Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Contra War
After Ronald Reagan became US president in January 1981, relations between Nicaragua
and the US began to sour. Reagan suspended all aid to Nicaragua and, according to the Re-
port of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, by the end of
the year had begun funding the counterrevolutionary military groups known as Contras, op-
erating out of Honduras and Costa Rica, despite the US maintaining formal diplomatic rela-
tions with Managua.
Most of the original Contras were ex-soldiers of Somoza's Guardia Nacional, but as time
passed, their ranks filled with disaffected local people. Honduras was heavily militarized,
with large-scale US-Honduran maneuvers threatening an invasion of Nicaragua. The
Sandinistas responded by instituting conscription and building an army that eventually
numbered 95,000. Soviet and Cuban military and economic aid poured in, reaching
US$700 million in 1987.
A CIA scheme to mine Nicaragua's harbors in 1984 resulted in a judgment against the
US by the International Court of Justice. The court found that the US was in breach of its
obligation under customary international law not to use force against another State and
ordered it to pay repatriations to the Nicaraguan government; the Reagan administration re-
jected the findings and no payments were ever made.
Shortly afterwards, the
New York Times
and
Washington Post
reported the existence of a
CIA drafted Contra training manual promoting the assasination of Nicaraguan officials and
other strategies illegal under US law, causing further embarrassment for the Reagan admin-
istration.
Nicaraguan elections in November 1984 were boycotted by leading non-Sandinistas,
who complained of sweeping FSLN control of the nation's media. The Sandinistas rejected
the claims, announcing that the media was being manipulated by contra supporters (
La
Prensa
eventually acknowledged receiving CIA funding for publishing anti-Sandinista
views). Daniel Ortega was elected president with 63% of the vote, and the FSLN controlled
the National Assembly by a similar margin.
In May 1985 the USA initiated a trade embargo of Nicaragua and pressured other coun-
tries to do the same. The embargo lasted for five years, helping to strangle Nicaragua's eco-
nomy.
With public opinion in the US growing wary of the war, the US Congress rejected fur-
ther military aid for the Contras in 1985. According to the congressional report into the af-
