250 at Mass and Park Rally Celebrate Ortega’s Defeat
About 250 spirited supporters of the newly elected government in Nicaragua gave thanks Saturday during a Mass at St. Vincent’s Church and a rally at MacArthur Park for freeing their country of communism.
“There are no words to describe the happiness we feel as a people,” Adam Torres said in Spanish. “Nicaragua is free. We have been liberated.”
Torres, who immigrated to the United States in 1979, said many exiled Nicaraguans plan to return to their homeland if there is a smooth transition of power from current President Daniel Ortega to President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.
He was one of the people joining in a noon Mass at St. Vincent’s Church in Los Angeles. After the Mass the Chamorro supporters formed a caravan of cars adorned with Nicaraguan flags and made their way to MacArthur Park about three miles away.
The demonstrators waved the blue and white flags that signify the pre-Sandinista era since the Sandinistas replaced the national flag of Nicaragua with one that is red and black.
Some onlookers made thumbs-down motions and a driver in a pick-up shouted in a English accent, “Vivan Los Sandinistas.”
“No more pain. No more war. No more separation my fellow Nicaraguans,” Cesar A. Aviles, director of the Nicaraguan Patriotic Coalition in Los Angeles, told the jubilant crowd at MacArthur Park.
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