Edén Pastora

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Edén Atanacio Pastora Gómez (born in Ciudad Darío January 22, 1937) is a Nicaraguan politician who ran for president for the Alternative for Change (AC) party in the general elections 2006. He finished in 5th place. In the years prior to the fall of the Somoza regime, Pastora was the leader of the Southern Front, the largest militia in southern Nicaragua, second only to the FSLN in the north. Pastora was nicknamed Comandante Cero ("Commander Zero"). His group was the first to call itself "Sandinistas", and was also the first to accept an alliance with the FSLN, the group that was to become more popularly identified by the name. At the end of 1982, a few years after the revolutionary victory, he became disillusioned with the government of the FSLN, and formed the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) with the object of confronting the "pseudo-Sandinistas" politically and militarily. He was reviled by Oliver North and other Reagan-era insiders for his refusal to subordinate to the CIA-backed FDN. He is also known for his unorthodox behavior in interviews. In an interview he responded to the question "what do you do to relax?" with the answer "I make love with my wife".

[edit] Sandinista

The seed for Pastora's revolutionary spirit was sown at the tender age of seven, when his father was assassinated by the Chief of Staff of Anastasio Somoza García's National Guard. While in high school with the Jesuits in Granada, he first learned about Augusto César Sandino through his Panamanian history teacher. He began his rebel career when he decided that the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle was corrupt and formed the southern Nicaraguan ARDE from local peasant farmers (called campesinos) and aboriginal tribes living according to more traditional ways. Eden allied himself with the FSLN in the mid 1960s. He became a rebel guerrilla and was the mastermind behind the August 1978 attack on the Nicaraguan National Palace, in which he and a band of FSLN operatives, disguised as members of Somoza's National Guard, stormed the Palace, killing the real National Guardsmen in the process. Among the hostages taken were members of the Nicaraguan Congress, which was in session at the time of the attack, and Somoza's half brother, José Somoza. Members of his band used numbers as codenames, with Pastora as Zero, leading to a lasting identification as Comandante Cero.

The operation was famed to have infuriated Somoza and was considered one of the turning points in the insurgency. Originally organised to free FSLN members imprisoned by the regime -- among the prisoners being Daniel Ortega -- the raid marked an uncontested victory for the FSLN, whether viewed in financial, political, or military terms. After negotiating a USD $500,000 deal with Somoza and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, Pastora, Ortega and other released prisoners left for Cuba where he claimed to have been a "prisoner" lavished with women and luxury, but not allowed to leave the country until Martín, the son of then Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos and Pastora's personal friend, voiced his concern and went to Cuba to personally rescue him.

Pastora was put in command of the FSLN's Southern Front, driving on the town of Rivas from bases in Costa Rica. In reaction to Pastora's widely held reputation, Somoza sent his best troops against him and as a consequence the Southern Front made little headway while suffering heavy casualties. However, the Southern Front contributed significantly to the Sandinista victory by tying down National Guard forces, as Somoza remained fixated on stopping Pastora, even as major cities fell to the rebels.

[edit] Contra

Pastora became disenchanted with the turn of the revolution when most of the Sandinista leaders moved to the luxury residences of Managua; he felt the leadership was doing too little to benefit the campesinos and aboriginal tribes he represented, and was overly concerned with propagating ideological consistency in a poorly concealed bid to consolidate Ortega's political power. Consequently, Pastora turned against the Sandinista regime to fight against it. While labelled a "Contra" in his native Nicaragua, it must be remembered that Pastora and his organization received minimal support of the United States. Largely, the "Contras" referred to by U.S. publications and politicians were the rightwing survivors from the leadership of the Somoza regime, who received substantial economic and military support from the U.S. Unlike these other Contra groups, Pastora largely refused the logistical planning and intelligence, instruction and training offered by the U.S., which included instruction and training in the use and application of terrorist tactics, torture, and military and political coordination with U.S. diplomatic actions (not to mention widely corroborated rumors of involvement in the international cocaine trade).

In contrast, Pastora's group received considerably more funding and support from Carlos Andrés Pérez, a former President of Venezuela and a fellow social-democrat. Stephen Schwartz, now a neoconservative, was his spokesman in the United States.^[1]

In 1984, Pastora was apparently the intended target of the La Penca bombing, which killed three journalists at a press conference he was holding. It is widely believed that this was the work of the CIA. Although it is unquestionable that some of his money came from help obtained with the CIA, Pastora's purported response to his critics can be loosely translated as "When your mother is sick, you accept help from anybody -- it doesn't matter who it is."

[edit] Today

Pastora had three failed marriages. Lamenting about the interpersonal strains that occur in the life of a revolutionary, Pastora said: "The first thing we revolutionaries lose is our wives. The last thing we lose is our lives. In between our women and our lives, we lose our freedom, our happiness, our means of living."

He was seen at a Sandinista demonstration over the slow certification of winners in the November 5, 2000 municipal elections. Pastora now has a shark fishing business in San Juan del Norte on the San Juan River along the border with Costa Rica.

Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez wrote El Secuestro, a screenplay based on the August 1978 incident, albeit changing the character names and basic situation (the scenery was the private home of a Somoza supporter, rather than the Nicaraguan Congress, but Msgr. Obando and José Somoza were key actual people included).

Álvaro Pardo made a documentary about Pastora in 2006 called Edén Pastora - Commandante Cero. It portraits Pastora's come back to the political arena of Nicaragua when he was nominated as a candidate for the mayor of Managua.