Oscar Manuel Sobalvarro, also known as "Comandante Ruben," joined the resistance to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua shortly after the Sandinistas came to power. He eventually became chief of staff of the Contra army. This interview, which was conducted for COLD WAR in October 1997, has been translated from Spanish.

On why he opposed the Sandinistas:

It was the repression carried out by the Sandinistas which forced me to take the decision to fight, in particular because we saw that Nicaragua's democracy was under threat. The Sandinistas promised democracy, but what we began to see a few months after their triumph was very different. ...

My father is a peasant; his name is Justo Pastor Sobalvarro. He is a man of few means, hardworking, who serves his community. He used to grow coffee in the province of Jinotega, but his property was confiscated by the Sandinista regime. ...

My father, who was a liberal, said to me: "I think that these people are communists." That's what Somoza used to say in his speeches, and my father -- though he didn't support Somoza and was a great liberal -- believed it. And being the age I was at the time -- I was 19, very young -- listening to my father say that everyday influenced me, and I started thinking that yes, the Sandinistas were communists. And when they began to give signs that they were, I believed it, and that's what made me decide to fight against them, even though the idea of joining the military and taking up arms to fight against someone hadn't crossed my mind.

At the beginning of their government, the Sandinista Front promoted a literacy campaign, and this program included first and foremost the education of adults in the rural areas. And they sent student brigades to the mountains. These brigades included foreigners who were appointed coordinators of the groups. One of these coordinators came to our house, and this person turned out to be a Soviet, and in his speech he said that God didn't exist, that God was Fidel Castro, and that it was necessary to serve Fidel Castro; that the government of Nicaragua was at the disposal of Fidel Castro, and that it was necessary to serve the government, and all this kind of thing -- which we the Nicaraguans weren't used to, because we've been very Catholic, especially my family. And I would say the Nicaraguans in general are very Catholic. And for someone to suddenly turn up and tell us that God doesn't exist really started putting a lot of doubts in our minds. ...

There was a lot of hatred. Personally speaking, I was first and foremost affected physically by the Sandinista Front, because we were taken out of our homes and our families and threatened with being shot, and at that moment I began to build up a tremendous hatred against the Front's structures, and I felt the desire to fight against these people because they were doing a lot of damage. Just as they hurt me and my family personally, we also saw how they hurt other people, and we really had the desire and the morale to fight. ...

[We didn't like the] systems which the Sandinista government implanted in Nicaragua, such as the control of private property, the political persecution of all those who didn't identify with the Sandinista regime, who didn't say "I'm a Sandinista." All this forced many Nicaraguans to fight against the Sandinistas, because, first of all, we weren't prepared to give up what was ours, our property. The Sandinistas came and confiscated our properties. All those who didn't agree with the Sandinista policies were subjected to confiscations and imprisonment, and their lives were threatened. Many were murdered just for disagreeing with the Sandinista Front. This sort of thing turned many Nicaraguan peasants against the Sandinistas and made them decide to fight [against them] militarily. ...

On joining the Contras:

I started [fighting] on March 20, 1980, with hunting rifles. My purpose in fighting the Sandinista Front at that time was not to wage war against them but to convey to the Sandinista government the message that the peasants and many other Nicaraguans did not agree with [the introduction of] new things which were alien to the way of life that we knew, and that if what they were trying to do was to implant a totalitarian communist regime, well, we weren't going to agree to that. And that's how we began the struggle. Initially we were a group of 15 young men, and then it grew to 30, and I was one of the leaders and main promoters of the group. That's how the Contras were born: what were known as the MILPAS: Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas [Anti-Sandinista People's Militias].

As part of the struggle against the Sandinista regime, we started laying ambushes; and it was during one of these ambushes that we retrieved two Soviet rifles. And it then became necessary to show the world that the Sandinistas really were being supported and supplied by the Soviet Union and Cuba. The best way of showing it was to present the Soviet-made weapons to the public, so after we retrieved these weapons I decided to go to Honduras to ask for support to present the weapons. After some time, we managed to make contact with Commander Enrique Bermudez, known as "Commander 380," and through him we showed the weapons to the U.S. government authorities who were in Honduras, and they were persuaded that the Sandinistas were indeed being supported and supplied by the Soviet countries. ...

This, of course, was in 1981, almost a year after the struggle began. Initially, we had used pistols and hunting rifles, but by now we had war weapons which we had captured, and their number was gradually increasing.

On U.S. support for the Contras:

It was through some contacts with the U.S. government that we started to receive help -- first of all through Argentine instructors, who trained us, and then the Americans became directly involved in giving us help. There were difficult moments, times when we were getting help, and then the U.S. Congress cut off the aid, so we had to renew the struggle to seek help. Some of our people who represented the political side of the resistance lobbied the U.S. Congress to try to get help to continue the war against the Sandinistas. However, we were always fighting against the Sandinistas, even without help from the U.S. government. ...

I think that the support we received from the U.S. government wasn't aimed at us achieving a military victory in Nicaragua. I think we received help to pressurize the Sandinista government into making changes. And it was not just the pressure that we exerted as guerrillas, but there were also the interests of the neighboring countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Honduras, who through the Esquipulas II agreement managed to get the Sandinistas to commit themselves to a process of democratization. And after these agreements, we became involved in negotiations with the Sandinistas. I also think that the Sandinistas were forced to negotiate not only because of the pressure exerted by the Central American countries, but because of the military pressure we exerted on them; because we were on top of them, gaining terrain every day, and they were unable to stop the guerrilla movement in Nicaragua through military force. So it was a combination of those two factors, and of course the [Sandinista] Front made mistakes -- the Front made many more mistakes than we did as a resistance movement.

On Nicaragua's role in the Cold War:

There was a war going on in Nicaragua, there was a war going on in El Salvador, there was guerrilla warfare in Guatemala, there were small movements in Honduras -- so naturally the big powers had a political interest in these events. We, as armed guerrilla groups, were an important factor in these big powers achieving their aims. ...

The interests of the Soviet countries were to spread the guerrilla movements throughout Latin America, and so of course we were protecting, let's say, the interests of the Americans by preventing these subversive movements from going any further. And I think that we, the Nicaraguans, were a very important factor in preventing the guerrilla movement in El Salvador from consolidating itself and taking power ... mainly because their strength depended on the support they received from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and since we were confronting the Sandinistas directly, the Sandinistas didn't have time to help the Salvadoran guerrillas, as well as other guerrillas in Guatemala and so on. So in this sense we were an important factor, and this was shown by the fact that when the resistance was dismantled, the Salvadoran guerrilla movement had to be dismantled too because they no longer had any base from which to continue fighting. ... And I think that at that very moment, the United States also achieved their aim of forestalling the emergence of any more guerrilla movements.