Nicaragua’s Killing Fields

DURING the years of Sandinista rule it was difficult for a journalist to report on large areas of the interior of Nicaragua. A special travel permit was required from the State Security, and in my case was never granted; “guides” were often mandatory; and the local inhabitants were unwilling to speak out. A year into the government of Violeta Chamorro there is still a residual atmosphere of terror in some areas, but the lid of repression has been lifted enough to give the world a glimpse of what happened between 1979 and 1990. The tale is blacker even than the much-defamed critics of Sandinismo dared to suggest.

Over the Easter weekend I visited Correntada Larga, a community of small cattle farmers, four hours by motorized canoe up the remote Rio Siquia. It was a virgin killing field, according to the inhabitants: no foreigner had ever come to take their testimony. Yet it appears that they were the victims of the biggest massacre hitherto recorded in Spanish-speaking areas of Nicaragua. (The Miskito Indian areas and the English-speaking enclaves have their own stories to tell.) On December 3, 1981, the State Security took over the big wooden farm house of the Sequeira family. Over the next two weeks it “processed” 37 unarmed campesinos, accused of plotting to set up the first embryonic cells of the Contra movement. After interrogation the campesinos were taken out in small groups and either hanged or shot. A further thirty campesinos were reportedly killed in the surrounding farms, bringing the total to about 67.

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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

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DURING the years of Sandinista rule it was difficult for a journalist to report on large areas of the interior of Nicaragua. A special travel permit was required from the State Security, and in my case was never granted; “guides” were often mandatory; and the local inhabitants were unwilling to speak out. A year into the government of Violeta Chamorro there is still a residual atmosphere of terror in some areas, but the lid of repression has been lifted enough to give the world a glimpse of what happened between 1979 and 1990. The tale is blacker even than the much-defamed critics of Sandinismo dared to suggest.

Over the Easter weekend I visited Correntada Larga, a community of small cattle farmers, four hours by motorized canoe up the remote Rio Siquia. It was a virgin killing field, according to the inhabitants: no foreigner had ever come to take their testimony. Yet it appears that they were the victims of the biggest massacre hitherto recorded in Spanish-speaking areas of Nicaragua. (The Miskito Indian areas and the English-speaking enclaves have their own stories to tell.) On December 3, 1981, the State Security took over the big wooden farm house of the Sequeira family. Over the next two weeks it “processed” 37 unarmed campesinos, accused of plotting to set up the first embryonic cells of the Contra movement. After interrogation the campesinos were taken out in small groups and either hanged or shot. A further thirty campesinos were reportedly killed in the surrounding farms, bringing the total to about 67.