Central America: Death Along the Border

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The Sandinistas push U.S.-supported contras back into the hills

Only a few months ago the early successes of the spring offensive launched by the U.S.-backed commando army of the Fuerza Democrática Nicaraguense (F.D.N.) seemed to spell serious trouble for the Marxist-led Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The counterrevolutionaries, or contras, had managed by April to establish advance positions only 70 miles from the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. As a result, some officials in the Reagan Administration were predicting that the contras would have one-third of Nicaragua under their control by the end of the year, thereby testing the Sandinista government's ability to survive. In the past few weeks, however, the contras' advance has been reversed. With the help of 3,000 fresh troops, the Sandinistas have driven the F.D.N. back to a narrow ribbon of bases along the Honduran border.

That region became a death trap last week for two U.S. journalists, Los Angeles Times Correspondent Dial Torgerson, 55, and Freelance Photographer Richard Cross, 33 (see PRESS). The two Americans were driving along a road near Cifuentes, a short distance inside Honduras, when their car was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a position on the Nicaraguan side of the border, killing the two men instantly. The Sandinistas had been harassing the road for nearly a month with machine-gun, mortar and grenade fire, killing at least five people in previous incidents. The firing was part of a campaign to secure the hills around Jalapa, a strategically located town of 10,000 in the tobacco-growing area of northern Nicaragua.

In Washington, Secretary of State George Shultz deplored the deaths and warned Nicaragua that the U.S. considers Honduras to be "of great importance." He added that "the large-scale shipments of arms to Nicaragua from the Soviet Union, sometimes direct and [sometimes] through Cuba, is not appreciated by us." Only a day earlier a defector from the Nicaraguan counterintelligence forces, Miguel Bolanos Hunter, had declared in Washington that Nicaragua was in the process of acquiring a Soviet air-defense system along with 80 MiG fighter planes. In a press conference arranged by the State Department, Bolanos also contended that the Nicaraguan government had concocted the story of an American-sponsored plot to poison Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto, which was used earlier this month as a pretext to expel three U.S. diplomats.

The killing of the two Americans provoked a volley of charges and counter-charges between Honduras and Nicaragua. The Honduran government, which quietly allows the CIA to provide assistance to the contras based within its borders, accused the Sandinistas of violating Honduran sovereignty. The Nicaraguans, who claim to be at a disadvantage in the border fighting because they do not pursue the contras into their Honduran sanctuaries, denied responsibility for the killings. The incident, nonetheless, revealed just how precarious the situation has become along the mountainous border between the two countries.