Contra War (Nicaragua, 1980s)

Contra War (Nicaragua, 1980s)

Within a year of the July 1979 triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution, there emerged a counterrevolutionary (contra) movement against the Sandinista regime. From around 1982 the war expanded to include large parts of the country, especially in rural zones of the north and east, due in large part to U.S. funding, training, equipment, and organizing under the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Combining an internal civil war with an external war of aggression, the contra war was waged by several counterrevolutionary armies that were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguans and millions of dollars of property damage.

By the mid-1980s the war compelled the Sandinista regime to devote around half of the national budget to national defense and to institute universal military conscription. By the late 1980s the latter measure proved widely unpopular among Nicaraguans, as did the economic and human cost of the conflict and the shortages of basic goods caused by the war and the May 1985 U.S. trade embargo.


Most observers agree that the contra war was a critical factor in causing the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in February 1990, effectively ending the Sandinista revolution. It was also central to the Iran-contra affair in the United States, which rocked the second Reagan administration (1984–88).

With the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas and an internationally supervised demobilization process, by the early 1990s the war effectively ended, though armed groups continued to destabilize many rural areas well into the 1990s. It is estimated that the war uprooted some 600,000 people (around 15 percent of the national population) and caused the deaths of 30,000 to 50,000 civilians and combatants.

Small-scale armed resistance to the Sandinista regime by autonomously organized militias began within a month of the FSLN’s takeover, principally in the region north of Jinotega. These earliest contras, calling themselves milpistas (combatants of the MILPAS, or Militias Populares Anti-Sandinistas, successor organizations to the pro-Sandinista Militias Populares Anti-Somocistas, and a play on an indigenous word for “cornfield”), launched their first armed assault against the Sandinistas in November 1979 in the mountains near Quilalí. The MILPAS were generally kinship-based, composed of fewer than 100 members each and rooted in rural dwellers’ long tradition of antipathy to state authority.

During this early period (1979–81), contra organizing also emerged in the borderland zones of Honduras and Costa Rica among exiled Somocistas and National Guardsmen. Like the MILPAS, these paramilitary groups were small in scale and organized principally around personal relationships. By late 1980 some of these exile groups began to receive covert funding from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Argentine military.

In April 1981 elements of the MILPAS and ex-Guardia—dominated exile groups in Honduras formed the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (Fuerza Democratica Nicaragüense, or FDN), under the command of exGuardia colonel Enrique Bermúdez, composed of some 500 troops.

Portraying the Sandinistas as clients of the Cubans and Soviets, in November 1981 Reagan signed a secret order (National Security Decision Directive 17) granting $19 million to the CIA to recruit and train contra forces. On December 1, 1981, he issued a presidential finding calling for U.S. support in conducting paramilitary operations against the Sandinista regime.

Around this time a second contra army was formed in the north, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN), under the political direction of the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN), and led by exiled businessman José Francisco Cardenal.

Henceforth the contra war rapidly gained steam. In April 1982 a second front was opened in the south with the formation of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and its military wing, the Sandino Revolutionary Front (FRS), based in Costa Rica and commanded by former Sandinista Edén Pastora.

Another largely autonomous armed rebel group formed in the Atlantic Coast region in late 1981, led by Brooklyn Rivera, among disaffected elements of the mass indigenous organization MISURASATA—an organization composed primarily of Miskitu Amerindians and represented in the FSLN’s newly created Council of State.

In the United States, congressional opposition to the Reagan administration’s funding of the contra forces mounted. In December 1982 the House passed an amendment sponsored by Edward Boland (D., Mass.) banning the use of federal funds to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The Reagan administration found legal ways to circumvent the ban.

By 1983 the contra forces had grown to some 13,000 to 15,000 troops, and by 1985 to some 20,000. By this time the contras had committed hundreds of atrocities against Nicaraguan civilians, as documented by the human rights organization Americas Watch and others.

In May 1984 Congress passed a second Boland amendment, requiring an end to all military aid to the contras by October 1. For the next two years, the Reagan administration illegally funneled covert aid to Iran in exchange for Iranian arms shipments to the contras.

By the late 1980s contra armies were active across much of the northern and central parts of the country. In 1988 and 1989 a series of peace accords (notably the Sapoá Accord of 1988) created a framework for contra demobilization.

With the Sandinista defeat in the February 1990 elections, the administration of President Violeta Chamorro negotiated with the leaders of the Nicaraguan Resistance (Resistencia Nicaragüense, or RN, successor to the FDN), culminating in the Disarmament Protocol of May 30, 1990.

Agencies of the United Nations and Organization of American States supervised the disarmament process, which by mid1990 had processed some 23,000 contras, from an estimated fighting force of 170,000, many of whom demobilized informally.

Through the early 1990s armed groups continued to destabilize large parts of the interior, consisting of both ex-contras (recontras) and former members of the Sandinista Army (recompas)—groups that sometimes merged to form groups of revueltos (a play on words meaning both “rebels” and “scrambled eggs”).

By 1992, with the contra war officially ended, as many as 23,000 armed insurgents continued to operate in rural areas, posing severe challenges to governance in the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Iran-contra Affair

Iran-contra Affair

The Iran-contra affair involved an attempt by the National Security Council (NSC) of the Ronald Reagan administration to circumvent congressional limitations on aid to the contras (Nicaraguan guerrillas) and to secure the release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East through the sale of arms to Iran.

The revelation of this attempt undercut the popularity of the president and led to the indictment of several aides. The affair arose from parallel events in Central America and the Middle East.

In Central America, the Reagan administration was supporting the contras, an amalgam of individuals and groups who opposed the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Despite a reputation for ineffectiveness and drug dealing, the contras were considered by the Reagan administration to be the best alternative to the Marxist Sandinistas.


Congress passed the Boland Amendment in 1982, which prohibited funding for the “overthrow of the government of Nicaragua.” The amendment allowed humanitarian aid but specifically prohibited covert aid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

At the same time in the Middle East, terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad were increasing their harassment of U.S. citizens in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the U.S. organization of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Beirut.

Over a dozen U.S. citizens were kidnapped and taken hostage between 1982 and 1984. The Reagan administration responded to this provocation by vowing never to negotiate with terrorists, while blaming the Iranians for supporting these organizations.

Additionally the Iranians were locked in a war with the Saddam Hussein–led country of Iraq. Running from 1980 to 88, the Iran-Iraq War would be bloody but ultimately inconclusive. In the course of the fighting the Iranians began to run into a significant problem.

Most of their military hardware had been purchased from the United States before the 1979 overthrow of the shah. As the war dragged on, Iran began to run short of ammunition and spare parts, which they could not acquire from the United States because of a congressional ban on arms sales to the Iranians stemming from the hostage crisis of 1979–81.

The NSC, led by National Security Advisor John Poindexter and CIA director William Casey, proposed the following arrangement to the president and his advisers. Through private arms dealers and Israel, the United States would sell arms to the Iranians above cost. In return, the United States expected Iran to pressure the terrorists to free the U.S. hostages.

The profits from the arms sales would be secretly diverted to the contras to keep their activities afloat. Reagan approved the idea despite opposition from Secretary of State George Shultz and some dissent from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

Colonel Oliver North

The first arms shipments took place in 1985, and more were sent in 1986. Despite pressure and apparent promises, only one hostage and the body of a second were released. The money and additional supplies were funneled to the contras until October 1986, when a CIA-chartered plane crashed in Nicaragua.

Its pilot confessed to running supplies to the contras. On November 3 a Lebanese journal, Al-Shira, revealed the existence of the arms sales to Iran. The Reagan administration acknowledged the existence of the arms sales and contra supplies in a speech by the president on November 13.

Witnesses such as NSC staff member Colonel Oliver North testified before both Congress and the Tower Commission, admitting to the arms sales and funding while portraying the president as a “hands-off” administrator. Reagan’s own appearance before the commission revealed the president’s shaky grasp of details and apparently poor memory of events.

In the Tower Commission’s final report, the president’s lack of control over his staff was strongly criticized, but most of the blame for the scandal was placed on the National Security Council and its staff.

U.S. Invasion of Grenada (1983)

U.S. Invasion of Grenada (1983)

On October 25–28, 1983, the United States—under President Ronald Reagan—invaded the small Caribbean island-nation of Grenada, deposed its leftist government, and installed a government more in keeping with the Reagan administration’s perception of U.S. geostrategic interests in the Western Hemisphere.

A clear violation of international law, the action garnered widespread domestic popular and bipartisan support, while being roundly condemned by much of the international community. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned the invasion; in the Security Council the United States cast the sole dissenting vote on a resolution condemning it.

The invasion boosted Reagan’s popularity at home; intimidated leftist movements and parties throughout the circum-Caribbean; and resulted in a corrupt and elite-dominated post-invasion government characteristic of the region.


Undertaken by some 7,000 U.S. troops, the invasion caused 118 deaths (19 U.S.; 69 Grenadan; 25 Cuban) and 533 were wounded, while U.S. forces detained 638 Cubans as prisoners of war. U.S. forces withdrew from the island in December.

The invasion’s antecedents have been traced to the intensification of the cold war under Reagan; the 1979 triumph of the leftist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; ongoing leftist revolutionary movements and civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the circum Caribbean; and the March 13, 1979, coup d’état in Grenada by the leftist New Jewel Movement, led by the charismatic Marxist-influenced attorney Maurice Bishop.

Independent from Great Britain since 1974, Grenada was ruled from 1974 to 1979 by Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy, widely considered despotic and notorious for his preoccupations with the occult, whose “Mongoose Squad” kept his opponents in check and himself in power. Most of the island’s 110,000 inhabitants welcomed the New Jewel coup.

invasion map

From 1979 to 1983, the economy grew at an average of 9 percent (very high for the Caribbean during this period, which included a global recession in 1981–82); unemployment declined from 45 to 14 percent; literacy rates increased from 85 to 98 percent; and the nation’s health, education, and welfare systems were reformed and expanded.

Bishop, as much a nationalist as socialist and influenced as much by Jamaican musician Bob Marley as by Marx, articulated a socialist, anti-imperialist vision at odds with express U.S. economic, strategic, and security interests in the region. The Bishop government did not hold elections as promised, imposed press censorship, jailed political opponents, and lent rhetorical support to the Soviet Union and Cuba.

On October 19, 1983, New Jewel hard-liner Bernard Coard ousted Bishop, precipitating islandwide protests and a general strike. After crowds forced Bishop’s release, Coard’s forces killed several dozen protesters and executed Bishop and two cabinet members.

The main U.S. rationale for its invasion was to protect the lives of more than 800 U.S. medical students at the St. George’s School of Medicine, whom the Reagan administration claimed were in imminent danger and prevented from departing. The Grenada invasion comprises a minor but revealing episode in the late cold war in the Western Hemisphere.

Nicaraguan Revolution (1979-1990)

Nicaraguan Revolution (1979-1990)

On July 19, 1979, a multiclass coalition led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, [FSLN], or Sandinistas) overthrew the 43-year Somoza dictatorship, inaugurating the period of the Nicaraguan (or Sandinista) revolution.

Nicaragua, under the FSLN, is considered the last major battleground of the cold war in the Western Hemisphere. In the early 1980s the revolutionary regime embarked on a series of successful programs in health care, literacy, and related arenas and enjoyed wide spread support.

By the mid-1980s the regime and revolutionary process began to weaken, largely the result of a crippling U.S. trade embargo and the U.S.-supported contra war under U.S. President Ronald Reagan. On February 25, 1990, a coalition of anti-Sandinista political parties defeated the ruling regime at the polls, effectively ending the 11-year revolutionary experiment.


The origins of the revolution lie in decades of politically exclusionary dictatorship under the three Somozas; the long history of U.S. military, economic, and political intervention in Nicaraguan affairs; the crushing poverty suffered by the majority of the country’s citizens; and the political and military organizing efforts of the FSLN.

Named after Augusto C. Sandino, the nationalist rebel who fought the U.S. Marines to a stalemate from 1927 to 1932, the FSLN was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge, and other Nicaraguans inspired by the example of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.

After nearly two decades of organizing and struggle, and the death of Fonseca in 1976, by the late 1970s the Sandinistas had garnered the support of the majority of western Nicaragua’s urban poor and a substantial segment of its business and landowning class.

Their political program emphasized opposition to the Somoza dictatorship (Somocismo) and U.S. imperialism; nationalism, democracy, and social justice at home; and political nonalignment abroad.

In 1979 a divided elite, the intransigence and corruption of the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and a relatively benign U.S. administration under President Jimmy Carter combined to create a strategic political opening, which the FSLN exploited to defeat Somoza’s National Guard (Guardia Nacional) and seize state power.

An estimated 50,000 Nicaraguans died in the uprisings and insurrections against the Somoza regime, around 1.7 percent of the country’s population of 3 million. The economy was devastated, with GDP declining 7.2 percent in 1978 and 25.9 percent in 1979, and the country saddled with $1.6 billion in foreign debt and severe shortages of food, medicine, and other basic commodities.

Revolutionary State

After ousting Somoza, the Sandinistas embarked on a far-reaching program of social and economic reform. The preexisting national government was abolished, replaced by the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction (JGRN, or Junta), established in Costa Rica in early 1979 and the country’s supreme political authority. From 1979 to 1984 de facto political power was wielded by the FSLN’s nine-member Joint National Directorate (DN), whose policy prescriptions guided the JGRN.

The Fundamental Statute of the Republic of Nicaragua, decreed by the JGRN in August 1979, abolished the previous constitution and established three branches of government: executive (the JGRN, comprised of five members); legislative (the Council of State, inaugurated in May 1980 and composed at that time of 47 members); and judicial (the Courts of Justice).

After national elections in November 1984, the National Assembly replaced the Council of State, and the JGRN was dissolved, replaced by elected president Daniel Ortega. In January 1987 a new constitution was promulgated codifying these and other changes.

Promoting democracy from below, the revolutionary regime found much of its legitimacy in the many popular organizations (organizaciones populares) that helped bring the Sandinistas to power, and which continued to play a key role in the revolution after 1979.

Chief among these were the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDSs, or neighborhood committees); the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST), the Rural Workers Association (ATC), the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), and the Luisa Amada Espinosa Nicaraguan Women’s Association (AMNLAE).

Incorporating gender equality into its platform, the FSLN focused considerable attention on women’s issues, including maternal health, child care, political equality, and others, though critics later charged that the party largely reproduced the patriarchal norms of the larger society.

The new government also abolished the National Guard and police forces, and in their stead created the Popular Sandinista Army (Ejército Popular Sandinista, or EPS), under the direction of the Ministry of Defense; and the Sandinista Police and State Security Forces, under the Ministry of Interior.

One of the major tasks of the new regime was to launch extensive land reforms through its Ministry of Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), headed by DN member Jaime Wheelock.

Sandinista agrarian reform efforts in the 1980s, like those of Cuba in the 1960s, have been the topic of enormous controversy. On seizing power, the government expropriated all land owned by Somoza and his allies, a total of some 800,000 hectares, or 20 percent of the country’s arable land. Most was given over to various types of state-run cooperatives.

Criticized for favoring these state-run farms over privately owned peasant farms through differential loan and credit policies, MIDINRA’s post-expropriation policies were among the chief reasons cited by opponents of the regime for the growth of counter revolutionary (contra) forces within the country beginning in the early 1980s.

Social and Cultural Policies

In the realm of popular welfare, the revolutionary government embarked on a wide range of reforms. These included a more extensive social security system; large state subsidies for housing and staple foods; the creation of a national health care system; a major expansion of public schooling; and a Literacy Crusade that earned the UNESCO Literacy Prize in 1980.

In the cultural arena, the Ministry of Culture promoted a host of revolutionary cultural products and forms including music, theater, dance, and visual arts, in part through the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers (ASTC).

A major issue through the 1980s was the relationship between the Sandinista regime and the ethnic minorities of the Atlantic coast region, which had a very different history and culture from mestizo-dominated, Spanish-speaking western Nicaragua.

Despite the FSLN’s efforts to grant the Atlantic coast population substantial political and cultural autonomy, from the early 1980s opposition to the regime mounted among the region’s indigenous (Miskitu, Sumu, and Rama Amerindians), Garifuna (Afro-Amerindian), and English-speaking Afro-Caribbean (or Creole) population—minorities that together comprised around 35 percent of the coastal (costeño) population of some 270,000.

Another major issue concerned the revolution’s relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. Critics of the regime emphasized the disrespect shown to Pope John Paul II in his visit to Managua in March 1983, which they argued was emblematic of the FSLN’s anti Catholicism, while the regime’s supporters stressed the influence of liberation theology on Sandinista efforts to promote equal rights and social justice.

On November 4, 1984, the Sandinistas held national elections—to be held every six years—in which they garnered 67 percent of the vote and won 61 of 96 seats in the newly created National Assembly. The elections were denounced as fraudulent by the United States but judged as fair by international observers from Europe and the Americas, including the Latin American Studies Association.

International Relations

Internationally, the Sandinista government pursued a policy of nonalignment, garnering the support of the Nonaligned Movement, and forging alliances with and receiving foreign assistance from western Europe (including France, West Germany, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark), as well as Cuba, the East bloc, and the Soviet Union. The United States, under President Reagan, interpreted the regime as a Cuban and Soviet beachhead and bulwark of communism.

On April 1, 1981, the Reagan administration announced a cutoff of aid, thereafter successfully depriving the regime of credits and loans from the Inter-American Development Bank and other U.S.-dominated transnational financial institutions.

On December 1, 1981, Reagan issued a Presidential Finding authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency to “support and conduct paramilitary operations against ... Nicaragua,” which included support for contra forces, composed principally of several thousand former members of Somoza’s National Guard exiled in Honduras.

In February and March 1984 the United States mined the harbor at Puerto Corinto, western Nicaragua’s largest port, and in May 1985 Reagan announced a U.S. trade embargo against Nicaragua. These and related hostile acts galvanized a growing peace and justice movement, in solidarity with the revolution, in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

End of The Revolutionary Experiment

By the late 1980s the regime was beleaguered by the combined effects of the trade embargo, the contra war, hyperinflation, and growing popular discontent in consequence of the devastation of the contra war, severe economic dislocations, and the policy of universal military conscription.

Losing the February 1990 elections to Violeta Chamorro and the National Opposition Union (UNO), the regime peacefully ceded power, leaving the country with some $12 billion in debt.

After 1990 the legacy of the revolution continued to exercise a major influence on the country’s social, political, and cultural life, while a retooled FSLN wielded considerable political power in a series of coalition governments. A substantially reconfigured Sandinista Party regained the presidency in 2006 with the election of Daniel Ortega.