Violence, Political Bickering Threaten Nicaragua’s Peace

The bloodiest violence since civil war ended three years ago has left dozens dead in northern Nicaragua, while political bickering in the capital has fractured the weak government of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

Her nation polarized and the economy moribund, Chamorro is struggling with her most profound crisis yet. Three years after she defeated the leftist Sandinista Front in elections and raised expectations of a peaceful “new Nicaragua,” Chamorro faces questions about whether she can fulfill her pledge to build democracy here.

Some of the government’s harshest critics on the right even warn of a return to war.

Hundreds of right-wing, armed former rebels, angry over what they say are broken government promises, are regrouping in the countryside. Political parties that Chamorro once headed are now boycotting the legislature. Newspaper headlines daily trumpet new charges of official corruption. And a shadowy far-left group is carrying out selective assassinations of prominent landholders.

The bleak panorama, officials and diplomats say, jeopardizes foreign investment and economic recovery in a country where the vast majority of people live in poverty.

“The road to democracy is longer and more difficult than we thought,” Chamorro conceded last week. She implored citizens to “turn a deaf ear to the drumbeats of war.”

For a decade, the Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations spent millions of dollars to train and equip Contra guerrillas fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinista government. About 30,000 people were killed, and the economy was left a shambles.

When Chamorro, the widow of a revered newspaper publisher, led a conservative coalition of 14 political parties to upset Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in elections in February, 1990, the Contras agreed to disarm.

Embarking on a program of free-market policies, the new president slashed five-digit inflation and began dismantling the bloated bureaucracy.

But her decision to include Sandinistas in her government infuriated and ultimately drove away her electoral allies, the National Opposition Union (UNO).

Chamorro and her chief administrator, son-in-law Antonio Lacayo, argue that accommodating the Sandinista National Liberation Front, still the largest single political bloc, is the only way to reconcile postwar Nicaragua.

Sandinista party members control the army and the police, and they dominate the Supreme Court.

And now, after a brutal, months-long power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government, Sandinistas also hold sway over Congress, thanks to an alliance with dissident UNO legislators who stuck with Chamorro.

The feuding harks back to Nicaragua’s century-old tradition of internecine politics, where age-old rivalries, intolerant egos and family ties dictate events.

“What we have here is a culture of confrontation,” said Luis Fley, a farmer and well-respected former Contra leader who is trying to build a political party.

The political crisis in Managua, which saw laws languish as Congress operated for months without a quorum, came as violence spread in the countryside.

Ever since the war ended formally in June, 1990, small groups of discontented former Contras and former soldiers have periodically taken up weapons and challenged established order. But in recent weeks, violence for the first time has claimed several lives.

It is in the hardscrabble northern countryside, Nicaragua’s historic cradle of insurrection, that the differences are most stark. Hatred and suspicion seem to run as deep as they did five years ago, at the height of the Contra war.

“We are living in the middle of the enemy,” said Encarnacion Baldivia, a disillusioned and bitter former Contra field commander who used the code name El Tigrillo (The Ocelot). “We were mistaken to think Violeta was going to solve our problems.”

Army troops pursuing rearmed Contras have engaged in battle 32 times since late December, said an army spokesman, 1st Lt. Milton Sandoval. Eleven soldiers, 50 rebels and 21 civilians have been killed and 50 people wounded.

The government maintains that most of the more than 600 gunmen operating in Nicaragua’s Esteli, Matagalpa and Jinotega provinces are “bandits” engaged in common crimes. But according to rebels, former rebels and independent monitors, a substantial portion of the bands are politically motivated.

All agree that the best organized is a group led by Jose Angel Talavera, who uses the nom de guerre “The Jackal.”

The “Re-Contras,” as these groups are known, are well-armed and sport new-looking uniforms. They have a few antiaircraft missiles and may be receiving some money from supporters in Miami, according to the army.

The Re-Contras complain that the government has failed to supply deeds to farmland and credits. Most important, they complain that continued Sandinista control of state security forces threatens their safety. Sandinistas, on the other hand, complain that vengeful Re-Contras are the bigger threat.

Since mid-1991, 490 political killings have been recorded by a pro-Sandinista human rights organization--204 of former Contras, 73 of Sandinistas and 49 of police and soldiers. Of the remainder, the report says, 113 peasants have been killed.

Few of the culprits have been brought to justice, a fact that further erodes confidence. The government insists it is working to investigate cases, and a special tripartite commission composed of church and Organization of American States members is examining 59 murders to determine if those cases were properly handled.

“You cannot say the government is promoting impunity--that would be an error,” Interior Vice Minister Frank Cesar said.

The government has also sought to disarm its citizenry, confiscating or purchasing about 43,000 rifles, grenade launchers and other weapons last year. But the military estimates that 30,000 more weapons remain in civilians’ hands.

To further complicate matters, a group calling itself the Leftist Punitive Forces emerged recently. Made up of former members of the Sandinista army and state security apparatus, it is waging a campaign to “eliminate the rich.”

The group claimed responsibility for the November murder of Arges Sequeira, a rancher who headed an organization representing thousands of landowners whose property was confiscated by the Sandinista government.

The violence and political discontent are fueled steadily by Nicaragua’s economic troubles. More than half the population is unemployed or underemployed, and most of those who do work are finding that their wages do not cover basic needs.

Prices for some food, for example, rival prices in the United States, yet the minimum wage is as low as $100 a month. The World Bank reported that per-capita income fell to $341 in 1991, less than that of Haiti. Returning Nicaraguan exiles have opened restaurants and shops but have not invested substantially in job-producing industries.

Added pressure comes from the estimated 22,500 demobilized Contras and more than 90,000 of their relatives.

Thousands have set up makeshift camps in dusty fields around Managua, forming new shantytowns in a city already suffering a severe housing shortage.

Ermicenda Flores Altamirano, 27, and her two small children live on a plot of dirt about six feet by six feet. A tin roof sits on four poles, but there are no walls.

A former Contra fighter who saw heavy combat in the northern hills of the Nueva Segovia province, Flores said she worked as a maid for the last six months to earn enough money to buy 200 cinder blocks that will form part of a wall. Flores’ husband, also a Contra, was killed in fighting in 1987.

Like most, she complained that the government has not helped beyond allowing her to occupy the land.

“We have meetings, but they keep fooling us and never give us anything. I am tired of meetings,” she said. “If it weren’t for my children, I would return to the hills and become a Re-Contra. At least in the hills, we had food.”

Thousands of demobilized Sandinista soldiers and fired workers in the Sandinista government bureaucracy are also looking for jobs. Whatever their political perspective, many Nicaraguans are desperate. And if they were looking to their political leaders for hope in recent weeks, they may have been dismayed by what they saw.

Beginning last fall, an intense power struggle was being fought by Chamorro and Lacayo on one side and their archenemy, Alfredo Cesar, the recently deposed president of the Congress.

Cesar, who is also Lacayo’s brother-in-law, was using his position to promote legislation that would have cut into Sandinista influence.

Among his projects in the National Assembly was a law that would have returned to original owners a large amount of land confiscated by the Sandinistas, and another that would have gutted the army’s budget.

Sandinista legislators stormed out of Congress last September, knowing they could stop Cesar by denying him a quorum. Undeterred, Cesar for months continued to operate a rump Congress.

Congress under Cesar passed a number of laws that Chamorro and Lacayo opposed, among them one that would have removed Gen. Humberto Ortega, an original comandante of the Sandinista Front, from his post as defense minister.

In December, the Nicaraguan Supreme Court ruled that the quorum-less Congress was acting illegally and invalidated all its actions since September.

Saying she intended to enforce the court ruling, Chamorro dispatched troops to the legislative building and took control of Congress.

Chamorro then named an interim congressional leadership composed of Sandinistas and National Opposition Union members who remained loyal to her.

Cesar, who says the action at Congress was nothing short of a coup, accuses Chamorro--and especially Lacayo--of breaking the backs of fledgling democratic institutions to consolidate power and appease the Sandinista Front. The government denies the charge.

The political intrigue did not stop there.

With Sandinistas and loyal UNO members holding a slim majority in Congress, the body granted Chamorro’s request last month to fire Controller General Guillermo Potoy. Potoy had just completed a yearlong investigation that determined that a senior government official working under Lacayo had stolen $1 million to bribe members of Congress.

Chamorro maintained that Potoy’s allegations were politically motivated, and he was fired before charges could be brought. Lacayo was later cleared by the attorney general’s office, but the official accused of paying the bribes, Presidency Vice Minister Antonio Ibarra, was indicted.

Ibarra fled to Cochabamba, Bolivia, and leveled a steady stream of sensational, if largely unsubstantiated, allegations against Lacayo, ranging from murder to drug trafficking. Lacayo would not be interviewed for this story but has denied some of Ibarra’s charges.

The dizzying spectacle, whether or not it causes permanent damage to the government, has tarnished an image Nicaragua needed to attract foreign aid, observers say.

“They’re not governing,” a diplomat said. “They’re just trying to go after each other. The national pastime is settling old scores. It weakens the institutions, and it weakens the country in the eyes . . . of the international community.”