Memoirs of a Counter-Revolutionary
Cruz, Arturo Jr.
onsidering their advantages, the contras_really should have won in Nicaragua. Their cause was just, which counts for something. There were plenty of them—as many as 15,000 actual soldiers at one...
...Most importantly, I felt liberated from the revolutionary myth...
...The formation of UNO, the civilian leadership of the contras, spurred this...
...I could go on...
...But he's probably more well known for his love affair with Fawn Hall...
...But my first night with Pastora lasted a full year...
...Oliver North and the CIA ordered the leaders to stop scheming, but to no avail...
...Pastora was reluctant to go to war," says Cruz...
...He soon became "the center of the CIA's Pygmalion-like strategy to mold a man into the Che Guevara of the right...
...The southern front, which Pastora led, made no headway...
...Grenada, El Salvador, and support for the contras...
...Arturo Jr...
...The second night you notice she is blind...
...In the United States, the press wasn't beguiled by the Sandinistas...
...The third reason is the contras themselves...
...But unity with the contras was impossible to achieve while he railed against his own allies...
...Second, the world press was against the contras, largely for ideological reasons...
...In any case, he stuck with the contras until 1988...
...Cruz's book is brimming with tales of mindless bickering among the contra leaders...
...So European reporters ignored it...
...Instead of bringing unity to the contras, [it] created more chaos," writes Cruz...
...One way or another, they managed to stay fed, clothed, and reasonably well armed...
...MEMOIRS OF A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY: LIFE WITH THE CONTRAS, THE SANDINISTAS, AND THE CIA Arturo Cruz, Jr./Doubleday/288 pp...
...livo reasons come to mind, and Arturo Cruz, Jr...
...To say they lacked unity is putting it mildly...
...The House vote in February 1988 against military aid to the contras was the final blow...
...How come...
...In Europe, reporters were enthralled with the Sandinistas as the latest thing in revolutionary chic...
...Nicaragua was Castro's special project...
...Cruz argues that the role of Pastora, the heroic Commander Zero who took the entire Nicaraguan parliament hostage in the waning days of Somoza, was critical...
...That was held by Marxist-Leninists...
...So he didn't try...
...In forty-eight hours of nonstop meetings, he cajoled the Sandinistas into setting up a nine-member directorate representing the factions...
...There were plenty of them—as many as 15,000 actual soldiers at one point...
...And the contras had a generous ally in Washington, President Reagan and his entire administration...
...Once their enemy, the Sandinistas, revealed themselves as a Marxist-Leninist variant of the typical Latin American junta, the Nicaraguan people became anti-Sandinista...
...They badly needed one...
...F or years, the Sandinistas were plagued with the Nicaraguan disease, political disunity...
...Of course, there's always another incentive for temporary unity among Communists...
...The contras were mired in their inherent Nicaraguan anarchical political culture," writes Cruz...
...Pastora's declaration had an enormous impact on me," says Cruz...
...Conspiracy is the ancient legacy of Nicaraguan political culture...
...they want democracy...
...I've met many of them, and they are courageous and dedicated to overthrowing the Sandinistas...
...Cruz was in an unusually good position to understand why the shortcomings of the contras were so destructive...
...At a meeting called by ten contras to discuss the urgency and necessity of independence from the CIA, all ten present would hurry to call the CIA as soon as the meeting was over to inform on one another...
...Spare parts for all vehicles were running out...
...Cruz grew disillusioned...
...He made me believe that one could be a dissident without being a Somocista or a National Guardsman...
...He quit in disgust, then ran for president of Nicaragua in 1984as Daniel Ortega's foe and later served on the civilian troika of the United Nicaraguan Opposition, UNO, that nominally ran the contras...
...Though victory was far from assured, the leaders began positioning themselves for the presidential election that would take place once they triumphed...
...His personality was erratic...
...Even if elected, they won't have absolute power, or anything close to it...
...Pastora was no George Washington...
...Fidel Castro and the nature of their revolution helped them overcome it...
...The Catholic Church, a powerful influence in Nicaragua, opposed the Sandinistas, too...
...Yet the contras lost...
...They might as well have told us to stop breathing," says Cruz...
...Reporters just didn't like Reagan and his policies, particularly those involving the use of force (Lebanon, Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...The intrigues over the seating lasted two weeks," says Cruz...
...As it was, the folks in charge of the contras spent much of their time currying favor with Washington officials, not Nicaraguans...
...I don't mean to blame the victim, the contras, for the crime, which is the continuation of Communist rule in Nicaragua...
...But Pastora, like the elder Cruz, was given no authority once the Sandinistas took over...
...Once they win, they'll have absolute power, or at least a shot at it...
...Cruz doesn't blame them for losing the war with the Sandinistas...
...Now he's sympathetic but cynical...
...I decided I could be critical of the Sandinistas but faithful to Nicaragua...
...Pastora's decision to join the Sandinistas calmed most Nicaraguans and allowed Daniel Ortega to say, we are a nationalist faction, not a Marxist one," says Cruz...
...The few working helicopters were needed to pick up wounded soldiers from inside Nicaragua...
...When he came to office a year later, President Bush figured that trying to undo it was futile (By then, it was...
...was a Sandinista turned contra, too...
...For Cruz, the epitome was an appearance at a dinner in Miami in 1987 by Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America...
...For democratic revolutionaries, all they're fighting for is the right to run for office...
...Nor should he...
...They aren't Somocistas...
...In 1982, Pastora defected...
...Calero insisted Abrams sit with him...
...The first is obvious: the wavering support and ultimate opposition of the House of Representatives...
...fr he absence of a charismatic leader 1 heightened the petty maneuvering among the contra leaders...
...His father, Arturo Cruz, was an opponent of Anastasio Somoza who joined the Sandinista government in 1979, serving as ambassador to the United States, among other posts...
...In early 1979, Castro summoned leaders of the three Sandinista factions to Havana...
...Pastora is like the gypsy whom, on your first night together, you cannot help but love more than anything on earth," he writes...
...Sure, a few Stinger missiles would have helped...
...The fact that the Sandinistas were armed to the teeth by the world's greatest imperialist power, the Soviet Union, detracted from the Sandinistas' image...
...18.95 Fred Barnes 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1989...
...They know seizing the government is everything...
...Pastora dissembled...
...It worked...
...Others wanted Abrams with them...
...The third she smiles and she has no teeth...
...Such was the condition of the contra army during the battle over the seating arrangements for Elliott Abrams...
...Once Eden Pastora proved to be an egomaniacal flake, they also didn't have a charismatic leader...
...Like other democrats in Nicaragua, he had a title but no power...
...offers a third...
...Adolfo Calero couldn't stand Arturo Cruz the elder, and vice versa...
...The fourth night you notice she has no legs...
...But he doesn't completely absolve them either...
...I met few others who did not fall for his seduction...
...Castro's name itself was a drug to Latin revolutionaries and nationalists," says Cruz...
...Meanwhile, "the planes used by the contras to make supply drops were in lamentable shape...
Vol. 22 • October 1989 • No. 10
