A Sandinista militiaman interviewed by The Guardian stated that Contra rebels committed these atrocities against Sandinista prisoners after a battle at a Sandinista rural outpost: " Rosa had her breasts cut off.

* 1979 – The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.

In the 1980s, the Contra-Revolución rebels fighting to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

However, the Southern Front contributed to the Sandinista victory by tying down over 2, 000 heavily equipped Nicaraguan National Guard forces, as Somoza remained fixated on stopping Pastora, even as major cities fell to the rebels.

After a short period of peace, civil war began again between government troops of the new Sandinista regime and the Contra rebels who felt betrayed by the Sandinistas and were funded by the United States.

Regional commander of Jorge Salazar III ; an evangelical pastor who joined the rebels due to Sandinista persecution of his congregation.

A humiliating hostage crisis ensued in August 1978 when Sandinista rebels led by " Comandante Cero ( Commander Zero )" future Contra leader Eden Pastora took over the National Assembly.

His exclusive reports included combat coverage of the first town to fall to Sandinista rebels, the first delivery of U. S. gunships to El Salvador, the first visit to Contra camps in Honduras, and the last interview with Sister Ita Ford before her murder by the Salvadoran military.

Nonetheless, Wilson, Clines and Theodore Shackley ( another former CIA officer ) were all working together with Secord in the summer of 1984 when Oliver North approached Secord to ask for help in buying arms for the " Contras ", a group of armed rebels then trying to overturn the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Slaughter in Salvador -- The Death Merchant heads to war-torn El Salvador, where he tangles with death squads and communist Sandinista rebels, with predictable carnage.

* Iran-Contra scandal: U. S. President Reagan signed a Presidential Finding, secretly authorizing the CIA to provide direct assistance to the Contra rebels, led by Eden Pastora, in overthrowing the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

A press conference had been arranged in the guerrilla outpost of La Penca by Edén Pastora, a former Sandinista who had switched allegiance to the Contra rebels.

Upon taking office, he announced his intention to serve out the remainder of Somoza's term. This announcement provoked a strong reaction from the Sandinistas, other Latin American states, and the Carter Administration in the U. S. Recognizing the untenability of his situation, Urcuyo fled to Guatemala on 18 July, effectively handing the country over to the Sandinista junta.

The contras ( some references use the capitalized form, " Contras ") is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua that were active from 1979 through to the early 1990s.

According to Bruce E. Wright, “ the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction agreed, under Sandinista leadership, that these principles had guided it in putting into practice a form of government that was characterized by those principles .” It is generally accepted that these following principles have evolved the “ ideology of Sandinismo .” Three of these ( excluding popular participation, which was presumably contained in Article 2 of the Constitution of Nicaragua ) were to ultimately be guaranteed by Article 5 of the Constitution of Nicaragua.

As a result, she was invited to join the Sandinista First Coalition Junta, however she resigned in 1980 when she claimed to have felt slighted and manipulated by the junta, and shocked by their socialist agenda.

The US government refused to recognize the Sandinista regime's legitimacy to represent Nicaragua in The Esquipulas Process, on the basis that the Sandinistas had taken power in a 1979 coup d ' etat against the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, establishing the Junta of National Reconstruction.

The Junta of National Reconstruction ( Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional ) officially ruled Nicaragua from July 1979 to January 1985, though effective power was in the hands of the Sandinista National Liberation Front's National Directorate.

Lesbian consciousness began in Nicaragua in 1986, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front expelled gay men and lesbians from its midst.

Demonstrating independence from the U. S., Mexico supported the Cuban government since its establishment in the early 1960s, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua during the late 1970s, and leftist revolutionary groups in El Salvador during the 1980s.

Leftist critics usually argued that the United States itself created a " moral equivalence " when some of its actions, such as President Ronald Reagan's support for the Contra insurgency against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, put it on the same level of immorality as the Soviet Union.

The buildup included T-55 heavy tanks, heavy artillery and HIND attack helicopters, an unprecedented military buildup that made the Sandinista Army more powerful than all of its neighbors combined.

The Sandinista ( FLSN ) movement organized relief, began to expand its influence and assumed the leadership of the revolution.

This occurred despite the fact that the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement continued to oppose the FSLN, running former Mayor of Managua Herty Lewites as its candidate for president.

The ubiquitous Red and Black Sandinista flag was used during the election process along with the pink as it was one of the colours of a campaign that finished its popular appearances with John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance and the Sandinista Hymn " fighting against Yanqui agressors, enemies of humanity.

Disappointed with the performance of Shelepin's new Latin American " revolutionary vanguard ", the KGB reconstituted its core of the Sandinista leadership into the ISKRA group and used them for other activities in Latin America.

Moreover, the ministry created a Sandinista daily newspaper named Barricada and its weekly cultural addition named Ventana along with the Television Sandino, Radio Sandino and the Nicaraguan film production unit called the INCINE.

The Sandinista regime tried to keep the revolutionary spirit alive by empowering its citizens artistically.

In its eleven years in power, the Sandinista government never overcame most of the economic inequalities that it inherited from the Somoza era.

Human Rights Watch also stated in its 1989 report on Nicaragua that: " Under the Reagan administration, U. S. policy toward Nicaragua's Sandinista government was marked by constant hostility.

Ambrosiano also provided funds for political parties in Italy, and for both the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and its Sandinista opposition.

Mexico increased its international presence during López Portillo: in addition to becoming the world's fourth oil exporter, Mexico restarted relations with the post Franco-Spain in 1977, allowed Pope John Paul II to visit Mexico, welcomed American president Jimmy Carter and broke relations with Somoza and supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front in its rebellion against the United States supported government.

This was a plan intended to promote democracy and peace on the Central American isthmus during a time of great turmoil: leftist guerrillas were fighting against the governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, which were backed by the United States under the auspices of the Cold War ; the Contras, supported by the United States, were fighting an insurgency against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua ; Honduras, only recently wresting political power from its military, was caught in the middle as a base for U. S. military forces ; and on Costa Rica's other border, Panama faced the oppression of Manuel Noriega's military dictatorship.

Linder felt inspired by the 1979 Sandinista revolution, and wanted to support its efforts to improve the lives of the country's poorest people.

In his tenure in Honduras, Negroponte steered a middle course between State Department and journalistic critics who favored a policy of nonresistance to the militarization of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and its aid to rebel movements in Honduras and El Salvador and ' hard line ' persons within the Reagan administration who would have involved the United States in Central America through actions such as blockades, bombing of Nicaraguan airfields, the provision of offensive weapons, and the installation of permanent military bases.

In the 1980s the Socialist Workers Party and its international supporters within the Fourth International ( FI ) broke from many of the traditional positions of Trotskyism, including the theory of Permanent Revolution, and embraced positions that marked a political convergence with the Cuban Communist Party and the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

In the 1980s, the Sandinista government extended their influence over the region via its Comités de Defensa Sandinista.

In 1977 Ramírez became head of the " Group of Twelve ", a group of prominent intellectuals, priests, businesspeople, and members of civil society who publicly stated their support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional ( FSLN ) in its struggle to topple the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

During the war against the Sandinista government, the contras carried out many violations of human rights, and evidence suggests that these were systematically committed as an element of warfare strategy.

Contra supporters often tried to downplay these violations, or countered that the Sandinista government carried out much more.

* Anti-Somozistas who had supported the revolution but felt betrayed by the Sandinista government – e. g. Edgar Chamorro, prominent member of the political directorate of the FDN, or Jose Francisco Cardenal, who had briefly served in the Council of State before leaving Nicaragua out of disagreement with the Sandinista government's policies and founding the Nicaraguan Democratic Union ( UDN ), an opposition group of Nicaraguan exiles in Miami.

In April 1982, Edén Pastora ( Comandante Cero ), one of the heroes in the fight against Somoza, organized the Sandinista Revolutionary Front ( FRS ) – embedded in the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance ( ARDE ) – and declared war on the Sandinista government.

Himself a former Sandinista who had held several high posts in the government, he had resigned apruptly in 1981 and defected, believing that the newly found power had corrupted the Sandinista's original ideas.

The Misurasata movement split in 1983, with the breakaway Misura group of Stedman Fagoth Muller allying itself more closely with the FDN, and the rest accommodating themselves with the Sandinista government.

One of the purposes the CIA hoped to achieve by these operations was an aggressive and violent response from the Sandinista government which in turn could be used as a pretext for proper military actions.

In 1984, the Sandinista government filed a suit in the International Court of Justice ( ICJ ) against the United States ( Nicaragua v. United States ), which resulted in a 1986 judgment against the United States.

There were isolated protests among the population against the draft implemented by the Sandinista government, which even resulted in full-blown street clashes in Masaya in 1988.

However, polls showed the Sandinista government still enjoyed strong support from Nicaraguans.

A leader in the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front ( Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN ), his policies in government have seen the implementation of leftist reforms across Nicaragua.

* 1985 – Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba ; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.

Somoza, in his memoirs, refers to this action as the beginning of a sharp escalation in terms of Sandinista attacks and government reprisals.

In the end, President Carter refused Somoza further U. S. military aid, believing that the repressive nature of the government had led to popular support for the Sandinista uprising.

" Other opposition parties such as the Conservative Democratic Party and the Independent Liberal party, were both free to denounce the Sandinista government and participate in the elections.

American support for the long rule of the Somoza family had soured relations, and the FSLN government was committed to a Marxist ideology, with many of the leading Sandinista continuing long-standing relationships with the Soviet Union and Cuba.

The Reagan administration insisted on the " Communist threat " posed by the Sandinistas — reacting particularly to the support provided to the Sandinistas by Cuban president Fidel Castro, by the Sandinistas ' close military relations with the Soviets and Cubans, but also furthering the Reagan administration's desire to protect U. S. interests in the region, which were threatened by the policies of the Sandinista government.

" The alleged violations included attacks on Nicaraguan facilities and naval vessels, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the invasion of Nicaraguan air space, and the training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying of forces ( the " Contras ") and seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.