Truce Marred by Random Attacks : Peace Hopes Fading in Nicaragua

LAS ANIMAS, Nicaragua — In wartime, Maritsa Bonilla Alvarez never ventured south from Chontales province’s capital of Juigalpa. Life changed, or so she thought, when the Sandinista government and U.S.-backed Contras agreed to a truce.

The young woman, who works in a civilian office that serves Sandinista army veterans and draftees, started visiting her boyfriend at the army training school here, trusting that the 40-mile journey by dirt road was safe at last.

But peace in this part of southern Nicaragua was shattered on July 4 when about 80 rebels on both sides of that road attacked a Soviet-made army truck with grenade launchers and automatic rifles, four witnesses said. Bonilla, who is 21 and agile, leaped out before the truck exploded in flames, then ducked a hail of gunfire. But seven civilian travelers and five Sandinista soldiers died.

Bloodiest Breach

The daylight ambush, less than 3 miles from the army training school, was the bloodiest breach of Nicaragua’s 16-week-old cease-fire and the second Contra attack to kill civilians in four days. It followed a breakdown of negotiations on a final armistice and an increase in reported skirmishes throughout June as rebel forces reinfiltrated into Nicaragua from base camps in Honduras.

Officially, Contra leaders disavowed the ambush, and neither side renounced the truce. For now, both armies have their own good reasons to avoid a return to full-scale combat.

For some rural residents, however, the random violations of this shaky peace pact do not look much different from the declared war that swept in and out of their poor farming settlements for six years, at a cost of more than 26,000 lives.

“The truce gave us great hope there would be no more killing, but now there is no more hope,” said Pedro Jose Villegas, 53, whose son was killed in the ambush. “If Ronald Reagan wants to finish us off, let him declare war once and for all or leave us alone.”

Innocent Victims

The 12 ambush victims were instructors, conscripts or cooks at the army training school and members of a farming cooperative across the road. Villegas’ son and another man were co-op leaders going to buy bulls in Juigalpa. The cooks were women going to buy food. One woman was 67. Another was a hitchhiker from the co-op who was pregnant.

Six of the bodies lay under fly-covered sheets on the dirt floor of Pedro Joaquin Espinoza’s living room in the co-op while carpenters hurriedly built coffins the day after the attack. Forty or more mourners crowded into the tin-roofed shack, most of them staring vacantly. A few women cried hysterically and fainted. One of the dead was the third Espinoza son to die at the hands of the Contras.

Grief on such a scale had not visited Nicaragua since well before the warring armies signed a truce March 23 and pledged to negotiate a lasting political settlement. That effort collapsed June 9 when the Contras rejected a government offer of promised political reforms. But to the surprise of military specialists here, neither side has moved to declare war.

‘Worse Than Mafiosi’

President Daniel Ortega said in a speech last month that his government was losing patience with the Contras. Calling them “worse than Mafiosi,” he said, “It would be more fitting to make these criminals pay for their crimes.” But he declared an extension of the cease-fire through this month and offered new peace talks.

The Contras also extended the truce but refused to resume the talks. Since Congress cut the rebels’ military assistance in February, they have negotiated from a position of weakness and want the aid restored first--a move that the Reagan Administration is considering.

While Contra leaders hesitate to fight without U.S. support, the Sandinistas want to avoid a military provocation that might prompt Congress to renew it. Sandinista officials say time is on their side. They are using the truce to re-equip their forces with Soviet hardware and retrain hastily prepared conscripts.

The Contras’ plea for new U.S. aid may have been aided by Nicaragua’s expulsion this week of U.S. Ambassador Richard Melton and seven other diplomats. The Reagan Administration retaliated, ordering the same number of Nicaraguan diplomats to leave the United States. A group of U.S. senators is reported to be working on a proposal for about $30 million in Contra aid.

Another reason the cease-fire is still formally observed is that it has created such high hopes for lasting peace that either side would pay a political price for renouncing it.

About 450 Nicaraguans died in the war in each of the three months before the truce was signed, according to the Foreign Ministry. Since the agreement, the Defense Ministry has listed 38 Sandinista soldiers dead. Witness for Peace, an American war-monitoring group, has confirmed war deaths of 19 civilians in that period. The Contras have not announced their casualties.

Despite the relatively low level of bloodshed, tensions are rising in the countryside as both armies increase their activity and engage in forced recruiting. Most of the reported truce violations have occurred in the past month.

‘Frustration on Both Sides’

“There is frustration on both sides,” said one Western military observer in Managua. “There are strong-headed field commanders, Contras and Sandinistas, who want the war resolved quickly, one way or another. They are willing to take risks, bend the rules.”

Short of non-lethal supplies, the Contras withdrew more than half of their approximately 10,000 troops to camps in Honduras during March and April. Since early June, most have marched back into Nicaragua with food, new clothing and boots, trying to regain former rural footholds, rebel officials say.

“The Sandinistas are systematically harassing our forces as they return to Nicaragua,” Bosco Matamoros, spokesman for the Contras, said in a telephone interview from Washington. “They are testing our readiness, trying to keep us off balance.”

Informal talks between local commanders of the two armies appear to have ceased, and unofficial truce zones drawn up in such meetings have broken down in some areas.

Rebel Raid Told

Witnesses said a large band of rebels raided a farming cooperative and its militia post 25 miles northeast of Rio Blanco just after midnight on July 1, killing a 12-year-old boy and two other unarmed civilians.

Matamoros denied that the Contras staged that raid or the July 4 ambush here. He said there are no rebels in this part of Nicaragua.

“An ambush of that type would be suicidal,” he said. “Our troops are vulnerable. They do not have many supplies. Their instructions are to avoid combat.”

But another Contra official, in Miami, said that the ambush is still under investigation and that sporadic communications with rebel field units often make such incidents hard to check out.

Part of Campaign

Sandinista leaders said the ambush was part of a campaign to disrupt the July 19 celebration of their ninth anniversary in power.

A day after the ambush, the road south of Juigalpa was heavily patrolled by the army and civilian traffic was brisk. But several cattlemen said they were driving their herds away from hills presumably frequented by the Contras.

“For a few months it was quiet here, but now the war has come back really hard,” said Santiago Aguilar, 45, a rancher. “The government and the others don’t seem to want to settle anything. I see ugly times ahead.”