seizing what they need from the Sandinistas.

With or without U.S. aid, every soldier interviewed said he would keep fighting.

“There is concern, but nobody is demoralized,” said Danilo, the nom de guerre of Ruben’s older brother. “Without American aid, it would be a poor man’s war. We would have to plan our operations better and rely on civilians for boots and clothing. But this is an area we control. The civilians support us.”

The litany of Sandinista offenses denounced by the peasant collaborators here are the same that prompt others to join the Contras.

Complain of Abuses

Some complained that the Sandinistas tried to force them into collective farms. Two peasants said the government stole their trucks. Others said the military draft makes it impossible to bring in a decent crop.

“If you don’t work on a collective, they won’t give you a permit to buy and sell,” said a 51-year-old farmer who now spends much of his time traveling to Managua to buy penicillin, disinfectant, vitamins and other first-aid supplies for the rebels.

“I am going to dedicate my life to this until we achieve freedom,” said the farmer, who works for no pay with a “chain” of 10 couriers he has trained.

A woman who often cooks for Contra troops said a Sandinista battalion commander once ridiculed her for writing the word Jehovah on her kitchen wall and having a Bible. “He told me God does not exist,” she said. “He said so many Contras have Bibles that Ronald Reagan must be in the business of selling them.”

Slayings Described

The woman and other peasants described the slayings of six suspected Contra collaborators said to have been taken from their homes in the area by Sandinista soldiers between 1982 and 1985.

Such slayings are apparently less frequent now, but one was reported last May in nearby Guapinol. Relatives identified the victim as a 28-year-old suspected Contra member who was taken from his home by government security agents and shot.

A 7-year-old boy was killed in the same hamlet Oct. 26 by what his father said was Sandinista gunfire directed at Contras standing near his home.

Peasants elsewhere accused the army of indiscriminate shooting into their homes during battles. One woman held up an 82-millimeter mortar shell that killed one of her cows.

Treats Rebel Wounded

Juan, a 39-year-old farmer, abandoned the Contra army two years ago to help treat its wounded and had five patients the other day when the rebel patrols passed by his home.

“The neighbors help me cook and care for them,” he said. “It’s far better organized today. People know now what we’re fighting for.”

A 21-year-old combatant named Israel said the Sandinistas came looking for him after wounding him in a battle two months ago. “There wasn’t a family who would tell them anything,” he said.