ABSTRACT
Like El Salvador, Nicaragua was engulfed in civil conflict throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s. According to statistics compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), between the years 1974 and 1978 some 5,000 Nicaraguan civilians were killed in the heavy crossfire between the Nicaraguan National Guard and the opposition forces of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) (AI Annual Report 1979). By the time the civil war ended on 19
July 1979 with the triumph of a Sandinista led coup d’état, as many as 50,000 persons had lost their lives to the conflict (AI Annual Report 1980). Yet, violence did not end there. Nicaragua, like both Cuba and El Salvador, was embedded in a Cold War global politic which would decide much of its fate, regardless of the efforts made by Sandinista leaders to avoid the fatal political entanglement. With the introduction of the U.S. backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, the human rights situation in Nicaragua again worsened as violence in the countryside shook the political foundations of the country.
