Adolfo Calero, Nicaragua’s CIA Man

Adolfo Calero, one of the fiercest opponents of the Sandinista movement in the 1980s, died of a lung condition on Saturday in Managua. He was 81. Calero was the founder and principal leader of the Contras, the right-wing guerrilla group financed by the United States that tried to overthrow Daniel Ortega’s first administration through an armed conflict that left thousands dead and destroyed Nicaragua’s economy. Ironically, Calero died during the second term of his former arch-enemy, who returned to power in Nicaragua in 2006.

Born in Managua in 1931, Calero was an opponent of the Somozas, who had turned Nicaragua into their own family fiefdom, ruling for 47 years with an iron fist until the Sandinista revolution victory in July of 1979. During the Somoza years, he studied at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. In the ’80s, he was manager of the Coca-Cola plant in Managua, and the CIA’s connection in the anti-Sandinista movement. He had previously collaborated with the Sandinistas in fighting the Somoza dynasty, but then distanced himself for ideological differences. “They (the Sandinista National Liberation Front) wanted to overthrow Somoza, and we wanted to overthrow Somoza, but we wanted to replace him with a democratic government and elections,” said Calero in an interview.

In 1983 he founded the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, which later became the Nicaraguan Resistance. It was the armed guerrilla movement that mobilized more than 10,000 men to fight against the Sandinista regime.

As a member of the Conservative Party (which today is a divided political organization with no significance in Nicaragua), Calero was one of the main players in the Central American country’s recent history, though in later decades he stayed away from politics. He founded the Contras “to liberate the homeland from Cuban-Soviet domination,” and became their main leader. An admirer of the United States, he was a coarse-spoken man with political aspirations that never materialized.

Calero was the administrator of the funds received by the anti-Sandinista guerrillas, through which he was directly involved in the Iran-Contra affair, which put the Ronald Reagan administration in jeopardy. In 1987, Reagan himself stated in an address to the nation that he assumed “full responsibility” of what was also referred to as Irangate: the illegal sale of weapons to Teheran during its war against Iraq, behind Congress’s back, in exchange for hostages from the United States. Some of the funds from those shady transactions were used by the CIA to finance the Contras (labeled by Reagan as “freedom fighters”) and their fight in Nicaragua. Calero swore at the time that he did not know that the $30 million-plus received by the Contras for the purchase of weapons and supplies had come from the sale of weapons to Iran, but in May of 1987, General Richard Secord, a specialist in clandestine operations who had been heading a network to arm the Contras, admitted before Congress that “this Administration knew of my conduct and approved it,” and that he “believed very much in the significance of what we were doing and that our conduct was in furtherance of the President’s policies.”

In 1989, disillusioned after the scandal because Washington had turned its back on the Contras, Calero blamed the United States for the failure of the armed group that he founded and directed. He said, “From night until morning, the North Americans told us, ‘Abandon these people, tell them good bye, and go back to the political struggle in Nicaragua.’ I don’t accept the United States’ decision that the struggle is now in Nicaragua. I don’t adhere to pressure.” However, trapped by international pressure and abandoned by the United States, Calero decided to return to Nicaragua in 1988 to negotiate the end of the war on the Sandinista regime.

He was also an influential force in the National Opposition Union, a coalition of 14 parties: conservative, liberal, Christian Democrat and Socialist, which became the main political opposition to Daniel Ortega at the end of the ’80s. However, because of differences with other leaders in the organization, Calero resigned before the elections in 1990, when the UNO democratically defeated the Sandinistas. At the time, the UNO was led by Violeta Chamorro, wife of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, a political opponent and president of the daily newspaper, “La Prensa,” who had been killed by Somoza.

Calero was one of the key players of Nicaragua’s recent history, who defended his people’s fight until his last days. “If not for the Contras, who knows what would have happened here,” he recently declared.