contras around here?"
"Of course, there have been loads of
Their camps are all around here; Las Trojes there are a couple, may-
"Have you ever been in one?"
"Yes, a couple of times. Most of them are teenagers, and there are girls, too. It's clear that a girl can shoot a FAL as good they have good weapons?"
"Better than us. Almost all of them had FALs, but they also had grenade launchers and mortars of several calibers.
"What do you think of the contras?"
"They have been extremely decent to me. I think that they have been very nice
"Have you ever fought the Sandinis-
"No, the Sandinistas have never come over here. But now the contras have gone into Nicaragua."
of us. At the other end was Jalapa. That is where the biggest Nicaraguan tobacco valley, the road that we were travelling on
But we could see no guards on the Nicaraguan side. were no buildings, only the racks for drying tobacco. A bit further down the valley, a long column of smoke was rising.
"The contras set fire to four tobacco storage barns a few weeks ago," Julio
Las Trojes consists of a few houses on both sides of the road, which turns at a 90 degree angle. A funeral procession was moving through the town as we came in. None of the known contras that the local people mentioned to us and said could take us to the camp were at home. So, we went on through the town, toward constructed refugee camp and the coffee plantations.
The women coffee pickers, they are nearly always women, were just about to go home when we came up. half were Nicaraguans, recently arrived
Who are they?
Why had they left Nicaragua?
One of the women - she could not have been more than 25, but with all her teeth gone she looked 50 - wore a ragged
"You could not work like before they wanted to take our land away."
"Did you have any land?"
"Did they take it away?"
We had two parcelas, and they are now left uncultivated."
"So, why did you run away?"
"They could have come and killed us."
"Did they threaten you?"
you know anyone who was
"No, but they said that they were go- In the back, there was a load of ammuniing to take our land, and that they might
"Who said that?"
She looked down and did not answer.
"Was it your husband?"
"The contras took him away as soon
"Do you want a cigarette?" tion covered by a tarpaulin. There were "No. Sit down, sit down." another four men sitting there. So, we went to the spot where he was pointing nervously with his rifle. contras had their camps. as quietly as we could. We looked toward
"A lot of them have been abandoned, • the forest. since they have gone into Nicaragua," An unarmed man in a black-and-white as we got here."
"Where did they take him?"
"They said they were going to a meet- other answered.
"Did he want to go?"
"No, he wept. He didn't want to be forced to leave me alone with our four
"Do you want to go back to Nicara-
"Yes, with God's help."
"Are you sorry that you left?"
She murmured vaguely.
She and her husband and four chilren came here together with a group of about
From what she and other women said, it was hard to see why they left Nicaragua.
The stories they told suggested that they had been enticed to leave, and in some cases forced.
Most of them were poor, simple, uneducated people, often coming from isolated tracts of land. dominated by some authority, the priest, the local judge, the landowner, or some local strongman. stories had a common theme. The local boss told them to flee, because "they're going to come and take your land and
They were told that Honduras would be a lot better, and when they came here, the men were taken away, and the women were left alone. A lot of them said that uniformed Hondurans some said police, others said soldiers - were present when their husbands were taken away.
young Honduran woman said:
"If they don't go with the contras, they are called Sandinistas and infiltrators, and they are likely to have a rough
While we were talking a heavy Toyota jeep drove past. Two men sat in front. War in Central America (DR)
checked shirt and jeans was coming to-
"There is still one over there," an-
In the other side of the bend, we heard loud voices and noise from a
A young Honduran woman gave us
"We want to talk to your leader."
more precise directions.
"If you go through the gate on the
He ran back around the bend. Five minutes later, he returned.
right side and then go straight up into
"There is no leader here; there's nothe forest, you'll come to one of them.
body here but refugees."
They're a bit jittery."
But be careful.
"Can we talk to them?"
After some time, we found the gate.
"No, that is not permitted, that is
An elderly woman was going by just as not permitted.
You must go back to we went through.
"Are you going to the camp?," she
Las Trojes and talk to the commander asked. "Be careful, they're dangerous, they shoot."
"We have already talked to him. We
We three Europeans and an American want to talk to contras."
journalists went up to the edge of the
"We don't know anything about that,"
cows and horses.
We talked in a loud pointed with his gun.
"You must go away, go away, we voice so that no one could get the idea don't know anything."
we were trying to sneak in.
Deep tire tracks showed that the heavy
We figured that it wasn't a good idea jeep had passed by on the path not long to insist any more.
We walked back in
The smell of pines was strong in the opposite reached the next turn in the road, somearmed with FAL body shouted.
"Stop, stop, they filmed us."
They jumped when they
We turned around.
The armed guard
One ran into the forest; the other had raised his FAL.
We walked directly toward
We put our hands over our heads and him with our arms over our heads. We walked straight toward him.
were a bit more frightened now. Anle come from the international other man came over the ridge that
C of
"We want to talk to your leader."
He was wearing an expensive straw
We did everything we could to conhat, and a short, light-weight black sports ne jacket, blue jeans and boots. He looked and reassure the guard, who was th getting more and more nervous as we tense and suspicious.
10 came nearer. He was wearing a reddish
"Who are you? How did you come shirt and blue jeans, and he had a helmet
We explained again, we were journalhidden under his straw hat. We stopped ists, people on the road had said that we apart ten feet away. His eyes glinted with gr a look of nervousness, uncertainty, and could find contras here.
th perhaps fear.
Time after time, he asked us how we ba
"Sit down," he said, pointing with his got there, and every time we explained pr
"Sit together there."
that we had been directed by people ca along the road.
wl
" he said, "you can't maince tain any secrecy."
na talked for a while, and his suspiby cion began to fade.
He said that he untic derstood that we were looking for news.
O.K., so we were journalists.
be lem was that journalists always distorted co res not Somocistas or former wa
We are the FDN (Fren-
Re te Democratico Nicaraguense, Nicaraguan
Democratic Front). That's what we are called. Somoza has been dead for more than a year and a half, and my name isn't Somoza, so I can't see why you keep
And most of us were never in the National Guard. We are the FDN, write that."
out that he was a lawyer from Managua. He has been fighting for three years, he said.
Before, he studied with Luis Carrion and Jaime Wheelock,
both of whom are in the FSLN national
"I know what they want," he said.
"I know that they are 100 per cent Communists. And if we don't stop them, even the U.S. is going to go Communist in ten years."
He was quite agitated.
"It's all Carter's fault. Write that, write that it is Carter's fault that we have to fight the Communists now. Write that we have to fight the Communists to defend the U.S."
A car drove up the path. When it came round the turn, we saw that it was the same Toyota that we spotted earlier. The back was empty. Ten minutes later it came by again, this time the back was
Edgardo, as the man said we could call him, nodded toward it.
waged inside Nicaragua. ated a territory, and that is where our command center is."
He looked at us, one after the other.
"In three weeks, big things are going to happen here. have won. Write that, write that in five will have the Communists
We asked if we could follow them into Nicaragua and interview their leader. He rejected this.
"That might be good," he said. "We haven't gotten good coverage in the press, and we could use that. I'll see what I can do. Next week I have to go to Tegucigalpa. I'll see if I can set up some contact with out leaders.
Then he seemed to realize that he had already said too much.
We asked about Eden Pastora, the so-called Comandante Zero, who is leading the FDN's attack form Costa Rico.
"He's as much a Communist as the ones who are still in Nicaragua," Edgardo snarled. "He's a splitter, maybe an infiltrator. I have no confidence in Social Democrats. It's right against left, there's nothing in between. We are the only ones who are really fighting, the FDN. We are the only ones who for real, the real counterrevolutionaries."
We left when night fell. We didn't stay over night in Las Trojes. We all got the feeling that the camp was a lot more dangerous than we had thought.
The day we arrived in Tegucigalpa, the papers carried a statement from the Honduran minister of foreign affairs saying that there were not, and had never been, counterrevolutionary bases on Honduran
"But the authorities here know no- soil.
"We have 6,000 men now. We have five fronts here and one on the Costa
Rican border. Now the war is being here. Totally."
thing about us. We are totally undergroud
"We want peace," he said. "But the
Sandinistas apparently want war."
FSLN's letter to leaders of Sandinista Defense Committees The following is the text of an October 7