Contra Bands Inside Nicaragua Prepare for ‘a Poor Man’s War’

As a Sandinista-hunter battalion stalked the steep green slopes just across the river, Julio Cesar Sovalbarro put down his M-16 rifle, lounged against a banana tree and lit a borrowed cigarette--an elusive Contra commander quite at home in the jungle.

Viewed from just about anywhere else, the Nicaraguan rebel cause has never looked so futile. Long dependent on aid from the United States and sanctuary in Honduras, the Contras stand to lose both by Dec. 5 under a Central American peace accord designed to shift the conflict to Nicaragua’s 1990 elections.

But in this rugged stretch of northern Nicaragua, Sovalbarro says his 90 guerrillas have carved a protective niche among anti-Sandinista farmers who feed them, deliver messages, steal army supplies and keep them informed of government troop movements.

Such civilian networks, never fully developed by the rebels when help flowed from outside, are vital to their newly declared aim of surviving entirely within Nicaragua and waging what Sovalbarro calls “a poor man’s war” against the revolutionary government.

“This is an area we control, where the people support us,” said the 30-year-old battalion chief known as Commander Danilo.

His claim was borne out by three days of hiking through this scattering of primitive tropical farms and by interviews with 10 farmers who spoke without any rebels present and voiced open and unanimous support for them.

As the war winds down, a key question is how many civilians across this agrarian country are willing or able to support an army of rebel holdouts. Many of the 7,000 to 11,000 Contras camped in Honduras are expected to slip across the border rather than disarm, joining the 1,500 to 3,000 already deployed inside Nicaragua.

If this glimpse of Pita del Carmen suggests any scenario, it is that the fighting could sputter on indefinitely as small bands of rebels dug in around isolated hamlets of like-minded farmers harass the 70,000-strong Sandinista army, with no hope of victory but little probability of quick defeat.

But if a major influx of Contras brings a sudden escalation of the war, which is now at low ebb, some farmers here said they might run for cover in the cities--and this could tip the balance in the Sandinistas’ favor.

“We do not know how many of us would be able to stay,” said Rodolfo Montenegro Lara, 49, one of the wealthier farmers in these poor, sparsely settled hills. “If no country will aid the Contras, they will have to take things here that do not belong to them.”

The Contras have rarely penetrated, and never held, a city or major town. But countless tiny settlements like Pita del Carmen dot the vast swaths of mountainous terrain lying beyond the reach of roads and public services. Some have been ignored or abandoned by the state and are now under de facto rebel control.

Here by the steamy confluence of the Cua and Gusanera rivers last week, a relay team of three civilian couriers guided two American reporters and a photographer through a concentration of Sandinista troops to meet the Contras.

Encountering the Sandinista hunter battalion on the south side of the Cua, the travelers stopped for the night at a farmhouse, keeping their destination secret. They resumed the hike in the morning, wending through 7-foot-tall grass around the base of a hill to eclipse the view from a Sandinista lookout post and crossed the Cua’s muddy rapids on horseback.

Camped on a coffee plantation near the north bank was Danilo, a dark, wiry man of peasant stock with long hair and a beard that instantly distinguish him from the cleaner-cut Sandinistas, whose camouflage uniforms are similar.

He greeted the visitors with a smile of gold-rimmed teeth, eager to explain how the rebels can defy last month’s agreement among Central American presidents to disband them.

Since marching 50 members of his 700-strong Salvador Perez Battalion into Nicaragua from Honduras last May 14, Danilo said, he has met up with 60 others. Of 110 men, two have died in 17 skirmishes and 18 have retreated to Honduras.

More important, he claimed, they have doubled their scant ammunition stocks to 500 rounds per man through capture or theft from the Sandinistas--a trend that makes prolonged warfare feasible.

“We are returning to the first stage of the war, when for each of our rifles we had to capture 10 of theirs,” he said, recalling the lean times before American military aid started flowing in 1981.

One of five brothers in the Contras, Danilo has survived mountain leprosy as well as nine years of Sandinista bullets. He looks more at ease here than he did in January, when a reporter saw him camped safely in Honduras.

“None of my men is demoralized by the (peace) accord,” he insisted in a three-hour interview. “Nobody is going to give up their weapons and turn themselves in. . . . (Whoever does) could be jailed or annihilated once and for all.”

Instead, he said, they will try to avoid combat and “observe the electoral process.” In an area where no civic opposition is organized, Danilo’s men are already campaigning to encourage an anti-Sandinista turnout in the Feb. 25 elections.

The government has responded by sending hundreds of troops into the area. On both sides of the river, they are spreading word of an offer to meet with Danilo and give amnesty to any rebel who surrenders. This is part of a peace offensive led by President Daniel Ortega, who is touring the war zones, freeing jailed Contra collaborators and asking farmers and religious leaders to set up local peace councils to contact rebel commanders.

Danilo has been through this before and wants no part of it. In May, 1988, he recalls, he and his men were lured into talks with a local Sandinista commander and ambushed. “I don’t have anything to arrange with them,” he said.

Farmers here are equally skeptical of the government effort. They echo the rebel view that there can be no peace with the Sandinistas.

Lt. Bartolo Gonzalez, the Sandinista battalion commander on the other side of the river, disagreed.

“There are not more than 10 Contras wandering in this zone,” he told reporters at a farmhouse one evening. “This isn’t war, it’s vandalism. The peasants who are the victims will take charge of disarming them.”

Maria Chavarria, the 83-year-old farmhouse matron, laughed when the lieutenant left. “How can we disarm an army?” she asked.

If any vandals are around, she said, they are the Sandinistas who took her family’s land three years ago to build an army base and, more recently, stole her clothing, food and a radio.

On the journey, other farmers detailed Sandinista abuses. They reported that Juan Molina, a 50-year-old local cattleman who had helped the Contras, was taken from his ranch by government soldiers early this month and executed.

As in other hamlets, early Sandinista attempts at collective agriculture, price controls and military conscription were successfully resisted here as many farmers joined the rebellion.

“The Sandinistas said we could have a school if we organized (a collective) and armed ourselves,” recalled Juan Francisco Castro Lopez, 63, who has a son in the rebel army. The farmers said no, and the elder Castro was barred from hiring a private teacher for his own children and those of his neighbors.

The area still has no school or medical clinic. Naked toddlers, their bellies swollen from malnutrition, share muddy, flea-infested playgrounds with dogs, chickens and pigs.

“The Sandinistas did more damage to the farmers than the Contras did,” said Castro Lopez, who was arrested six times in the early 1980s. “The Sandinistas are showing a different face now. They are more political. . . . But they have lost our support.”