Exiles Nicaragua

Two former Nicaraguan army officers ended nearly 10 years of political asylum in the Venezuelan Embassy in Managua and were given permission to leave the country, Foreign Ministry officials said. Col. Carlos O. Gutierrez, 62, and Capt. Mario Guerra Palacios, 42, boarded a commercial flight to Guatemala. Ministry spokeswoman Mercedes Borge said they will eventually travel to the United States to live in exile.

On one glorious night last February the streets of what is called Little Managua exploded in blue and white flags, the music of guitars and marimbas, and euphoric Nicaraguan exiles. The Himno Nacional was sung more than once that Monday night, and every other person, it seemed, vowed to be back in the other Managua, the one 1,000 miles south of here, come summer.

President Daniel Ortega on Tuesday announced that the government would permit the return of three Roman Catholic priests exiled by the Sandinistas. He called the decision "a gesture of good will." This is the first step the Sandinista government has taken toward complying with the provisions of the Central American peace plan that was signed on Aug. 7. Ortega, speaking at a news conference, also announced the creation of the National Reconciliation Commission, another key element in the plan.

There are more than 150,000 Nicaraguan exiles in Miami, and, for the past few months, most have insisted that the election in their homeland would result in nothing but a Sandinista fraud and a victory for Daniel Ortega. But Monday, with the votes finally in and President Ortega on his way out, the exile community was a pinwheel of emotions that alternated joy, disbelief and a measure of anxiety about their individual futures.

Two Roman Catholic priests expelled from Nicaragua for criticizing the Sandinista government returned Saturday night to a jubilant welcome by hundreds of parishioners who shouted "Christianity si, Communism no!" Church leaders said the homecoming was a first step toward national reconciliation under a Central American peace accord calling for democratic reforms and an end to the war in Nicaragua by Nov. 7.

During his first week back in Nicaragua after seven years of exile, former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro met a hostile cattleman who warned him that the Sandinista government would use him "like a rancher uses one steer to corral all the rest." At a dinner party, a businesswoman angrily told Chamorro it would be best for everyone if "you keep your mouth shut."

A political leader of the U.S.-backed Contras announced he will return to Nicaragua in the next few days, the official Sandinista newspaper Barricada said Friday. Roberto Ferrey made the announcement in letters to Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo and to the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Joao Baena Soares, it said. General elections are scheduled in Nicaragua on Feb. 25, 1990.

One of the Sandinista government's harshest legislative critics left Nicaragua as a political refugee Friday after a nine-month asylum in the Venezuelan Embassy. Felix Pedro Espinoza, a wealthy cattleman who was elected as a Conservative to the National Assembly, boarded a flight to Panama, en route to Caracas, with a safe-conduct pass from the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry.

The Nicaraguan government and U.S.-backed rebels agreed Monday on a mediator's proposal to open indirect cease-fire negotiations in the Dominican Republic, ending a monthlong dispute over the site of the talks. Each side announced that it will send a negotiating team to meet separately in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo on Thursday with the mediator, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. Disagreement over a site had threatened to delay the talks and prolong the six-year-old conflict.

There are more than 150,000 Nicaraguan exiles in Miami, and, for the past few months, most have insisted that the election in their homeland would result in nothing but a Sandinista fraud and a victory for Daniel Ortega. But Monday, with the votes finally in and President Ortega on his way out, the exile community was a pinwheel of emotions that alternated joy, disbelief and a measure of anxiety about their individual futures.

By early Monday morning, pro-Sandinista activists in Los Angeles began hearing unexpected reports on the international telephone, fax and computer network they had created to bring them news of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's victory. "The first thing that came to my mind was shock," said Carol Wells, a 44-year-old art history professor who founded one of Los Angeles' first Nicaraguan solidarity groups in 1982. "I felt numb.

Resistance leader Roberto Ferrey returned home to Nicaragua on Monday after six years in exile and pledged to fight to improve conditions for democracy in the period leading up to next February's elections. Ferrey told reporters that his return did not necessarily mean that he is quitting as a Contra director, a position he only recently assumed, or that he had dropped the idea of a military solution in Nicaragua.

A political leader of the U.S.-backed Contras announced he will return to Nicaragua in the next few days, the official Sandinista newspaper Barricada said Friday. Roberto Ferrey made the announcement in letters to Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo and to the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Joao Baena Soares, it said. General elections are scheduled in Nicaragua on Feb. 25, 1990.

In an increasingly nasty squabble between allies, the leaders of Nicaragua's rebels are complaining that the Bush Administration wants them to disband their political operation in Miami and go back to Nicaragua--or lose their CIA subsidies. Administration officials, frustrated at what they see as the Contra leaders' guerrilla warfare against U.S. policy, have responded by accusing some rebel leaders of preferring the easy life in exile to the rigors of the political struggle in Central America.

Two leaders of ethnic Indian groups opposed to Nicaragua's Sandinista regime will return to Managua from Honduras to take part in elections scheduled for February, 1990, a spokesman for the group said Saturday. Steadman Fagoth and Brooklyn Rivera head the Yatama Indian group, made up of Miskitos, Sumos and Ramas who fought the Sandinista government along Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The spokesman, Kendy Medina, said by telephone the two will return to Managua in August.

Two former Nicaraguan army officers ended nearly 10 years of political asylum in the Venezuelan Embassy in Managua and were given permission to leave the country, Foreign Ministry officials said. Col. Carlos O. Gutierrez, 62, and Capt. Mario Guerra Palacios, 42, boarded a commercial flight to Guatemala. Ministry spokeswoman Mercedes Borge said they will eventually travel to the United States to live in exile.

When an aunt offered to help Luis Jiron flee Nicaragua with her own sons to dodge the draft, the architecture student said no. "The country needs people to build it up, not to abandon it," he told her that day in 1983. But after surviving the Contra war as a Sandinista soldier, Jiron lost the battle to sustain himself with the ideals and income of a young draftsman.