Harvard's New Interior Minister
Wattenberg, Daniel
"Harvard's New Interior Minister" In 1981, Tomas Borge brought bureaucratic order to political murder in Nicaragua. Exasperated by the "anarchical fashion" in which the regime had been dispatching opponents since the July 1979...
...They did a great deal of work in the countryside where religion has much greater weight than in urban areas and in the Pacific region in general...
...But that doesn't mean there wasn't any, because the Sandinista people who performed 'wet' operations were trained by the best in the world¡ªthe East Germans and the Soviets...
...is the largest contributor to the OAS, providing 59 per cent of its annual budget...
...The same department cen sored the independent media and published the FSLN party daily, Barricada...
...Carrion was instrumental in the Sandinista campaign to break down traditional patterns of Miskito life and absorb the commu nity into a nationwide system marked by Marxist-Leninist forms of political organization, property ownership, and ideology...
...During the 1985 national elections, its Department of Agitation and Propaganda first unleashed its "divine mobs" of paid lumpenpro letarians to terrorize opposition rallies with baseball bats and steel-reinforced flagpoles...
...They also tried shifting the blame to the Nicaraguan government, claiming Carrion had received the "warm endorsement" of his foreign ministry...
...He is directly responsible, not just for the destruction of Miskito Indian villages, the burning of the Miskito Indian churches, the relocation of the Miskito Indian people, but he was in charge of planning of the destruction of the Miskito organization called MISURASATA," says Wiggins...
...And in the years that followed, Carrion would not flinch: after defecting in 1985, Alvaro BaldizOn, who had supervised internal MINT human rights investigations for Borge, implicated Carrion directly in the executions of hundreds of political opponents...
...Sandinista television and print media ran pictures of the nude priest who had seduced a distraught member of his flock...
...So what Luis CarriOn and his cronies¡ª[DGSE chief] Lenin Cerna and the East Germans and the Cuban agents¡ªorganized was how to infiltrate their people into the community structure...
...Harvard refuses to discuss its criteria for admitting the Comandante, a cum nada graduate from nowhere...
...1986 State Department report on the BaldizOn revelations cited Carrion's complicity in the following assassinations: ¡¤ In early December 1982, DGSE officers imprisoned 20-year old RamOn Heberto Torrente Molina, suspected of recruiting and serving as a courier for the armed resistance...
...His admission that, in effect, the contras weren't "mercenaries" after all was a stunner...
...In 1983, the CPDH and IACHR published lists of more than 300 farmers who had been reported missing following MINT/Sandinista army counter-insurgency operations in the areas around Cua, Pantasma, Waslala, and Rio Blanco...
...As Carrion crams for his mid-terms, human rights groups in Nicaragua are still discovering mass graves filled with victims of the Sandinistas...
...I have heard conflicting reports about his intellect...
...Gonzalez reported to Carrion that in addition to forty Miskitos killed in combat, 200 had been imprisoned and 150 had been executed in accordance with decisions reached by a joint commission from the Defense and Interior ministries that had been formed to decide the fate of the captured Indians...
...His cousin, Arturo Cruz, Jr...
...Exasperated by the "anarchical fashion" in which the regime had been dispatching opponents since the July 1979 revolution, the interior minister and ruling Sandinista junta member promulgated a secret directive governing the application of "special measures," or extrajudicial killings...
...C arrion was one of only 400 scholarship winners from an OAS applicant pool of 5,000 last year, but an OAS fellowship specialist is quick to defend the award...
...After several visits by Father Carballo, she urged him to come to her home one night, saying she was distraught...
...Back in Nicaragua, he entered the University of Central America...
...Because Harvard offers no funding to Mason fellows, students must secure it from other sources, often foundations or their own governments...
...ment, earning a masters' degree in public administration in the school's Edward S. Mason program for Third World leaders in mid-career...
...says, "He is very bright¡ªno doubt about it...
...Some detainees report that immediately after their arrest they were deprived of food for days at a time, and sometimes of water too...
...When foreign governments and international organizations pressed the government in December for information about hundreds of missing Miskitos, Borge ordered an investigation by BaldizOn's office...
...But this is the same group that based its Nicaraguan political prisoner estimates on Red Cross figures¡ªwhich did not include those held in State Security prisons, because its people weren't allowed to visit them...
...DGSE agents dressed as regular policemen waited outside, and when the agent inside the house fired several shots, the fake policemen stormed the house...
...Its State Security Directorate (DGSE) operated a string of prisons and clandestine jails where political opponents were held incommunicado and tortured (Nicaragua's independent human rights¨Cmonitoring group, the CPDH, estimated the regime held 7,000 political prisoners in 1986...
...And the only mistake we made was that we wanted education so much that we failed in a way by letting these Cuban teachers come into these communities as teachers...
...As a result, U.S...
...I think another factor...
...Some prisoners allege that they have been held alone in such cells for periods of more than one week, being taken out for interrogation under bright lights at irregular intervals of day or night...
...After arriving at Castillo's home, Carballo was struck on the head by a DGSE agent and forced at gunpoint to strip...
...In the end, the contra was a campesino movement with its own leaders," he said...
...When asked whether he intends to return to politics in Nicaragua, Carrion says only, "Yeah, maybe...
...Alarmed by eroding popular support for the Sandinistas, MINT began conducting secret opinion polls in the mid-eighties for internal use...
...The pork is with the OAS...
...The Sandinistas marched tens of thousands of Miskitos off to relocation camps (dubbed Tasba Pri, "Promised Land" in Miskito, by the Sandinistas) and destroyed their evacuated villages...
...Beginning in 1982, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR), the human rights arm of the OAS, began sending detailed allegations-cum-information-requests to the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry regarding the fate of missing Nicaraguans...
...Luis Carrion Cruz...
...n 1981 Carrion assumed control of Sandinista rela tions with the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, a portfolio he held until 1985...
...A Sandinista television crew and a Department of Agitation and Propaganda turba converged on the scene, and the "police" paraded the naked Carballo into a squad car...
...There, he distinguished himself as "the best student in the country," says Cruz...
...Sandinista troops and Cuban teachers and doctors poured into the region's 225 villages...
...Beatings have also been reported...
...Sub-Comandante Javier LOpez Lowerli requested "special measures" because he had no legal case against Cruz...
...And that was Commander of the Revolution Carrion's job description at MINT during the Sandinista reign: Building the party's capacity to maintain control no matter how unpopular it became...
...We can keep power with 5 percent...
...And Managua's Viceroy for the Atlantic Coast was Carrion...
...was the confrontation between the revolutionary government and leaders of the Catholic Church and some Protestant churches...
...Some detainees have said that these cells were so small that they were unable to sit down, the floor space measuring little more than one square metre...
...Hampshire, then attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, for a year before dropping out...
...In 1981, the DGSE began operations against the Catholic Church¡ªwiretapping, surveillance, and disinformation and slander campaigns¡ªin hopes of building up a rival "popular church" preaching liberation theology...
...The U.S...
...After sustaining heavy losses during a July 1982 Miskito military offensive, Sandinista military and internal security forces retaliated against Miskito civilians around the towns of Puerto Cabezas and Seven-Bank...
...Carrion planned, along with Borge and State Security (DGSE) chief Lenin Cerna, a notorious 1982 secret police operation to publicly humiliate Father Bismarck Carballo, the Catholic Church's spokesman and director of its Radio CatOlica...
...There were no ways for Sandinista or Marxist Leninist ideas to get in there," Wiggins explains...
...Delegation to the OAS, the meritocrats from the OAS evaluation committee admitted they did not know if he had graduated from there, or indeed if he had any undergraduate degree...
...But don't expect Harvard or the OAS to fund their excavation of the Sandinistas' legacy of terror with a research grant¡ªthey're betting on the future...
...By infiltrating political parties, unions, and business groups, the DGSE monitored and manipulated the opposition and fomented disunity within its ranks...
...Hundreds of bodies may lie buried in Carrion's past, but Harvard likes his future...
...The investigators found a copy of an October 1982 report from the ranking MINT officer in Puerto Cabezas, SubComandante Jose Gonzalez, to Carrion...
...We don't run a CIA here...
...But while there might be an argument that it's worth biting the bullet to educate a Sandinista leader in democratic politics, nobody involved in the CarriOn fellowship has yet made it...
...H ow, then, to defend Carrion's Harvard fellowship...
...The hope of many of them was to become like the landowners affected by the agrarian reform, and in some way, these sectors interpreted this as a denial of their own chance one day to become large landowners themselves...
...In November 1983, BaldizOn investigated the case of a Nicaraguan farmer, Paster Cruz Herrera, another case pressed by the IACHR...
...Trained in criminology in the Soviet Union, BaldizOn "was assigned by Borge to track down all accusations made by the IACHR," says Douglas Payne, Central American analyst at Freedom House...
...taxpayers are helping to put Carrion through graduate school...
...In its report on the Nicaraguan human rights record for the years 198689, Amnesty International gave a good description of the inhumane conditions and "white torture" typically suffered by detainees: During 1986 and 1987 there were persistent reports of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and inhuman conditions of detention, particularly in rural detention centres...
...BaldizOn submitted his report on the case in December 1983...
...Maritza Castillo Mendieta, an agent in the DGSE' s Department of Ideological Diversionism, sought Carballo out for "spiritual guidance," claiming she was suicidally depressed because her husband had abandoned her...
...More than 300 farmers had been executed, they reported in June 1984...
...CarriOn approved, and Cruz was executed in April 1983 along with three other prisoners...
...Under the new order, authority to approve "special measures" would be limited to Borge himself and his Ministry of the Interior (MINT) deputy and fellow junta member...
...In 1981, Tomas Borge brought bureaucratic order to political murder in Nicaragua...
...He spent his senior year at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New...
...ut the case against Carrion goes far beyond his ulti mate responsibility for the crimes of secret police ¡¡¡¡¡¡officers acting under his direction...
...The Indians organized armed resistance, crossed the border into Honduras, and rebelled...
...Killed attempting to escape," went the official story...
...Many Miskitos were captured by security forces and summarily executed...
...ambassador to the OAS, Luigi Einaudi, indicat ed he was a "dunce...
...While it is true that the committee rendered no ethical judgment, it is doubtful that they rendered an indepen dent judgment of Carrion's academic credentials...
...Under ¡¡¡¡¡¡Borge and Carrion, the Cuban-trained MINT grew into a 15,000-strong internal security conglomerate...
...It could be argued that a Harvard scholarship is a reasonable price to pay to cultivate CarriOn as a potential leader of the Sandinista democratizers against the unregenerate Leninism of Tomas Borge and the out-of-the-closet caudillismo of the Ortegas...
...Carrion is spending this year at Harvard's Kennedy School of Govern Daniel Wattenberg's "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" appeared in our August issue...
...But when questioned recently by the U.S...
...In response to sustained pressure from area residents and the human rights groups, BaldizOn's office was ordered to investigate...
...Tomas Borge said, 'I want to know the truth, I want to know it privately, secretly.' And he assigned [BaldizOn] to do it, so then Borge would be able to concoct his response...
...We are not ethical judges, we are judging the academic credentials only," he says...
...71...
...The beef," he says, "is with the OAS...
...One could argue that, for better or worse, the Sandinistas will remain a force in Nicaraguan politics for the foreseeable future...
...Frequent use was made of cubicle-sized cells known as chiquitas (tiny ones...
...While Americas Watch tried to poke holes in some of the hazier parts," says Payne, "I found quite astounding the picture he did paint in detail of an entire operation, with names...
...After his arrest by state security near the town of Pantasma in Jinotega in February 1983, Cruz was transferred to Las Tejas, a DGSE prison in Matagalpa...
...Many testimonies referred to detainees being held in isolation for days and weeks at a time in stifling, cramped and unlit concrete cells...
...coroner's "determination that there hadn't been any hanky panky involved was probably correct," says Payne...
...Before he could throw sand in the eyes of international human rights monitors, Borge needed an internal mechanism for uncovering the truth...
...Borge named a special prosecutor to take legal action against those responsible...
...So they brought them in en masse, and they were all security forces from Cuba trained to deal with the Indian issue...
...The L.A...
...No: the beef is with Harvard...
...It doesn't say that because he's a violator of human rights he cannot be granted a scholarship in our regulations...
...A story has it that one showed popular support for the government had plunged to around 20 percent...
...Forms of psychological pressure clearly amounting to torture have also been alleged, such as the use of weapons to threaten prisoners and mock executions, threats of indefinite detention or that the detainee will be made to "disappear," and false reports that members of the detainee's family are also in detention or are liable to arrest...
...Borge ordered BaldizOn to investigate following an IACHR complaint, and after receiving his report, said he had forgotten that Carrion had approved the killing...
...In the summer of 1990, while the Sandinistas emerged from post-electoral trauma, Carrion made a veiled attack on the regime's agricultural policies and religious persecution...
...On the other hand, recent soundings taken by the U.S...
...Steve Singer, the Kennedy School's communications director, won't say whether Carrick' was sponsored or actively recruited, but he is unmoved by arguments that indirect taxpayer support for Carrion's Harvard education implies some accountability on the university's part...
...Three high-ranking MINT and party officials implicated in the murders were transferred, while lower-level security personnel were charged and soon released...
...In reality, the OAS deci sion was dictated by Harvard's acceptance of Carrion...
...Upon hearing this, Borge observed icily, "No problem...
...Before Exeter, he went to high school at the prestigious Christian Brothers school in Nicaragua...
...And "special measures" were to be applied only after obtaining the approval of Borge or Carrion...
...The cells are described as being almost completely dark, with minimal ventilation and no provision for sanitation...
...This was the most tragic time of Miskito Indian history," says Armstrong Wiggins, head of the Indian Law Resource Center...
...But Jos¨¦ Tijerino, the Nicaraguan .OAS ambassador, insists Carrion received no more than a pro forma endorsement...
...According to BaldizOn, in late 1981, Barge signed an order called "The Standardization of the Application of Special Measures Against Elements of the Enemy Potential and Criminal Potential Throughout the National Territory...
...After CarriOn approved the "special measures" requested by the MINT Delegate for Region II, Comandante Guerrillero David Blanco Nunez, the youth was executed by DGSE officers in a dry stream bed off the road between Chinandega and LeOn...
...In 80 percent of the executions, Sub-Comandante LOpez had received Carrion's approval to apply "special measures...
...On the strength of Carrion's admission to Harvard, the Organization of American States awarded him one of its highly competitive Special Training scholarships, which pays his tuition, travel, and books...
...Until defecting in 1985, Alvaro BaldizOn was Chief Investigator of MINT's Special Investigations Commission...
...It really did not overturn his credibility as to the overall picture, and [BaldizOn] himself admitted that 'I am going on memory, and there is a lot of material I'm giving you.'" BaldizOn has since died, of food poisoning in a Los Angeles restaurant...
...While the party's leadership remains in anti-democratic hands, calls for internal party democracy and the renunciation of violence have made some soft ripples among the rank and file, and Carrion himself has gone public with some second thoughts...
...ow, a review of some of the qualifications Carrion N may have omitted from his applications...
...Under the order, "special measures," or assassinations, were to be undertaken only against people whose detention was not public knowledge, and the authority to request the use of "special measures" was restricted to a handful of trusted, high-ranking MINT officers...
...Americas Watch spent much time pecking at BaIdizOn's story...
...He declines to say whether he is still a Marxist-Leninist...
...He explained that agricultural policies "such as the establishment of checkpoints on the highways to guar antee, coercively, that the campesinos would deliver their production to the state at the official price" had driven an important sector of the rural population, landowners and landless alike, into rebellion: Some campesino sectors felt that their claims were fulfilled by the agrarian reform, but others¡ªeven those who had no land, especially in the remote agricultural zones, in the best cattle-producing areas¡ªthey felt threatened for fundamentally ideological reasons...
...hile Sandinista control of food distribution provided leverage over the nation's non-Indian populations, the Indians were largely self-suffi cient...
...These were passed on to MINT, the institution implicated in the allegations, for responses...
Vol. 26 • January 1993 • No. 1
