Playboy Interview: The Sandinistas

In April of this year, the President of the United States called an extraordinary Joint Session of Congress to get support for his Central American economic-and-military-aid program, to talk about progress toward democracy that the government of El Salvador had been making--and to denounce the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Among President Reagan's charges against the Nicaraguans: They were Marxists; they were becoming a Cuban and/or a Soviet military base; they were encouraging revolution throughout Central America; they were undemocratic; they hadn't held elections yet; they had been rude to the Pope. In light of all that, Reagan announced, "We should not--and we will not--protect the Nicaraguan government from the anger of its own people."

What he was saying openly was that the United States of America would be quite happy if the Sandinistas were overthrown. For at least two years, the U.S. has been financing counterrevolutionary activities against the Nicaraguan government. In addition to many open measures designed to destabilize the Nicaraguan economy, the Reagan Administration has been financing a not-so-secret "secret war" aimed at toppling the Sandinistas: Anastasio Somoza's former National Guardsmen and other anti- Sandinistas are trained, armed and supported in base camps in Honduras and Costa Rica; those Contras have been making military incursions into Nicaragua.

That so much of America's attention should be focused on Nicaragua's leaders made it appropriate for Playboy to seek out the Sandinista junta and find out something more about those people who so obsess the Reagan Administration. For people supposedly establishing a regime abhorrent to U.S. interests, they are a group whose views, aims and personalities are remarkably unreported. Journalist Claudia Dreifus, whose most recent credit was the "Playboy Interview" with Latin-American writer and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez in February, was a natural choice for the complex assignment. After months of negotiations, Nicaragua's head of state and a panel of three of the most influential Sandinista leaders finally agreed to sit down with Dreifus to speak about their feelings toward the United States.

Speaking with Playboy were Sergio Ramirez Mercado, 40, one of three members of Nicaragua's ruling junta; Father Ernesto Cardenal, 58, a Roman Catholic priest who is minister of culture; and Comandante Tomás Borge Martinez, 52, outspoken minister of the interior. In an interview Playboy agreed to run separately, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, 37, the Nicaraguan head of state, also spoke at length about his life, poetry and politics. Comandante Ortega is an extremely elusive figure who, until the "Playboy Interview," had not sat for an indepth interview with a North American journalist.

But first, a quick history lesson.

Nicaragua is a small Central American republic of nearly 3,000,000 people; it is also a country that has a unique historical relationship with the United States. In 1855, a North American adventurer named William Walker was invited to Nicaragua by the Liberals to aid them in the civil war against the Conservatives. Once there, he declared himself president and reinstituted slavery. Walker was eventually routed from Nicaragua, but after him came three invasions by the U.S. Marines--in 1909, 1912 and 1926. The invasions took place during the era of U.S. big-stick diplomacy, and each of them was designed to protect U.S. economic and political interests in Central America.

In 1927, after the Marines had landed in Nicaragua, a peasant leader named Augusto Cesar Sandino decided to wage a nationalist war against the invaders. Sandino's peasant band, armed with sticks, machetes and guns, succeeded in keeping the Marines pinned down for a full six years. It was jungle warfare--fought on the guerrillas' turf; the Marines, despite superior armaments and training, were never able to defeat Sandino's guerrilla fighters. After six years of stalemate, they turned their power over to a new Nicaraguan National Guard they had trained. At the head of that National Guard was an obscure but rising politician named Anastasio Somoza Garcia. Somoza had gotten his job because he spoke English and because he had high-placed friends at the U.S. Embassy. In 1934, Somoza invited Sandino to Managua for a series of "peace talks." After one of those conversations, Sandino was assassinated.

The death of Sandino marked the end of his radical nationalist movement; it also marked the rise of the Somoza dynasty. For 42 years, three successive Somozas would rule Nicaragua as if it were a private estate. They were the last of the old-time Latin-American dictators, and for them, the National Guard was nothing more than a family army, the country itself just a private preserve; indeed, the Somozas used their power to corner many of the country's basic industries: At one point, the Somoza family owned 30 percent of Nicaragua's arable land.

Besides greed, the other keynote of Somoza rule was its pro-Americanism: It was the first Somoza about whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "He's a son of a bitch, but he's ours." And in one of the most ingratiating gestures ever made by a sovereign country, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last of the dynasty, put a U.S. Ambassador's picture on the 20-cordoba note.

In the kind of Nicaragua that the Somozas created, to talk of Sandino was to invite arrest. Over the years, Sandino and his peasant warriors were erased from the history books. But Nicaraguan history was changed on a day in 1961 when the anti-Somoza radicals Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martinez and Silvio Mayorga met in Honduras and formed what would become the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional--the F.S.L.N. According to its founders, the Frente was to be a new nationalist guerrilla army of peasants, students and workers that would avenge Sandino. Its immediate goal: the destruction of the Somoza regime. Its long-term goal: a social revolution that would end the interminable backwardness of Nicaragua.

The destruction of Somoza took the F.S.L.N. almost 20 years to achieve--through jungle battles, general strikes, kidnapings, exiles, assassinations and a civil war that cost more than 50,000 lives. When it was over, Fonseca, Mayorga and dozens of other top F.S.L.N. leaders were dead. Of the three founders of the Frente, only Borge survived to see July 19, 1979, the day the Sandinistas marched triumphantly into Managua. By then, Anastasio Somoza Debayle had already fled the country for Miami. With him had gone his wife, his children, his mistress and most of the assets of the national back. Thousands cheered Borge and the F.S.L.N. as they entered Managua. "Sandino has been reborn!" Borge declared.

Latin-American revolutions have a history of ending up with one strong man's grabbing the spoils. To avoid that fate, the Sandinistas opted for a collective leadership. Although a directory of those who hold power in Managua today is confusing, Playboy's interview subjects are a cross section of the top leadership. Dreifus negotiated the interview with various intermediaries, then spent several weeks in Managua last spring. Her report:

"This is undoubtedly the first 'Playboy Interview' ever brought formally before a national cabinet for a vote. The verdict was positive, but getting to that point after months of negotiations was a logistical nightmare. 'You know, we're fighting a war right now,' one Nicaraguan official told me, even after the vote was taken. 'The leaders you want to interview never have 15 minutes together in one place.'

"As nothing came through in the way of firm appointments, I decided to take a bold step: I would fly to Managua and try to pin people down from there. So I left for Nicaragua with my colleague Marcelo Montecino, a talented O.A.S. translator and photographer who would be handling the simultaneous-translation chores.

"The first things you see at Managua's Augusto Sandino Airport are those three famous Soviet helicopters that Reagan is always showing in aerial photographs on television. The next thing you notice is a huge sign that says, Welcome To Nicaragua--A Diners Club Country.

"Revolutionary Managua is a chaotic and exciting place. There are posters and slogans everywhere--even in the women's rooms. Managua, in fact, is the only city I've ever been to where there is political graffiti on public-bathroom walls. In one women's room, hand-scrawled notes said things like, Luis Manuel Saballo--Hipocrita. To be in Managua was like being in a time machine: Here was a place seemingly run by the kind of people who were Sixties radicals. Wherever one went, people were young, singing political folk songs and chanting, 'Power to the People.' One night, there was even a Pete Seeger concert in town!

"As for me, my first few days in Nicaragua involved a lot of chasing after high-ranking Sandinista officials. None of my efforts came to very much until the third day, when an appointment with Father Cardenal was finally arranged. Then, suddenly, everything fell into line: Ramirez, then Borge. We even got to see elusive Ortega for four hours. Once the breakthrough was made, the Nicaraguan leaders gave us unlimited time; they seemed eager for the opportunity and aware that Playboy lakes its 'Interviews' seriously. Soon, the 'Interview' became a piece of local gossip. News was breaking fast in Nicaragua--fighting at the border, Reagan's big speech--but none of the press corps staying at the Inter-Continental Hotel could get to any of the top leaders for reactions; could Playboy be having better luck? We had promised the Sandinistas that we'd keep our interviews secret; they didn't want to be deluged with other requests. One morning, a network reporter approached me over breakfast at the Inter-Continental.

"'What is Playboy doing here, anyhow?'

"'I'm scouting a story--"The Girls of Managua,"' I answered quickly. For a while, anyway, he believed me.

"After the interviews were under way, some of the Nicaraguan leaders began inviting Marcelo and me to, well, hang out with them. Things we did in Managua: go with Borge to a prison farm for Mosquito Indian counterrevolutionaries; watch Father Cardenal put on an all-day Latin-American-song festival in Revolutionary Square; take seven uninvited people to dinner at Ramirez' house.

"Ever since I've returned from Nicaragua, people have been asking me about the atmosphere down there: 'Is there much anti-American feeling?' I must say that, all things considered, there was surprisingly little. American rock 'n' roll blared every day from Radio Sandino. Not once did I encounter any rudeness or hostility--and Marcelo and I wandered off quite a bit to do unofficial reporting. The day after Reagan gave his Congressional address, 250,000 Nicaraguans marched in protest in Revolutionary Square. It was an armed demonstration--250,000 people with guns. Yet Marcelo and I walked out into the crowd and went freely among them. No one threatened us.

"But the Nicaraguans with whom one talked on the street did have mixed feelings toward the U.S. They liked out rock 'n' roll, our blue jeans, out friendly, open ways; what they didn't like was what they called 'Yankee arrogance.' The moment that summed it all up happened one night when a group of us went to a restaurant with Borge. Some American tourists come over to him and said how surprised they were to see the Comandante in an ordinary restaurant. Borge joked with the tourists, welcomed them to Managua and then said, with a grin, 'All North Americans are welcome here, any time--just don't bring the Marines!'"

[Q] Playboy: To many North Americans, you of the Sandinista leadership are faceless guerrillas--people whom Ronald Reagan describes as Marxist dictators. Let's start by getting a brief sense of each of you as people. Tomás Borge Martínez, as the sole surviving founder of the Sandinista front 22 years ago, you're regarded as a sort of Thomas Jefferson of Sandinista Nicaragua. What are the personal experiences that turned you into a revolutionary?

[A] Borge: Personal questions are always terrible to answer. They always seem like Argentine questions. Although I have spoken very little about my personal life, I will make an exception this time. Let me begin by saying that Nicaragua today is a country where "I" almost doesn't exist. It is difficult to find my past. It almost doesn't matter where I was born. It almost doesn't matter that I grew up in the kind of family where my mother once told me, when I was just beginning to have my political awakening, "The day you become a Communist, I will fall over dead." And I told her ... well, I better not tell you what....

[A] Father Cardenal: Go ahead--what did you tell her, Tomás?

[A] Borge: I told her that I would not be blackmailed by her gentleness and her naïveté and that I was a Communist. Needless to say, she did not fall over dead.

[Q] Playboy: How did you come to that political awakening?

[A] Borge: Perhaps I could say that I was led to the revolutionary life by reading an author named Karl May. Karl May, not Karl Marx. May was a German who wrote novels about the wild West in the United States [without ever visiting America]. I was about 12 years old when I read his books, and they affected me profoundly. In the May Westerns, the heroes were archetypes of nobility--they were courageous, audacious, personally honest. I wanted to be like them. But since in Nicaragua we didn't have the Great Plains of the North American West, and since the injustices we were facing were different from those in the Western novels, I decided to confront Nicaraguan injustices.

Around the same time that I was reading May, I had a girlfriend and we would walk around our town and talk with some of the peasants. Learning of their misery, their poverty, their traumas was what really turned me into a revolutionary. They would tell me about the horrible conditions they lived under, conditions they attributed to Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the first Somoza--the father of the dictator we overthrew. From the time I was 13, I struggled against Somoza. Then, in 1956, the first Somoza was assassinated and there was an immediate repression--all kinds of anti-Somocistas were rounded up and imprisoned, myself included. I was taken prisoner and condemned to five years' imprisonment.

A solidarity movement of students sprang up to keep me out of jail--and among them was Carlos Fonseca Amador, an extraordinary compañero. A kind of poet and scientist, something like a saint and an ascetic. When I got out of jail, our relationship continued, and I had the privilege of being taught in my political thinking by Fonseca.

In July of 1961, we decided to found the Frente Sandinista de Liberación National. We took up arms to initiate the guerrilla struggle against the second Somoza, who was governing just as tyrannically as his father.

[Q] Playboy: When you first took up arms, did you think you'd live to see a victory?

[A] Borge: I was convinced there'd be a victory--but I wasn't sure of surviving. There were so many years of imprisonment! Once, after an armed confrontation with a National Guard patrol, I was condemned to 200--or was it 230?--years in jail. I don't know what the sentence was; it really makes no difference. The first nine months in the jails, I was handcuffed, hooded and tortured. Sometimes, I was left in solitary confinement for so long that I welcomed the return of my torturer--just so that I could see another human being.

Once, when I was tortured, I said to my jailer that someday I would have revenge on him. "How?" he asked. "By forgiving you," I told him. I can say now that I did take revenge on that jailer.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Borge: I forgave him.

[Q] Playboy: How did you get out of prison?

[A] Borge: After the 1978 F.S.L.N. raid on the National Palace, the front captured the building and held hostage many of Somoza's congressmen. We were released in exchange for their freedom. Then came the triumph in July 1979. What hurt me most was that my wife didn't live to see the victory. Through all my years underground, my wife and our five daughters had suffered terribly. They were abandoned without protection. They were persecuted, threatened by Somoza. Most of the time, they were practically living on public charity. It would have been very satisfying to my wife to see her daughters living a new life.

[Q] Playboy: How was your wife killed?

[A] Borge: During the [final] insurrection, she was looking for her daughters in Chichigalpa. She was in a local taxi that was detained by a patrol of the National Guard. One of the guards recognized my wife and immediately captured her. She was taken to a National Guard outpost, where they raped her and tortured her. Then they finally riddled her with bullets.

[Q] Playboy: How did you find out about it?

[A] Borge: After the triumph of the revolution, I set out to search for her. She had disappeared. So we published her photograph, and some people who had seen her killed directed us to a mass grave. She was there, with ten other cadavers.... It is very hard to talk about this. I have remarried, had two children since and adopted a third--but it's still hard to talk about.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps we can shift to Father Ernesto Cardenal. Father, you're the minister of culture, and the first question that comes to mind is How can a Catholic priest also be a Marxist revolutionary?

[A] Father Cardenal: As Christians, we don't think that there should be any incompatibility with Marxism. One can be a Marxist without being an atheist. What Christianity gives us is a set of goals: All men should love one another, should live in a society of justice, fraternity and equality. Those are goals that Marxism and Christianity have in common. Ever since the F.S.L.N. was founded 22 years ago, there has been a feeling that our revolution should not be antireligious. During their years underground, the F.S.L.N. founders constantly sought me out to talk about how we could create a truly Christian revolution in Nicaragua.

[Q] Playboy: You come from an extremely wealthy family, don't you?

[A] Father Cardenal: The Cardenal family were very rich businessmen. It is a very large family, and it is a divided family. Some Cardenals are with the revolution, others against, a few neutral. In my cousin Julio Cardenal's family, one son died as a Sandinista revolutionary, while his son-in-law died a counterrevolutionary. It is true in the divided Robelo family, too. This is a very common phenomenon in Nicaragua. But I can't think of another country where there has ever been such a large sector of the upper bourgeoisie that has so identified itself with revolution. There are even some comandantes from millionaire families.

[Q] Playboy: How did you go from millionaire to priest to revolutionary?

[A] Father Cardenal: As a young man, I had great love for girls and for poetry. Eventually, I began to write poetry against the Somoza dictatorship. Around the time the first Somoza was assassinated, I had an encounter with God--though the two events aren't necessarily connected. God revealed Himself to me as love--and then I forgot all human love. I became madly in love with God, and I wanted to live in some place where I would have complete solitude and be alone with God. This eventually led me to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, where the famous theologian Thomas Merton lived. This was in 1957. Merton and I became very close there, because we were the only poets in the monastery. But I grew very dissatisfied with life at the monastery--never speaking, getting up at two A.M., not eating fish, eggs or meat. Merton was dissatisfied, too. We wanted to start something new.

Eventually, I left to study for the priesthood, and in 1964, I founded a religious community in the Solentiname archipelago on Lake Nicaragua. In Solentiname, we created a community of young peasants from the region. We organized cooperatives, art workshops, poetry workshops--and there was also a lot of Bible study. In which, together with the peasants, we developed liberation theology. On Sundays, we would discuss the Gospel in terms of the problems of the poor, in terms of what was happening with Somoza. Those discussions came to a point where, in 1977, a group of the young men from Solentiname Went to the nearby town of San Carlos and attacked the National Guard barracks there. Three of our young men died in the raid. The raid was really the beginning of the rising against Somoza. But what Somoza did in retaliation was destroy Solentiname--the houses, the books, the pre-Columbian art we'd collected, the craft workshops, everything!

From then on, I was in exile, traveling around the world seeking support for the F.S.L.N. I traveled to many countries looking for solidarity. I did that up until the day of the triumph, and then I became minister of culture. A job I really dislike, by the way.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Father Cardenal: I loathe diplomatic receptions. They're horrible. All that false politeness, those false toasts. They're sterile hours. Quite frankly, I'd much rather be back in Solentiname--which has been partially rebuilt--writing my poetry. For me, working in the revolution is a sacrifice. I've often wished the revolution would free me from this ministry. And I've been asking for it. But they tell me that they still need me, and I understand this, because the revolution is suffering so many attacks. The person who is responsible for the fact that I do not write poetry is Ronald Reagan. If Reagan had not been elected, perhaps I would be in Solentiname, happy and tranquil, writing poetry. So he really messed up a lot of my personal life.

[Q] Playboy: Sergio Ramírez, you are one of the three members of the Nicaraguan junta, but you were once one of Nicaragua's best-known novelists. Do you, like Father Cardenal, feel a certain resentment that politics has taken you away from your art?

[A] Ramírez: No. It's been ten years since I've written a line--ten years that I've been involved in overthrowing a dictatorship and then helping build a new country. That's been a kind of happiness of its own. I am very happy that I was offered this opportunity, that I accepted it. How many times in the life of a man does he find a chance to participate in the building of a new world? Perhaps if I had used those ten years to write, today I'd be a most famous artist. But I still prefer having participated in the revolution.

[Q] Playboy: You also come from a well-to-do family, don't you?

[A] Ramírez: No--we are not like the Cardenals, if that's what you're asking. My father was a businessman, my mother a schoolteacher. But on both sides, it was a family closely tied to the dictatorship--to the Liberal Party, which was Somoza's party.

[Q] Playboy: What turned you against your family's values?

[A] Ramírez: My first experience came in 1959, when I was 17, at the university in León. One afternoon in June, the army fired upon an unarmed student demonstration. There were four deaths, 80 wounded. I was one of the survivors. From then on, I hated Somoza--though I did not take up a gun. I did not become clandestine. I went on with my life, doing many things: I got a degree in law, a profession I never practiced; I wrote novels, edited a book on Augusto Sandino. Then, in 1969, I became the secretary-general of the Central American Superior Council of Universities in Costa Rica. For the next few years, I worked at that in Costa Rica, and during that time, I was linked to the struggle against Somoza--though, as I said, not as a guerrilla. To go underground was almost to accept a kind of revolutionary sainthood. I traveled around Central America during that period, getting to know people like myself--intellectuals and revolutionaries fighting dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador--people who are mostly now dead...murdered. Anyway, I opposed Somoza but didn't play much of a part in the struggle against his regime.

[Q] Playboy: When did that change?

[A] Ramírez: Between 1973 and 1975. I was in West Berlin on a fellowship that permitted me to work full time as a writer. For a long time, it seemed that the dictatorship would take who knew how long to overthrow. But in 1974, events were moving very rapidly in Nicaragua. In 1974, the F.S.L.N. raided the house of Somoza's close friend Castillo--the famous "Christmas party." In exchange for freeing Somoza's friends, many guerrillas, including Commandante Daniel Ortega, were released from prison and allowed to go into exile in Cuba. After that, the F.S.L.N. had an international name and became a large organization. So there I was in Berlin, with an offer to go to Paris and become a screenwriter for a new project at the Pompidou Center. I had to make a choice: to stay in Europe as a Latin-American writer in exile or to return to Nicaragua, where things were happening.

[Q] Playboy: And you chose the latter?

[A] Ramírez: Yes. When I returned to Central America, I was assigned a specific task. Till then, the front had always been characterized by the dictatorship as a terrorist organization--bank robbers, common criminals, disoriented youngsters. That image isolated the F.S.L.N., and my job was to organize a group of people with solid prestige who could serve as a form of political support for the guerrilla struggle--businessmen, lawyers, financial leaders, intellectuals. We organized prominent citizens to sign a statement supporting the F.S.L.N., and we called ourselves the Twelve. Father Miguel D'Escoto, our foreign minister, was one of the Twelve, as was Ernesto's brother Fernando, who is a Jesuit. The organization of the Twelve was a tremendous blow to the dictatorship--and Somoza ordered our arrest. At that point, some of us had to flee to Costa Rica. But in the summer of 1978, the Twelve returned to Managua, defying the arrest order, and it was an extraordinary moment: Thousands of people lined the road from the airport to greet us. A huge crowd. After that, we traveled openly throughout Nicaragua, stirring the public against the dictatorship. Somoza couldn't repress us as he would have liked--because international pressure wouldn't allow it.

Then the insurrection really began. We went underground. In September of 1978, Somoza's security men went to my parents' house in Masatepe, took my father away and threatened him with execution. My father was 75 years old and had been a supporter of Somoza's! By that time, Somoza didn't care about public opinion or anything else, and it was clear that he would murder me if he could find me.

[Q] Playboy: What were your feelings when you heard that your father had been kidnaped and threatened?

[A] Ramírez: It was terrible. I knew it was an attempt to smoke me out. My brother, who is now our ambasador to Costa Rica, escaped from the family house, because a family member who worked for the police warned him in advance of the raid. Eventually, they released my father.

[Q] Playboy: There has been so much bloodshed in Nicaragua--more than 50,000 dead just from the uprising against Somoza. There is still killing from the border raids. Has all that carnage hardened you?

[A] Ramírez: That's a difficult question to answer. For us, hardening has been relative. Little by little, comrades and companions fall, and they continue to fall--and it affects us less. We see it as inevitable. But I don't think we have ever become insensitive. I think that it's this sensitivity, this incredible sensitivity, that allowed us to avoid masses of executions here of Somoza's National Guards. During the uprising, we made a public promise that we would not execute prisoners. We had guaranteed the lives of the Guards. We had established places where they could seek refuge, and we respected all of those commitments. And all our leaders respected them. That gave us one of the great moral advantages in this revolution. It is something that even the dirtiest propaganda has not been able to destroy. There is a moral authority that we got from not executing prisoners. There were hundreds of Guards who fled to Honduras because we gave them safe conduct, because we didn't persecute them or follow them to murder them. And the consequence of that policy is right next door at this moment. Now we have Guards at the border--threatening us with their counterrevolutionary raids. But if we hadn't spared them, we wouldn't have a revolution as we conceived it.

[Q] Playboy: Now that we know a little about you three as people, let's discuss the revolution that you've created. You are obviously Marxists in your political beliefs, yet you've expressed pride that there are Christian principles involved and that certain human rights have been protected. Can one of you further characterize the nature of your revolution?

[A] Borge: First of all, ours is neither a Marxist nor a Christian revolution. This is a revolution in which Marxism and Christianity are integrated with all other ideologies. We believe in pluralism and practice it. We do not have people in the government who want to destroy our revolution, but we do have members who are not in the F.S.L.N. One of the members of the junta, Córdova Rivas, is a member of the Conservative Party, for instance.

[A] Ramírez: You could say that we're a people who, four years after the triumph over Somoza, still feel the fever of the revolution--looking for answers in very many ways. I'm hoping that will still be true in ten years. We don't want our revolution to become gray, orthodox. The basic thing we have to deal with is the extreme poverty of Nicaragua. It's not easy. In July 1979, the first time we entered this Government House, we thought we could do everything in a day. A year later, we thought we could do everything in five years. Now we think that we can do everything but that it will be the work of several generations.

It should also be said that we don't see our revolution as a copy of any other. When Ronald Reagan or Jeane Kirkpatrick says that we're another Cuba, that is just a North American invention. We don't believe that the problems of Nicaragua can be solved by merely copying other models. That means we have not reproduced the sociopolitical mechanisms of the United States or the Soviet Union. We're not following any form. What we are doing is seeking a profound solution. To what? To the poverty of this country.

[Q] Playboy: So to you, the revolution is continuing.

[A] Ramírez: Yes. The struggle is the same. Against whom were we struggling? Somoza's National Guard. Who supported, armed, financed the old National Guard? The United States! Against whom are we struggling now? The National Guard. Who arms and supports the National Guard today? The U.S. Government! The only difference I see is this: Before, we did it from underground, from the mountains. Now we do it from the Government House--now we do it from power!

[Q] Playboy: That brings to mind a famous photograph of Zapata taken just after he'd gotten power in Mexico, sitting uncomfortably in a thronelike chair. Or maybe you remember the movie with Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!--

[A] Ramírez: Great movie!

[Q] Playboy: Zapata, as played by Brando, arrives in Mexico City to govern but after a while asks himself, "What are we doing here? Let's go back where we belong." Does any of that strike a chord?

[A] Borge: Of course. It's the kind of thing we've asked ourselves 200 times. To make war is relatively simple. But to carry on after victory, to make war against poverty and backwardness and egotism and bureaucracy is something else. Especially now that we're fighting North American imperialism, which is infinitely more powerful than the poor historical memory that was Anastasio Somoza.

[Q] Playboy: What did you find when you took over the country from Somoza in 1979?

[A] Borge: Ruins. Somoza left us ruins. Thousands dead. Backwardness. Illiteracy. Incredible poverty. He left us old factories that could not compete in the market. He left us no money in the national treasury. What did we find in the bank in July 1979? Five cordobas! The money--everything but the debts, billions in debts--went abroad. Beyond all that, beyond many deaths, the torture, the poverty, Somoza left us bad taste--mal gusto.

[Q] Playboy: Bad taste?

[A] Ramírez: There was no official culture under Somoza--which may be a kind of blessing. When it came to culture, he was like one of those black holes in space. Here in Nicaragua, we speak of something we call Somocista quiche, which refers to the way Somocistas slavishly imitated the habits and the tastes of the North Americans--the worst tastes of North Americans, at that. What the Somocistas really wanted was to turn Nicaragua into a kind of Miami--which is not the best cultural tradition of North America. Somoza's wife, Hope, the leader of this cultural movement, did not think of the United States in terms of New England or the Midwest but, rather, Miami. Low camp. Quiche.

[A] Borge: It was incredible what they considered art, poetry. They used to publish poems in homage to Somoza--"I give this song to you, Somoza, along with my heart...." Ernesto [Cardenal]'s poetry, by contrast, was unacceptable, because it didn't rhyme.

[Q] Playboy: Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders charged that you were consolidating a monopoly force with Cuban assistance and building the largest military establishment in Central America. Is his charge true?

[A] Ramírez: In a sense, yes. But with an important difference that Enders would never be able to understand. Yes, we do have a large armed force. At this moment, thousands of citizens have guns, and they are not professional soldiers--they're workers, students, peasants. And if the aggression increases, we will double that number. So, in that sense, Enders is correct.

He is not correct when he says that this is an aggressive force that threatens the stability of the rest of Central America. Sometimes I think that there is a huge gap of understanding in some North Americans when it comes to what we're doing here. Even from people who do not think as Enders does. For instance, there were a group of Congressmen from the United States who came through here the other day and they said some extraordinary things to us.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Ramírez: One of them actually said, "If you had good relations with the United States, none of this would be happening." Meaning the covert support of our enemies, the murders, the terrorist attacks....

[Q] Playboy: How did you answer that?

[A] Ramírez: We said we've tried to have good relations. But if we assume that relations are bad, does that authorize us to put a bomb in the White House? If you took that argument to its logical end, bad relations would give us the right to try to kill Reagan as our enemies have tried to kill us. Oh, but we have long experience with meeting with U.S. Congressmen. They come to Nicaragua and act as though they were in Arkansas or Nevada. For them, there is no international border. We are the back yard. For them, there is no such thing as our independent sovereignty--what exists, instead, are the so-called strategic interests of the United States.

[Q] Playboy: Reagan's people accuse you of not really wanting to negotiate with U.S. officials. You've met with Enders and with then--Secretary of State Alexander Haig. What do you claim happened?

[A] Ramírez:Comandante Ortega will be telling you more about that, but I can tell you a little bit about those meetings. Briefly, what we got mostly from Enders and Haig when we met with them was extreme arrogance. With Haig, there wasn't even a dialog, because he always barked at us. With Enders, it was more a litany of the things we were supposed to do--and then threats if we didn't obey. That was his style. We have been spoken to in one of those two ways for more than 50 years.

After George Shultz replaced Haig, we had hopes to start afresh. Our foreign minister, Father Miguel D'Escoto, requested a meeting with him while he was in New York for a UN session. Our request was ignored. Not a single word back.

[Q] Playboy: When did that happen?

[A] Ramírez: Last September. Father D'Escoto had our instructions to continue trying to talk with Secretary of State Shultz in any possible way. As it happened, Shultz was giving a reception for the UN missions, and Father D'Escoto was on the diplomatic list. Nothing special about that. At the head of the receiving line, there was Shultz, shaking everybody's hand. Father D'Escoto was announced, he put out his hand--and Shultz refused to shake it. Father D'Escoto plunged on, asking him if the two governments couldn't simply meet to discuss things. Shultz refused to say a single word.

That incident shows us the mental and ideological problems the Reagan people have. They despise us. As a people. As a revolution. From their viewpoint, we deserve only annihilation. Why should they waste their time speaking with such a small, weak country?

[Q] Playboy: Despite all that, do you still want your position to be better understood by the U.S. public?

[A] Ramírez: You know, we have never forbidden any representative from the U.S. to enter the country. We've received innumerable delegations of U.S. Congressmen. I've spoken with at least 20 delegations during the past four years, and we've always given the same explanations, because they always ask us the same things. With patience, with cordiality we've responded. We've never said, "What are you people doing here? Why don't you solve your problem of racial discrimination? Why don't you solve the problem of chicanos in the U.S.?" That would be stupid on our part, to give that sort of answer. Here, the U.S. Ambassador is treated with every courtesy and respect--which perhaps shouldn't be due to the representative of a country that is financing and directing an invasion against Nicaragua. Nevertheless, this is one of the few countries in the world where a U.S. Ambassador can go to a barbershop to have his hair cut and be completely unconcerned for his safety. He can even act in amateur theatrical productions. I don't know whether Ambassador Anthony Quainton is a good or a bad actor, but he takes part in community theater here.

[A] Borge: He must be a better actor than Reagan.

[A] Father Cardenal: We would be very happy here to receive Reagan's son, who is a ballet dancer.

[A] Ramírez: Besides, he's unemployed.

[A] Borge: Why don't you invite him, Ernesto?

[A] Father Cardenal: I don't know how to get in touch with him.

[A] Ramírez: Perhaps through Playboy.

[A] Borge: It would be interesting if President Reagan could come.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Borge: So that he could see, even with his atrophied vision, the reality we are living.

[A] Ramírez: No, Tomas--it wouldn't do any good. It would probably be like the Pope's visit, when he didn't see anything. You can attribute that statement to Father Cardenal. Just a joke: Only cardenales can speak about Popes.

[Q] Playboy: When Reagan went before a joint session of Congress to give his address on Central America, he began by saying, "El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts. Nicaragua is just as close to Miami, San Antonio, San Diego and Tucson as those cities are to Washington." What was your reaction to that?

[A] Ramírez: Those are the same ideas that were behind President Monroe's doctrine. That theory of influence due to geographical proximity was what impelled a North American named William Walker in 1855 to come to Nicaragua and to try to conquer Central America. According to Walker and his Southern soldiers, Central America was a natural part of the United States, along with Mexico.

The important thing about that speech was that Reagan seemed to be personally declaring war on us. In a very solemn moment, he invited his wife to listen to this declaration of war--giving a sentimental touch to the matter. Both houses of Congress were there. The speech was broadcast throughout the nation. It was a declaration of war stated from the most august halls of the United States--a war against a small and weak country. I think that Washington and Jefferson would have blushed, because it wasn't for this that the founders of North America fought their revolution. What I think was behind the speech really had a lot to do with the military situation in El Salvador. Reagan wanted to tell Congress and the North American people that he was doing everything possible: He warned them that if El Salvador falls--as it probably will--he can wash his hands of the matter.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the leftist insurgents are winning in El Salvador?

[A] Ramírez: Absolutely. I don't see how the U.S. can prevent their taking power--unless the U.S. introduces an invading force into El Salvador.

[Q] Playboy: After a speech like Reagan's, do you gentlemen ever ask yourselves, "What is going through the mind of the President of the United States?"

[A] Father Cardenal: I don't think he thinks. Close friends of his say that no one has ever seen him reading a book. Besides, I believe he's mad. What he says about us is worthy of a madman, and he may end up in an insane asylum. It all sounds like some wild-West movie he's acting out. He's playing the cowboy who kills all the "bad guys" in Nicaragua.

[A] Ramírez: I think of Reagan as a sort of Frankenstein's monster. Not in the pejorative sense, but when you think of the Frankenstein legend, the monster was made up of the bodies and brains of different people, with horrible results. Within Reagan's mind, I don't think there's any one person but, rather, a mixture of any number of extremists who have dwelt in academic and corporate catacombs, who have waited all these years to put their policies into effect. Reagan is a character of this period in North America the same way Colonel Sanders was a character representing Kentucky Fried Chicken--just an image with a whole apparatus behind it.

So the apparatus is there, no matter what happens to the image. If Reagan resigned, the system would be left behind, though perhaps George Bush's policies would be somewhat different.

[A] Borge: What Sergio is saying is absolutely right. Reagan, or his image, is entirely determined by economic interests. Such is the degree of power of advertising in the United States that the people could just as easily elect Coca-Cola as President. And that's what we believe Americans did--swallowed Reagan as if he were Coke.

[A] Ramírez: There can be differences, obviously. Carter was a different sort of President from the usual. He did not invade Iran with 500,000 troops to rescue the hostages as a demonstration of his machismo. That's how Reagan won, by telling the United States it needed a strong man to direct its destiny.

[A] Borge: It's very difficult to try to get inside the head of Reagan. I suppose he's always onstage, in front of a movie director. We realize that his speeches are prepared and that he probably doesn't think about what he says too much. But Reagan has become an obsession for us--and we've become an obsession for him. His obsession with us is visceral.

[A] Father Cardenal: By the way, do you know anything about those monkey movies of Reagan's?

[Q] Playboy: Monkey movies? Do you mean his film Bedtime for Bonzo?

[A] Ramírez: Yes. I think that's it. It's an old movie in which Reagan plays a person who controls a monkey. It's very difficult to get hold of prints of that movie. It seems as if someone has bought all of them so that they cannot be shown.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that the collective leadership of the Sandinista government has been trying to get prints of Bedtime for Bonzo?

[A] Borge: Yes. But we haven't been able to. The movie deals with a monkey, and the monkey's master is Reagan. So this is a wonderful allegory--almost a premonition.

[A] Father Cardenal: Some months ago, we tried to find the movie at various film societies around the world, but we couldn't.

[A] Borge: Perhaps Playboy could help us obtain a copy.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get back to the interview, gentlemen.... In the same speech, before a joint session of Congress, Reagan made a lot of strong charges. Let us quote some of them: "The government of Nicaragua has imposed a new dictatorship; it has refused to hold the elections it promised; it has seized control of most media and subjects all media to heavy prior censorship; it denied the bishops and priests of the Roman Catholic Church the right to say Mass on radio during Holy Week; it insulted and mocked the Pope." He says more. Do you want to answer those charges?

[A] Borge: Some of this is very much of the level of Ripley's Believe It or Not!

[Q] Playboy: What about those elections?

[A] Ramírez: On August 22, 1980--a year after our triumph over Somoza--we announced that elections would be held in 1985. We haven't changed on this matter one bit. What has changed is the circumstances. When we announced elections, other political groups decided to take up the counterrevolutionary armed struggle, so in 1985, they probably will not be able to participate in those elections. I recognize the fact that that has changed.

But the ideal of elections continues. There will be elections among many parties. There will be a direct vote by secret ballot. Possibly we will elect a national assembly that can vote on a new constitution and can institutionalize the country. If we can achieve that in 1985, we will set a record for elections after a revolution.

[A] Borge: Don't forget that in the United States, there were eight years between the triumph of your revolution and your first elected President.

[Q] Playboy: If the activities of the Somocista Guardsmen--known as the Contras--continue and intensify, will there still be an election by 1985?

[A] Borge: In principle, yes; unless there is a total war that makes an electoral process impossible.

[Q] Playboy: What about civil liberties? Ever since you declared a state of emergency more than a year ago, you've had censorship of the press. La Prensa, which has become an opposition newspaper, has been ordered to suspend publication for several days and, on other occasions, has had to kill articles your censors prohibited.

[A] Borge: To understand why we've instituted censorship, you have to understand that we are a people at war--we've been invaded. When a country is at war, it is a special situation and an emergency that we must cover.

[A] Ramírez: Yes, it's true that we've imposed limitations, temporary limitations, on the fundamental right of freedom of the press. We think freedom of the press is a fundamental right. The problem with La Prensa is that it is not a newspaper that publishes healthy criticism of the revolution. Rather, it is a newspaper identified with interests trying to overthrow this revolutionary government. La Prensa doesn't want to improve our form of government but to replace it with something we consider worse, much worse. Under those circumstances, we have no choice but to defend our revolution. We're clear on that.

[Q] Playboy: Why censor La Prensa, though? Isn't it enough to answer it with ideas? If a newspaper is publishing lies, prove it.

[A] Ramírez: You can do that in the United States, because The New York Times and The Washington Post are not linked to terrorist organizations. But imagine first that the United States had an enormous army of terrorists at the Mexican border trying to overthrow its Government. If there were a newspaper supporting that, I would say its constitutional rights and freedom of expression might be questioned.

[A] Father Cardenal: Perhaps you should ask why we haven't abolished opposition newspapers.

[Q] Playboy: Ok. Why?

[A] Father Cardenal: Because we want a revolution with freedom of expression--the first revolution in the world to be waged with freedom of the press. We want to create a good example. A democratic revolution. A humanistic revolution. Sometimes we think that the kind of pressure the counterrevolutionary activities put on us--and the measures we must take to protect ourselves against it--are exactly what the United States wants. It wants us to have religious persecution; it encourages some priests to speak from the pulpits against the revolution--priests who never spoke against Somoza. It would even like it if we were executing people! What are we supposed to do?

[Q] Playboy: The abolition of the death penalty and the early release of many Somocista prisoners may be human-rights accomplishments in which you can take pride. But to many human-rights groups, your slate is flawed. Americas Watch, for example, in a recent report stated: "Though others, notably the United States and Honduras, undoubtedly bear some responsibility for continuing disorder along Nicaragua's northern border, this cannot, in our judgment, justify the increasing number of pretrial political detentions, the newly established prior censorship of the press, the continued involuntary relocation of more than 8000 Mosquito Indians in the Tasba Pri camps.... Unless these actions, and the pattern of governance which they reflect, are promptly reversed, we believe that human rights in Nicaragua may deteriorate still further and that many of the human-rights advances of the July 1979 revolution may be lost." How do you answer that?

[A] Ramirez: The first thing we did after the triumph was sweep away the completely corrupt Somocista judiciary. In its place came a very young judicial system with little experience. In faraway places in the country, we have very young people exercising police authority. There are probably some who are not educated as to the precise length of time, for instance, that prisoners can be detained before putting them on trial. That can happen. But what we do not accept, what does not happen, is that inexperienced policemen torture prisoners to get a confession! When Americas Watch says that it is concerned with the possible loss of freedoms, I say I would worry, too, if there were a progressive and irreversible deterioration of human rights. At the moment, I would accept and agree that in certain circumstances, there are abuses. We cannot deny that.

[Q] Playboy: But UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick charges that there are thousands of political prisoners in Nicaragua's jails.

[A] Borge: No. That is wrong. In Nicaragua, there are some thousands of prisoners, but a great majority are common criminals. However, there are certain kinds of prisoners incarcerated for counterrevolutionary activities. A lot of those prisoners--perhaps 500--are Mosquitos who have joined up with the Contras.

I must say, though, some of the questions you ask us are rather odd. When we took a vote and agreed to be interviewed by Playboy, I thought at least I would be asked about my reputation as a seducer.

[Q] Playboy:Comandante Borge, it is mentioned around Managua that you're a well-known seducer.

[A] Borge: Well, if you had asked me about that, I would have had an answer ready: that a revolutionary has to be a seducer.

[Q] Playboy: All right, we'll go along with the diversion. Do tell us why a revolutionary has to be a seducer.

[A] Borge: Because we even have to seduce the birds out of the trees to put them into the service of the revolution.

[Q] Playboy: Are you claiming that having charm makes your revolutionary duties easier?

[A] Borge: [Laughs] It's a kind of duty. I don't know if I'm charming or not. I'm sure that I'm not sympathetic to quite a few people. I'm a heavy to a lot of people.

[Q] Playboy: If we can get back on track here.... The issue of the Mosquito Indians is a serious one for your government. Since taking power, you've forcibly relocated thousands of Indians from their homes near the Honduras border and have (continued on page 140) The Sandinistas (Continued from page 68) placed them in resettlement camps father inland. Your rationale thus far has been to remove the Indians from the influence of your Contra enemies across the border; but to North Americans, your actions are reminiscent of "strategic hamlets" in Vietnam or the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. How do you explain what Amnesty International and even your strongest supporters say is a deep stain in your record?

[A] Ramirez: It's an extremely complicated situation and one that was forced on us. I'll try to summarize: Yes, when the Contras began invading from Honduras, we had to move entire populations of Mosquito Indians father into our territory. It wasn't gratuitous. It wasn't something we thought was good. But it was necessary.

[Q] Playboy: You're implying it was necessary for their own good. If that were true, you wouldn't have Mosquito Indians still eagerly joining up with the Contras. They obviously oppose you strongly. Didn't your forcible relocation of them have a lot to do with that?

[A] Borge: The Mosquitos were moved, first of all, because there was constant fighting in the region. But, yes, it's true that they join the counterrevolutionaries quite easily. The Mosquitos--about 70,000 people--were incorrectly treated by the revolution right after the triumph. But let me give you a little history: The region along the Atlantic Coast in which they lived is so isolated that Somoza largely ignored it. What he did do was give them propaganda through the years about the dangers of Communists, but for them, he wasn't a repressive force the way he was for the rest of the country. So they didn't have the same anger, the same need for change that the rest of us had.

After the triumph, we sent a group of compañeros into the region who didn't understand things the way they should have--they knew more about astronomy, some of them, than about anthropology. some They made terrible, alienating mistakes in dealing with the Mosquitos. At the same time, the main leader of the Mosquitos, a former agent of Somoza's security police, began making some vicious broadcasts in the Mosquito language. It was claimed, among other things, that our government had a policy of exterminating all Mosquitos over the age of 30--things such as that. Not surprisingly, with the coinciding of our blunt policies and that propaganda, many Mosquitos became confused. It remains a very painful situation.

[Q] Playboy: Another blot against your government was the way Pope John Paul II was treated during his visit here in March, when he was shouted down in front of TV cameras. This is the official Vatican version of his visit: "During the holy Mass, Sandinista activists shouted slogans of a political character without interruption, disturbing the Mass.... Furthermore, the great crowd of faithful were not only kept at a distance but did not have megaphones or access to microphones. They were not able to make their own voices heard or to express their support for the presence of the pontiff and his religious message."

[A] Ramirez: The whole business of the Pope's visit is very complicated. The Pope did not understand this country. He got off the plane thinking as a Pole. He came here with a preconceived notion. He thought that here was a totalitarian regime that oppressed the Catholic people and that these Catholics would take advantage of his presence to start a rebellion. He thought this was the opportunity they were waiting for to "liberate themselves" from religious persecution. Basically, he got off the plane as an ideological conquistador.

[A] Father Cardenal: Many, many untrue things were said about the Pope's visit here. One of the lies that were said first by Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo [who opposes the Sandinista regime] and then later repeated three times by the Pope was that the people were prevented from attending the Mass. During his Mass, he actually said he was addressing his remarks to those who were not allowed to come. But in the plaza, there were 700,000 people! At the Mass, the Pope did many political acts: He started by permitting Archbishop Obando y Bravo to speak. That was not on the program, had not been negotiated in advance. And Obando y Bravo's speech was political. Everything he says is to annoy the revolution. The Scripture texts that were chosen for the Mass insinuated attacks on the revolution.

[Q] Playboy: For instance?

[A] Father Cardenal: For instance, he used the text on the construction of the Tower of Babel--which is something that has no relationship to the current situation in Central America. By using that text here, he was insinuating that ours was a very proud and arrogant government that wanted to substitute itself for God. In the text, those who built the Tower of Babel were lifting themselves as high as God, and then God destroyed everyone. That was the message. There was also a prayer for the people in jail.

[Q] Playboy: You mean for the Somoza Guardsmen you imprisoned?

[A] Father Cardenal: For the prisoners. But there was no prayer offered for people who had died during the insurrection against Somoza and now at our border. No prayers for those who died at the hands of those Guardsmen now in prison--those Guards who are criminals! The day before the Pope's visit, 17 young men had been killed by the Contras. There was no prayer for those dead! What was most interesting was that in every Mass the Pope has said everywhere in the world--no matter how bad the government--there has always been a prayer for those who govern. But not when the Pope came to Nicaragua!

[Q] Playboy: Are you certain? Did he say such a prayer for the government in El Salvador?

[A] Father Cardenal: It is in the text of every Mass. And here it was suppressed. It is not a prayer that asks rulers to continue in power--just that God should enlighten them so that they can rule well. But this was suppressed.

[Q] Playboy: If you had to do it over--the Pope's visit--would you do anything differently?

[A] Father Cardenal: I think what happened was very good.

[Q] Playboy: Good?

[A] Father Cardenal: Yes. Because what the Pope found here was a very mature people, a very Catholic people, but also a revolutionary people. Our people said that they were Catholic but they would not be living with false myths--with fetishism. Now the image of the Pope has changed since he came to Nicaragua. In Italy, recently, they yelled at him, too.

[Q] Playboy: It is true that the Pope objects to your participation and that of four other priests, including your brother, Father Fernando Cardenal, and Father Miguel D'Escoto, in this government?

[A] Father Cardenal: As far as I know, the Pope doesn't want a priest to have a government job. But we've not had any official communication. My brother Fernando, a Jesuit, who heads our literacy program, recently met a Jesuit from Colombia who was with the ministry of education there for a long time--and he had no problem. I suspect we're having problems because the Pope doesn't want Christians to be revolutionaries--he wants Christians to separate themselves from revolution.

[Q] Playboy: If he were to demand that you choose between the government and the priesthood, what would you do?

[A] Father Cardenal: As for now, it doesn't seem to be a problem. The way things work is that each priest is under a bishop. I report to the bishop of the Solentiname region, not to Archbishop Obando y Bravo, who opposes us. But all the bishops, (continued on page 188) The Sandinistas (continued from page 140) including Obando y Bravo, have permitted us to continue in our positions on the condition that we do not exercise our priestly duties while in public office. We've agreed.

You must understand that not all the bishops in Nicaragua oppose the revolution. Some are for it, others are indecisive. Archbishop Obando y Bravo is against it--clearly, strongly against it. When I spoke with Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican's secretary of state, I told him that in Nicaragua, there were questions about revolutions that needed answering--that if bishops in the Catholic hierarchy reacted automatically against revolutions, there would be great divisions among Christians, not merely in Nicaragua but throughout Latin America, throughout the world. These divisions could someday have effects as far-reaching as those of the Protestant Reformation.

[A] Ramirez: When we've said that this revolution can be an example to Latin America, we haven't said it boastfully. But there are important elements in this revolution that help define the future of change throughout the continent. For instance, our revolution did not consider religion a backward element, something we had to leave behind. We never felt that atheism had to be an essential characteristic of the country so that things could improve. Here, the humble people exercise religion as a part of their lives in a fundamental way that isn't true of the upper classes. Now the upper classes use religion as political instrument and have sought refuge in the Church because their power has weakened. The rich never went to Mass before. They believed in the golden calf, and the churches were superfluous. Now they go and fill the churches.

[Q] Playboy: Why is Archbishop Obando y Bravo so opposed to you?

[A] Ramirez: Because he's a man who's afraid of change. He has very orthodox ideas of communism and anticommunism, and that has clouded his understanding of the revolution--and put him in a position of complete enmity to the revolution.

[Q] Playboy: The archbishop is hardly your only adversary. There is an exile opposition of several thousand former Somoza National Guardsmen who operate out of Honduras; Alfonso Robelo Callejas, who was once a member of the junta, has formed another exile guerrilla organization; and in Costa Rica, Edén Pastora, the former Sandinista "Comandante Cero," leads a guerrilla group of perhaps 500 men. They're getting a lot of publicity on American television. How do you explain the defections of such people as Robelo and Pastora?

[A] Borge: Robelo is easy to understand. It is very difficult to be a revolutionary when you have 200,000,000 cordobas.

[Q] Playboy: And Pastora? Right after the triumph over Somoza, he was one of the great Sandinista heroes. It was he who led the raid that resulted in your liberation from prison, Comandante Borge.

[A] Borge: He wasn't the only compañero at the National Palace. My personal opinion about him is that he should be treated in a psychiatric hospital.

[Q] Playboy: Wait a second, Comandante. Dismissing a political opponent as crazy and talking about psychiatric hospitals has ugly overtones. Don't you have a better argument than that?

[A] Borge: Well, you know, a lot of us compañeros have sat around and tried to analyze him--and we have all come to the same conclusion. I could even tell you some anecdotes that everyone here knows that would help you understand the personality of this poor man. He used to claim, for instance, that his mother had such incredible power that she'd look at a piece of glass and the glass would actually shatter. He used to claim that when he and his brother were in marksmanship competitions, they were so good their bullets always went into the same hole. The curious thing is not that he told those stories but, rather, that he told them with complete seriousness. He'd tell us those things, and we'd laugh, because he was a man who always lived on a stage, always trying to call attention to himself.

[Q] Playboy: Are you trying to tell us that his defection from you wasn't ideological but a matter of ego?

[A] Borge: Exactly. Pastora became internationally famous during the National Palace action, when all the compañeros were instructed to keep their identities secret. Everyone obeyed that command--except Pastora. At the time, he did not have a long history with the F.S.L.N., but the National Palace action was so spectacular that he immediately acquired world-wide fame, like a movie star. After the triumph, he wanted a position commensurate with the hoopla around his name. Well, many people had questions about his personal limitations. We made a decision early on that we didn't want to create any cults around any personalities. Pastora didn't get the position he wanted. At that point, he began to have conflicts with the revolutionary process. One thing led to another, and he eventually said he wanted to go to Guatemala to join the revolutionary struggle there. We said, "Fine." The next thing we knew, Pastora had decided on treason.

[A] Father Cardenal: Pastora's vanity is no small matter. I knew him well. Once, right after the National Palace affair, he asked me if a man could be more vain than a woman--and I think he asked me that because he was beginning to feel that vanity.

[A] Ramirez: It's really difficult to explain a man who one year speaks against the rich and against imperialism and then, suddenly, goes to the other side of the street. Do you know what he recently did? He made a public statement that he was giving a deadline to all the Cubans working in this country to get out of Nicaragua in 15 days or all of them would be killed. All Cubans! Doctors, teachers! He is making some very odd alliances these days, too. When Alfonso Robelo resigned from the junta on April 22, 1980, it was Edén who made the speech in the plaza condemning him. Now Pastora is in the final stages of an agreement with Robelo. His next alliance will probably be with Somoza's National Guard.

[Q] Playboy: In a Newsweek article on the covert war against you, it was stated that Pastora wouldn't take a penny from the CIA. Would you grant him that?

[A] Borge: It's true. He hasn't taken a penny. He's taken dollars.

[A] Father Cardenal: Pastora spends a lot of money abroad. So it has to be from the CIA. Where else could it come from?

[Q] Playboy: That brings us to the subject of U.S.--financed covert actions against your government. When Reagan went before Congress last April, he said that the United States had every right to support covert activities against you, because you were permitting Nicaragua to become a military outpost for the Russians and the Cubans--not to mention the Libyans and the P.L.O. In effect, he warned that you were going to become a Soviet base.

[A] Ramirez: That's not true. That's a cheap argument. What does building a Soviet base mean? We're not members of the Warsaw Pact--we have absolutely no military agreements with the Soviet Union. The heart of the matter, Reagan's real problem, is that we're not a North American military base--and until July of 1979, that's exactly what we were. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was launched from here--as was the U.S.--sponsored coup against the Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954.

Some of Reagan's propaganda against us is really quite fantastic. For instance, the charge that Nicaragua is going to permit the Soviet Union to build a canal through our country. What's the proof? On our Pacific coast, we're permitting the Soviet Union to build a floating dry dock from which it can repair its fishing fleet in the Pacific--

[A] Borge: By the way, there is something very similar in Peru that doesn't bother the U.S.

[A] Ramirez: What military advantages do we get from that arrangement? The country will receive some payment for the service. Twenty people have employment at the dry dock. But the distance between that and a new canal is the same as the distance between Reagan and Orson Welles as movie actors.... It's exactly like the missile thing: Reagan says we plan to let the Soviet Union install nuclear missiles here--an incredible fiction!

[Q] Playboy: Can you say categorically that if the Soviet Union offered you missiles placed on Nicaraguan soil, you'd turn them down?

[A] Ramirez: Yes, I could say so categorically. But to me it's a useless discussion, trying to answer the Reagan Administration while it accuses us. For us to answer that it's not true about the missiles is to put ourselves on the defensive, because the Administration makes us justify something that we're not doing. And we know that this is interminable. Because even if we deny it, no matter how much we deny it, within a week, Shultz, Kirkpatrick, any of them will repeat that Nicaragua is willing to install nuclear missiles, and we will have to say once again that it's not true. And it becomes a useless game.

[Q] Playboy: If we accept what you claim--that you're not now in the Soviet camp--let's play out a different scenario: What if U.S. economic pressures on you increase? Could you be driven, as some feel Fidel Castro was driven in 1960, to make an alliance with the Soviets?

[A] Ramirez: We are facing the same kind of divided world that Fidel confronted in the early Sixties. But for us, the world is not divided as strictly into East and West. The truth is that the United States Government has declared war on us--but that doesn't mean that we're at war with the NATO countries. We have excellent relations with Holland, Belgium, Spain, Greece. [The embassy of the Netherlands in Washington disagrees with Ramirez' description of Dutch-Nicaraguan relations as "excellent." The foreign minister recently said, "I am concerned that Nicaragua may evolve into a dictatorship of the left." The other embassies referred to relations as normal.] At the moment, we have the support not just of the socialist countries but of Western countries, of Arab and African countries, of Latin-American countries as well, despite their ideology. We have the support of Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico. If all of that diversified support disappeared, hypothetically, we might be left with the support of only the Eastern European countries. But we don't think that moment will come.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get down to specifics. Reagan talks of thousands of Cuban advisors working for you in Nicaragua. Are they here?

[A] Borge: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Doing what?

[A] Borge: The Reagan Administration would have everyone believe that they are all spies and military men who pretend to be doctors and teachers. We would like to ask the President to check with the people the Cubans are teaching and ask them whether or not they're real teachers and doctors. And, yes, we have dozens of Soviet experts who help us with maritime and mineral exploration. It would be absurd if Nicaragua were offered thousands of North American doctors and teachers and we refused them. We inherited a country where we have no doctors or teachers, and the Cuban government has generously sent some. We will keep them in Nicaragua, even though it may irritate some leaders of the world.

[Q] Playboy: Since you claim that your support from Cuba consists mainly of economic help and advice, what sort of advice has Castro personally given you?

[A] Father Cardenal: It may seem surprising, but Fidel has basically recommended moderation. He said that we should go more slowly on the nationalization of industries than he did, for example. Although he didn't say it to me personally, he warned us against committing some of the errors Cuba did.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Father Cardenal: He didn't specify which ones while I was around.

[A] Ramirez: There are several important differences between our revolution and the Cubans'. First, Cuba was much closer to the U.S., and its economy was completely dominated by North American interests--all the way from sugar production to the gambling casinos. To break that grip, Castro had to be more radical. That isn't the case in Nicaragua. We inherited limited North American interests, and we still have excellent relations with business investors four years after the revolution.

[A] Borge: The fact that Cuba is an island is another big difference. Although it is closer to the U.S., it could be pressured by the U.S., only from the sea. The Bay of Pigs, despite the power of the North American Navy, could be launched in only a limited way. But with our borders, we have a constant Bay of Pigs, in slow motion.

[Q] Playboy: What about your other foreign supporters? How do you explain aid from Libya when Muammar el-Qaddafi is thought of as a fanatic dictator?

[A] Borge: Ours is a country that is being attacked. We require military help--we have an absolute right to that. Libya has offered to help. In no way do the Libyans determine the policies of the Nicaraguan revolution. Reagan, on the other hand, certainly does determine policy for El Salvador and Honduras in return for U.S. aid. In any case, France helps us militarily, too. Reagan never mentions that.

[A] Ramirez: We don't choose our friends according to the pattern of the United States. That would be very difficult. We would have to accept other types of allegiances we wouldn't like. The United States has its own interests, world interests, and according to those world interests, it chooses the villains and the heroes of the movie it is directing. Those characters--those countries--don't necessarily coincide with our own heroes and villains.

For instance, by North American standards, Qaddafi is a more odious villain than Chile's military strong man, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. For us, Pinochet is far more odious! But he does not threaten the strategic interests of the United States, while the Qaddafi government supposedly threatens U.S. strategic interests in the Mediterranean. It's all a matter of perspective. For instance, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines elects himself every four years, but no one ever worries about him in the United States, because he represents the strategic military interests of the United States in the Pacific.

[Q] Playboy: What about the P.L.O.?

[A] Ramirez: We think the Palestinians have a right to exist as a nation, and they struggle for that right. And we respect that.

[Q] Playboy: And are the reports true that there are as many as 50 P.L.O. pilots flying jet fighters in Nicaragua?

[A] Ramirez: Untrue. It's a lie--not because we have anything against the Palestinians but because we don't have 50 planes. And if we did have them, we'd have Nicaraguan pilots fly them!

[Q] Playboy: What is your explanation of the incident in April when some cargo planes from Libya, supposedly loaded with medical supplies for Nicaragua, were found by Brazilian authorities to contain arms and military supplies? If you're so open about taking your friends where you find them, why the deception?

[A] Ramirez: We didn't know that that was a secret operation. We received an offer of support by Libya, and we accepted it--as we are willing to accept support in this difficult moment from any country that wants to offer it to us. We don't feel any sort of shame. We feel proud that a country such as Libya would support us in a moment like this. It should serve to demonstrate that we're not tied to Soviet military support, because Libya is not a country aligned with the Soviet Union.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about some of your neighbors. What do you think of Jose Efrain Rios-Montt, the president of Guatemala?

[A] Borge: There's a movie called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Let's just say that Rios-Montt falls into one of those three categories.

[Q] Playboy: And the new military leader, Alvaro Magaña Borga, in El Salvador?

[A] Borge: He's definitely a bad guy. Perhaps the guy who's not good, bad or ugly is Dr. Roberto Suazo Córdoba, from Honduras.

[Q] Playboy: What is he, then?

[A] Father Cardenal: Nothing. He has no role in this film.

[Q] Playboy: The fact is, you of the Sandinista government are perceived by many North Americans as the bad guys. Aside from your Marxist beliefs, why do you think you've managed to get such poor press in the U.S.?

[A] Ramirez: First of all, I think it has to do with the impossibility in the midst of a revolution of a small and poor country's penetrating the consciousness of a very large, complex country. You know, we once tried to hire a public-relations firm in the United States. Representatives from the agency came here, and we even paid them to do a poll on the most sensitive points of North American opinion about Nicaragua. But we would have had to spend $1,000,000 a year to barely make a scratch in the skin of an elephant.

So we feel that it's due to our lack of material resources, our lack of experience and sometimes our lack of intelligence. We've never developed a strategy on American public opinion.

Your television networks in the United States will show a film in which you see the Somocista guards in their camps in Honduras and how they go bravely into Nicaragua. We couldn't finance or get that type of favorable propaganda, because we're not going to convince the North American public overnight that we're the type of democracy that is acceptable to the normal American.

When you North Americans see the new uniforms of the Contras while our soldiers wear old boots and torn clothes, you'd swear the Contras were the regular government army. Our young boys are still fighting for a cause, not for money. So when we can convince the North American public that the Contras' cause is unjust, in that sense we win a battle. But it's an uphill battle. Because if the Reagan Administration manages to convince the North American public that its position toward Nicaragua is just and legitimate--if someday the polls change and one says that 60 percent of the Americans agree with Reagan instead of the other way around--the situation will become more difficult for us.

[Q] Playboy: To change the subject, does anyone here know who killed Somoza? On September 17, 1980, Anastasio Somoza's Mercedes-Benz was blown to bits in Paraguay, where he lived in exile. Who did it?

[A] Ramirez: We'd have to answer that question like Lope de Vega in his play Fuente Ovejuna, act three: "Who killed the commander?" The villagers answer, "All the people!" If the people of Nicaragua could have killed Somoza, they would have done it. Whoever did it had the support of the Nicaraguan people. There's an Argentine organization that took responsibility for the execution, and one of the members of that commando team who fell, Captain Santiago, now has a street named after him in Managua. That wasn't our idea--it was the people's initiative.

[Q] Playboy: So nobody was sorry.

[A] Ramirez: On the contrary; there was a great fiesta here the day Somoza was executed.

[A] Borge: I happened to meet one of the men involved in that action sometime afterward. In an odd way, it made me sad. What saddened me was a situation in which the death of any man could make so many people so happy.

[A] Ramirez: I dissent from you on that, Comandante. I think it was legitimate joy. I do not feel sad about the joy that we all felt.

[Q] Playboy: Father Cardenal, the Ministry of Culture, where you work, is located in the mansion that Hope and Anastasio Somoza called home. When we were in your office the other day, you told us a strange story about a tree in the back garden. It's a huge tree with enormous, gnarled roots. You claimed that a few days after Somoza's assassination, the tree sickened and part of it died.

[A] Father Cardenal: Well, I don't believe in magic, but I remember you were struck by my mentioning it, even though I only thought it ironic. But since then, I've reflected on it. You know, North American scientists have done studies showing that there can be relationships between human beings and plants--perhaps some sort of communication. Perhaps plants react to the people around them. Perhaps that tree had a true affection for Somoza. So although he was an evil criminal, perhaps he loved that tree--and it was one of the few living things that would react to his departure with sadness.

[Q] Playboy: On a more prosaic note, let's discuss some of the charges made against you by the U.S. Government. To quote Jeane Kirkpatrick: "Within weeks after the fall of Somoza in July 1979, the Sandinistas began to cooperate in support of the Salvadoran insurgents by establishing training camps and the beginning of arms-supply networks. This clandestine assistance initially involved local black markets and relatively limited resources. In 1980, after meetings in Havana had unified Salvadoran Marxists into a single military-command structure, the Sandinista leadership agreed to serve as a conduit for an arms-trafficking system of unprecedented proportions, originating outside the hemisphere. That structure remains in force today." How do you respond?

[A] Borge: We are very courteous with women. We prefer not to respond.

[Q] Playboy: That is hardly the point. Kirkpatrick is a representative of the U.S. Government.

[A] Borge: Yes, of course. I'm just saying that I've already answered the specific charges, as far as I'm concerned.

[Q] Playboy: Then will you respond to the general thrust of her remarks--that Nicaragua is the first domino in Latin America? That since the revolution triumphed here, it will be exported to El Salvador, then Guatemala, then Honduras, then Mexico?

[A] Borge: That is one historical prophecy of Ronald Reagan's that is absolutely true!

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Borge: These revolutions are a necessary and an inevitable step in the historical process in countries such as ours, where injustices are immense, where everything has yet to be done, where it is a crime to be young, where there has been a permanent denial of the higher values of man. It is logical that there will be profound and serious changes in other countries, each with its own characteristics. Don't think that the Nicaraguan revolution is the result of happenstance. Those same conditions are accumulating in the rest of Central America, and their inevitable result is revolution.

So Reagan is correct when he points out that today Nicaragua, tomorrow El Salvador. We would like to invite Ronald Reagan to build with us! If Nicaragua triumphed, El Salvador will also triumph!

[Q] Playboy: Reagan is hardly likely to join in building revolution with you. In fact, though somewhat restrained by the U.S. Congress, he hasn't made much of a secret of the fact that covert support has been given to your enemies. Do you think North Americans know what you would like them to know about covert actions?

[A] Ramirez: The important thing is not what the North Americans don't know about covert action but, rather, what might happen here. In the minds of the extremists of the Reagan Administration, there are several ideas that, when put into practice, have been really dangerous to the history of humanity.

[Q] Playboy: As we said, Reagan obviously feels that you people are the extremists.

[A] Ramirez: Yes. I know. But we're not the extermists. We're not the ones who are as extreme as Hitler or Pol Pot.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning what? Are you comparing what Reagan is doing in Central America with what Hitler did in Europe--or Pol Pot in Cambodia?

[A] Ramirez: Yes--insofar as Nicaragua is concerned. Now, Reagan is not Hitler insofar as the United States is concerned. North American society continues to be an open society with guarantees of rights for its citizens. But those same rights don't exist for Nicaraguans, thanks to U.S.--sponsored covert actions. The rights you have don't exist for the children who have been mutilated by mortar fire, the peasants who have had their throats slit, the farmers who have been kidnaped, the technicians who have been murdered, the health workers and the rural teachers who have been killed. All of those Nicaraguans are victims of a genocidal and criminal policy.

I say this as an enemy of rhetoric--I am not just being rhetorical. Murders have been committed, crimes against unarmed Nicaraguans. And all of those crimes have depended on the political will of Ronald Reagan. Somoza's Guards wouldn't have committed their crimes if they hadn't been given the weapons, the logistics and the confidence by Reagan. And there are many other things the Reagan extremists have in mind besides supporting thousands of Guards from Honduras: They've got a slew of operations that have not yet been put into effect. Some of those plans involve introducing terrorist commandos to murder the leaders of this revolution. There are very concrete plans for this.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know? Do you have any proof?

[A] Ramirez: We know. We know. We have the means to know. There exist organized groups of murderers who are infiltrated into a country to kill its leaders.

[In early June, after the return of Playboy's interviewer from Managua, the Sandinista government announced that three U.S. diplomats were being expelled for, among other charges, conspiring to kill foreign minister D'Escoto. A day later, President Reagan announced that all of Nicaragua's consulates in the United States were being closed, and Nicaragua's consuls were given 24 hours to leave the U.S. The following portion of the interview took place after those events.]

[Q] Playboy: You had predicted that there were plans to kill your leaders, and apparently you acted on that premise by expelling three U.S. diplomats. But your proof that at least one of them was conspiring to poison foreign minister D'Escoto seems unconvincing thus far.

[A] Ramirez: I don't know what you've seen in U.S. reports, but we have all the proof that any reasonable person would require. As we speak, our government is issuing a full report on the incident. Briefly, one of the U.S. diplomats, Ermila Rodriguez, had induced a contact in our foreign ministry to deliver a bottle of Benedictine brandy to foreign minister D'Escoto. We determined by chemical analysis that it contained thallium, a poison. There will be more details available by the time your interview goes to press, but for now, let me ask you: Wouldn't it have been absurd of us to concoct such a wild story if all we wanted to do was to expel three CIA agents?

[Q] Playboy: Not if you intended it as a gesture: It can be very popular in some parts of the world to spit in Uncle Sam's eye, and the pretext doesn't always matter.

[A] Ramirez: Look, we had no recourse. For instance, we know that there are at least 15 other CIA agents in Nicaragua right now in the guise of diplomatic functionaries--we didn't expel them, though we know them to be agents. It was simply that the evidence against these three was so over whelming that we had no alternative but to expel them.

[Q] Playboy: Reagan's new Ambassador at Large for Central American Affairs, Richard Stone, was met at the airport just after the expulsion by a middle-level official. Did you intend that as a snub?

[A] Ramirez: He was met by an official appropriate to his rank as Ambassador. I am giving you a formal response based on protocol.

[Q] Playboy: And a less formal answer?

[A] Ramirez: Of course, it's true that the poor relations between Managua and Washington were reflected in our formal reception of Stone. He had, after all, made some extremely hard-line statements about our government even before arriving.

[Q] Playboy: How did his meetings with you go?

[A] Ramirez:Comandante Ortega tells me that Stone was somewhat more cordial and conciliatory in private than he was in public. But let me tell you a personal story: Back in 1979, Comandante Ortega and I were in Washington on an official visit to President Carter two months after our victory over Somoza. Senator [Edward] Zorinsky invited us to lunch up on Capitol Hill. It was a social occasion attended by other Senators, and Stone was introduced. In the middle of this friendly lunch, he leaned over and began to grill Comandante Ortega--our head of state--as if he were in a police line-up: "Is it or isn't it true that you are a terrorist indoctrinated in Cuba?" Stone then left the luncheon and gave waiting reporters a statement he had prepared beforehand condemning our government--just two months after we'd taken over. So with a precedent like that, it's difficult to be optimistic about a man with such prejudices.

[Q] Playboy: Then you're becomeing more persimistic overall?

[A] Ramirez: Yes; recent events seem to confirm what I've been telling you--which is that, little by little, the extremists in the Reagan White House are taking over. For instance, there is now all-out support by Washington for General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras' military leader. For the first time, Honduran military units have joined the Contras in attacking our troops along the northern border, and they are also providing artillery support. This could rapidly escalate into full-scale war.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think war with Honduras is inevitable?

[A] Ramirez: If General Alvarez keeps getting the kind of support he is getting in Washington, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Reagan reached to your expulsion of the diplomats the way he did because of this new hard line?

[A] Ramirez: Reagan reacted the way someone who is powerful reacts when he feels offended by someone weaker. He had to react more strongly than we did: He couldn't just expel three of our diplomats; he had to shut down every one of our consulates. It was simply another roar of the MGM lion--and we've heard that roar through the years.

[Q] Playboy: What if, despite the restraints, the war against you escalates? What if it becomes a war as long and as grueling as Vietnam?

[A] Father Cardenal: We would be scared; but we are willing to do anything. And no matter what, the struggle would continue. The war would become internationalized. We will not pretend that we would stay within our own borders. If we're defeated here, we can go someplace else and continue the struggle. So, in that sense, there is a parallel to Vietnam: The struggle would be for 20 years, until a new triumph, until we won.

[Q] Playboy: You admit that you're scared as political leaders; are you scared personally?

[A] Ramirez: What we feel this minute is as good an example as any. Here we are, sitting relatively tranquilly--but there are 2000 armed Guardsmen pouring over our borders; a hostile government in Honduras; an even more hostile Government in Washington; the knowledge that every day, we are being discussed in the National Security Council, that the CIA has contingency plans to destroy us, to murder us.... How do I feel?

I feel as if anyone could be waiting to murder me the minute I leave the Government House. My children go to school without protection--they could be kidnaped at any time. These are everyday possibilities, but we've become accustomed to living like this. All we can do is try not to lose our morale. Otherwise, we'd lose control--not only of our nerves but of the country.

[Q] Playboy: What specific actions are you planning if the counterinsurgency widens?

[A] Ramirez: It's hard to say. All kinds of things could happen. It's even possible that, as a last resort, there could be an invasion of North American soldiers in Nicaragua and a long-term war. We wouldn't lose. We have experience with such wars. We were invaded by the North American Marines in 1909, 1912 and 1926. What the United States would have to do is send a squadron of 300 airplanes to destroy the most important centers of the country. They could, perhaps, conquer Managua--but that means nothing in the long run. As I said, we're only a small piece of Latin America.

[Q] Playboy: Do you really believe the U.S. would invade?

[A] Borge: The North American Government has many kinds of contingency plans that would lead to further logical steps. First, there's the plan we see being acted out now: the invasion of our country by counterrevolutionary forces from Honduras to create the false idea that there's a civil war in Nicaragua. The next step would be to try to assimilate it into the real civil war in El Salvador--which would be pure fiction. At the same time, that plan would keep as a reserve the Honduran army as a sort of military checkmate at the right moment. And if that plan were to fail from a North American point of view, then perhaps, as a last resort, there might be an invasion by North American forces.

[A] Father Cardenal: But this war may never happen--and can be prevented if there is sufficient pressure from the people, the press and the Congress of the United States on Reagan.

[Q] Playboy: Are you optimistic that the American people will understand your viewpoint?

[A] Ramirez: There is no other road but to understand. There must be a mutual understanding that Latin America has to change and that there may be different ways for that change to occur. The worst thing would be for the United States to always, repeatedly, be against any of those changes. The CIA would have to repeat its covert operations ten, 15 times in Latin America. And that would be a terrible historical lesson for the United States to always bet on the losing side. It shouldn't, it mustn't be on the side of the villains in this movie.

[A] Borge: Let me add something--and I'm happy that this conversation has been a collective effort, because that makes it part of the revolutionary process. Although it's rather late, let me stress how much the North Americans are loved and appreciated by the Nicaraguan people. Americans who visit here are constantly surprised at how affectionately they are received. So if it fits within this Interview, we want to express that affection and respect to a people who knew their great historical responsibility during the war in Vietnam. We know they will become aware of what it means to wage aggression against a poor and small country and that they are with us and against the imperialist designs of their present Government.

[A] Ramirez: Perhaps this isn't the moment to say it, but we are aware of the bountifulness of North American civilization. We think we still have a lot to learn from the technology and the spirit of progress that have characterized North American society. But we believe that this trying to dominate a weaker people is a tumor in the body of the North American society. Because of the present situation, there is great ignorance on both sides. What is stressed most to the North American people is that we have a revolution tied to the Soviet Union, and the danger is that, little by little, that view will become accepted by the U.S. public. Conversely, Nicaraguans may begin to think of the United States as synonymous with aggression, invasion, dictatorships, threats. Both images are equally superficial.

[Q] Playboy: So to return to your frequent metaphor, what you would like is for North Americans not to see you as the bad guys in the movie.

[A] Ramirez: Yes. We're the heroes. We're not Greek heroes who get saved at the last minute by a deus ex machina and are without fault. We are human heroes, full of frailties, defects, error-prone--but on the side of justice! That much we're sure of; we're not on the side of a bad cause! What we want is to be able to prove it.

"Reagan's people despise us. As a people. As a revolution. To them, we deserve only annihilation."

"The Pope did not understand us. He got off the plane as an ideological conquistador."

"We made a decision that we didn't want to create cults around Sandinista personalities."