Detail of a mural on the Avenida Bolivar in Managua in 1986: Death comes cloaked in an American flag. Photo by me (click on it for a larger view).
The Nicaraguan dictators were always special friends of the United States, and when the last Somoza was overthrown in 1979 the US wasted no time in trying to subvert the new government. When Nicaragua moved closer to Socialist Cuba and the USSR, the CIA and other forces in US government, with the full support of President Reagan, moved to finance and organize armed rebellion on the mountainous border with Honduras: the so-called Contra rebels. The mid-1980s Iran-Contra arms scandal was an attempt by the Reagan administration to illegally fund the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries with money illegally obtained from selling arms to another US enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US-backed Contras were known for brutality and atrocity.
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