Playboy Interview: Daniel Ortega

He's an enigma, a mystery, one of the most famous men in the world and one of the least known: Daniel Ortega Saavedra, 41, comandante of the Nicaraguan revolution, president of the Nicaraguan republic, coordinator of the directorate of the Frente Sandinista (Sandinista front) of Nicaragua, the man Ronald Reagan risked his Presidency to destroy. Among radical youth in Latin America, Ortega is a hero--a David who helped overthrow the 42-year Somoza dictatorship and who for the past seven years has successfully stood up to the Yanqui Goliath. In the United States, he's perceived as a devil, a man who's inviting Marxism onto the North American mainland, a small-time potentate thumbing his nose at U.S. power.

The real Daniel Ortega is hard to know, a shy man who has always eschewed personal publicity. There are no biographies available about him, few snapshots. Until 1981, he rarely gave interviews--and left public statements to other, more charismatic Sandinistas. So who is this Daniel Ortega, the revolutionary our own President has called "a dictator in designer glasses" and a "dyed-in-the-wool believer in the totalitarian Marxist government"?

Real information about Ortega and the revolutionary regime that he heads is vital for Americans who want to make intelligent decisions about their own country's policies. Much of the thrust of U.S. foreign policy for the past seven years has been aimed at destroying the Sandinista regime. Consider this: It was to rid itself of Ortega and the Sandinistas that the Reagan Administration endorsed a certain "neat idea" for channeling the profits from an Iran arms deal to the Contras--during a period when Congress had prohibited military aid to those anti-Sandinista guerrillas. The Nicaraguans have long claimed that Reagan's Administration is "obsessed" by them, and, as the Iran/Contra hearings showed, there may well be some truth to that claim.

After the Sandinistas took power on July 19, 1979, Ortega was the least noticed of the top leaders. Most observers assumed that the more charismatic Comandante Tomás Borge Martínez would eventually become Nicaragua's singular leader. However, the Sandinistas said that power would be shared among a series of committees, juntas and directorates so complicated that it took a road map to understand them. Two years of political chaos later, after various splits, resignations and political shake-ups, a new governing junta of national reconstruction was organized, with Ortega, 36, as coordinator.

The New York Times describes Ortega's political ascendancy this way: "Although all Sandinista leaders share a common nationalist and Marxist ideology, Mr. Ortega has been identified by political scientists and others who study modern Nicaragua as among the least dogmatic members of the National Directorate. Mr. Ortega's rise within the Sandinista front has been steady. He was a guerrilla leader, became a member of the first revolutionary junta in 1979 and later became 'junta coordinator.'"

Revolutions are complex, and what the Sandinistas originally proposed was some kind of mélange of Marx, Bolívar, Che and Sandino mysticism. Some non-Marxist members of the government quit; several later joined the Contras; the war with the Contras mushroomed from a skirmish to a constant organized guerrilla campaign; Reagan waged an economic, diplomatic and military war on the Sandinista government; the Nicaraguan economy was thrown into near collapse. And through it all, this ex-guerrilla with only a high school education, whose primary life experiences were in prison and the political underground, attempted to lead his country.

Ortega's critics said that he used his office to consolidate Sandinista hegemony over Nicaraguan political life; his admirers claimed that he held the country together through the simultaneous strains of revolution and counterrevolution.

To learn more about the object of all this activity, Playboy's editors asked journalist Claudia Dreifus to see if she could get Ortega to sit for our "Interview." Ortega has never before given an in-depth personal interview, though Dreifus had interviewed him as part of a panel of four leading Sandinistas for Playboy's September 1983 issue--an interview considered definitive among Latin-American scholars. Dreifus reports:

"Like many reporters who have covered Central America, I've been fascinated by the image of this very shy, secretive young president. Almost everything I've ever seen written about Nicaraguan political leaders (on both sides) casts them as either flawless heroes or vicious tyrants. The left worships the Sandinistas; the right demonizes them. In any case, as I approached the government officials with a request for a full-length interview with Ortega, I found that the Nicaraguans seemed willing to do it. They felt that Playboy had been fair to them the last time around. Thus, after a few weeks of negotiations, phone calls and research, I flew to Managua. In my tote bag were an invitation and a tape recorder; Charles Roberts, a talented interpreter, was at my side. We were all set to do some world-class journalism.

"Or so we thought....

"As any reporter who has ever been in Nicaragua can tell you, it is one of the most infuriating places in the world to work in. Appointments vanish. The phones don't work. Even when they do, no one calls you back. Of course, everyone does this with great charm and politeness, and nothing unkind is ever meant. But I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I discovered that our definite appointment with the president had sort of--oops!--vanished. Well, not exactly 'vanished'; it just wasn't particularly scheduled. Ortega, we were told, would see us--though no one could say exactly when.

"'If you want to get your interview back on track, just tell the press office you're leaving tomorrow,' a sympathetic colleague explained over Nica-Libres at the Inter-Continental Hotel bar. It had been four years since I had last been to Nicaragua and I wasn't current on tactics. 'You see, the thing is, Ortega hates doing interviews and tries to put them off for as long as possible. What he will do, finally, is see the reporter on his or her last night here. On the other hand, sometimes he doesn't see the reporter at all.'

"I should have listened and made my threat then and there. Instead, for a week, Charles and I got the run-around. Sometimes, I'd hire a taxi for an hour just to look around, to see how Managua had changed since I'd last been there. My main impression was of how much the war with the Contras and the U.S. economic blockade had affected everything. There were more soldiers in the streets, more beggars, more refugees from the countryside, more black-marketeers, more amputees. Everything was sadder, bleaker, dirtier. People looked really worn. Here and there, one saw a sight particular to revolutionary Nicaragua: militia women in combat fatigues wearing stiletto heels.

"By my ninth day, I still had no confirmed appointment with the president. It was a sweltering, humid Saturday. Desperate, I stormed into the presidential press office and gave my ultimatum: 'If I don't get to see the president this weekend, I'm afraid my editor has ordered me to quit Managua. I'm leaving town on Monday--the first plane to Costa Rica.'

"'Well, why didn't you say so earlier?' said Ortega's press secretary, smiling. 'Would you like to join President Ortega at the game tomorrow? It's the final day of the Nicaraguan baseball championship. You can begin your talks there.'

"Charles and I, indeed, caught up with Ortega there--and we saw him thereafter three more times. We talked at the ball park, at his rambling ranch house, on the road driving to Matagalpa, at his offices. What Ortega had decided was that he was going to make an interview for history--and he gave himself fully to it.

"Naturally, I found myself disagreeing often with his views--Ortega is certainly no civil libertarian--but I was surprised by the openness with which he accepted my frequently hostile questions. I felt that there was nothing I couldn't ask him and that his responses, though sometimes rhetorical, were genuine.

"Aside from marathon talk sessions, Ortega let us hang out with him and catch glimpses of his life. One day, he showed us his Managua: Here was the neighborhood where he had played baseball as a young boy. Here was the place where a statue of Somoza once stood. Farther down the road was the house in which he had hid while underground in 1976 and 1977. At one point, we drove past a wall with graffiti scrawled on it by the local Communist Party. Ortega sneered. 'I should think you're on great terms with them,' I said.

"'Not at all. They're the opposition.'

"'How come?'

"'They're too dogmatic,' he answered, refusing to elaborate further.

"The most memorable interview day was our last. It began at six in the morning--Ortega was driving up to Matagalpa to thank the coffee harvesters for bringing in the crop. Charles and I were to join him in the presidential minivan and we would complete our interview en route. For three hours, without ever losing a beat, Ortega responded to our queries. Then we arrived in Matagalpa. It looked like a scene from Elia Kazan's 'Viva Zapata!': Ten thousand peasants stood in the sun--with red banners flying, hearing the president of their country thank them for their labor.

"'No pasarán!' shouted the peasants in Sandino T-shirts. 'They shall not pass!'

"The very next morning, with 20 hours of tape, Playboy's team headed for Augusto Sandino Airport--where we booked a flight to Mexico. It was four A.M. In the haze of the morning, as we waited to board the plane, I closed my eyes, opened them again and saw a woman with a beard on a unicycle wheeling her way through the airport waiting area. What was this? I found out it was part of an all-women's circus from California that had come to Managua to entertain the coffee harvesters. So there it was: hermaphrodite unicyclists wheeling their way around an airport that Reagan had declared a threat to American security; it was surreal, magical, absurd, Nicaraguan."

[The first portion of the "Interview" takes place at Sandino Stadium--formerly Somoza Stadium--in the presidential box during the final game of the championships. It's a crowded, raucous place, filled with Sandinista officials, bodyguards and various Ortega children. To Daniel Ortega's right sits poet Rosario Murillo--his common-law wife, a beauty with movie-star looks. To President Ortega's left are several top Sandinista leaders, including interior minister Tomás Borge Martínez, the only surviving founder of the Frente Sandinista--a man said to rival Ortega for political power. An automatic rifle lies at Ortega's feet. The competing teams are the Dantos, who have won three games, and the Boers, who have won two.]

[Q] Playboy: Isn't it probable, Mr. President, that you are one of the few chiefs of state who actually know how to use a machine gun?

[A] Ortega: Yes. I know how to use it.

[Q] Playboy: What kind is it?

[A] Ortega: AK-47. Russian.

[Q] Playboy: Which team are you rooting for?

[A] Ortega: The Boers. But I have to applaud both teams. I can no longer express my sympathies publicly. The fact that baseball is being played in the middle of a war against us by the United States is another triumph for the Nicaraguan people. It means that Washington has not been able to fragment our society. Despite the war, sports, leisure activities--they go on.

[Q] Playboy: We seem to remember President Reagan's saying that he thought Nicaraguans had picked up their interest in baseball from the Cubans and that this was yet another example of Castro's influence on you.

[A] Ortega: No, no! We got it from you! I grew up a New York Yankees fan. After three U.S. interventions by the Marines in Nicaragua, it was a legacy we got from the Americans--the only good one.

When I was growing up, right in the neighborhood of this stadium, to be a Boers fan--a strange name but one given to the team by European immigrants to Nicaragua--was to be against Somoza. The other Managua team was called The Five Stars, and it was run by Somoza.

[Ortega applauds a play on the field. Borge addresses the interviewer.]

Borge: Have the U.S. papers been talking about a rift between Borge and Ortega?

[Q] Playboy: Yes. What do you have to say about it?

Borge: They say we've been plotting to assassinate each other, right?

[Q] Playboy: We haven't read that. But we've seen reports of a power struggle between you, and it surprises us to see you together.

[A] Ortega: These stories--they're intended to prove an attempt against one or the other of us. They want the CIA to kill one of us and blame the other. If either me or my brother [General Humberto Ortega Saavedra, minister of defense] dies, they'll blame it on Borge. Or vice versa. They'd like a violent pretext, as they had in Grenada, to justify an invasion. That is one of the alternatives the CIA is considering. That's no assumption; we have specific information about plans of that kind.

[Q] Playboy: What specifics?

Borge: As they say in the U.S., I cannot reveal my sources.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think about some of the more elaborate plots revealed in the Iran/Contra investigations?

Borge: The revelations have been very logical, unsurprising. Reagan has claimed he was unaware of illegal aid to the Contras. Ridiculous to think that they would have kept the news from him! As though a son were to have found a treasure in his father's house and then not told him! To deny the father the immense pleasure of his most profound wish! I'm also not surprised it took so long for it to come out. Given the visceral hatred the Reagan Administration has for this revolution, they would have done everything possible--including obtaining resources illegally--to overthrow us. But it's also logical it was uncovered, given the legal traditions of the United States.

[Q] Playboy: Mr. President, we're wondering if you have a favorite Iran/Contra character. The scandal has presented such a fascinating cast.

[A] Ortega: I have no favorite. The one I find most interesting is Reagan, because he's the one responsible for all of them. If he's not responsible, then he may as well resign, because it means he does nothing as himself in his high office.

[The Boers make a play on the field, causing great cheers in the presidential box.]

You know, I used to come with my father to the baseball games here. I grew up around here. One of the players down there is the grandson of the man who headed the Augusto Cesar Sandino Masonic Lodge in our neighborhood. He would give us lectures about economic inequalities and politics. That place played an important role in my political development.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to believe that a Masonic lodge was a hotbed of revolution.

[A] Ortega: Ah, but you see, Sandino was a Mason. [Sandino, assassinated in 1934, was the Nicaraguan revolutionary who fought the U.S. Marine invasions in the Twenties and early Thirties.] In any case, the cheapest seats here in the stadium were in the sun, so we used to make hats out of newspapers to shield ourselves. That's when I discovered I had myopia. My father would ask me what the score was, and I couldn't see the scoreboard.

[Q] Playboy: That must have been a problem for you during your years as a guerrilla--where to get glasses.

[A] Ortega: For a time, I used contact lenses as part of my disguise.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us of what President Reagan said of you--that you were "a dictator in designer glasses." What did you think when you heard that?

[A] Ortega: I laughed. I didn't think I was so important to President Reagan that he would worry so much about me. It seems such a waste of time for a President of such a powerful country to be so obsessed with this small country. It's just more evidence of his obsession with Nicaragua.

[Q] Playboy: Well, what about those glasses? You reportedly spent $3000 on designer glasses while you were in New York, and the newspapers reported it in great detail.

[A] Ortega: Look, every time I go to New York on a visit to the United Nations, I go to the same optical shop. I went there the first time because of my myopia; the U.S. is supposed to have the most advanced optical science. The place was recommended to me by a friend who is well off, and I always charged the glasses to him. So the last time I was there, I bought some frames. I play sports, I jog; they could break. And if at any time I have to survive an American attack and take up arms, I want some spare frames. I had no idea what the bill was, and when it came out later that "Ortega had spent $3000 on designer glasses," I was flabbergasted. I'm only glad that I wasn't under the same kind of scrutiny in some of my earlier trips to New York. During those years, I would take the Nicaraguan UN delegation to a nice restaurant in New York. Sometimes, I would pay a lot of money, since restaurants there cost so much, and I can imagine what the press would have said then. And the hotel bill! Hotels cost a fortune in New York.

[Q] Playboy:Comandante Borge mentioned Reagan's visceral feelings toward you. Why do you think they're so personal?

[A] Ortega: It's not personal--it's against the Nicaraguan revolution. There has been talk ever since this Iran/Contra scandal broke about Reagan's not being in charge. But I know for certain that there's one thing he's really on top of--the only thing he's really interested in--Nicaragua. He's taken us as his thing, like a little kid with his toys, making a little war. He's made this war of the Contras against Nicaragua his hobby. That's why we always say that he's really the head Contra. He meets with people, they tell him how the war is going, ideas come out and he gets very excited. Other issues--domestic, economic matters, budget problems, the deficit, international problems--he lets his advisors deal with those matters. The only thing he can talk about is Nicaragua, because it is his hobby. And it's a dark hobby.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think you've become the center of this obsession?

[A] Ortega: We don't understand it. What we know, however, is that it is real--and we have to guide ourselves accordingly.

[Q] Playboy: You have said you weren't surprised by what has come out about the Contra funding--but, surely, the part about the Iran arms deal must have astonished you.

[A] Ortega: The Iran part, yes--that surprised us. Of course, we weren't surprised by Contra funding--we'd been saying that was happening all along. But this Iran thing, with Reagan accusing Iran of being a terrorist state--which is what he called Nicaragua, too, by the way--and after all that, Robert McFarlane showed up in Tehran with a cake shaped like a key and a Bible! Now, that was amazing!

[Q] Playboy: If McFarlane arrived in Managua with a cake and a Bible, what would you do?

[A] Ortega: Receive him. In fact, we've been waiting for seven years for Reagan to send us someone with a cake and a Bible. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: There are people who say that this entire Iran/Contra affair has given you breathing space; that without it, an invasion of Nicaragua by the U.S. might have been more likely.

[A] Ortega: Well, I think that the scandal has helped demonstrate that what we've been saying all along is true. For years, we were saying that there were all these illegal operations going on, and very few in the United States believed us. With the scandal now, people see that these illegal operations do exist. As we talk, more aspects of the scandal are emerging. Perhaps some of the elements that have not yet come out have to do with the plans the United States has for carrying out direct action against Nicaragua. I certainly think that Reagan has not given up on the option of an invasion here.

[Q] Playboy: You know, of course, that many American politicians say that you use the invasion threat as a way of consolidating domestic support and drawing attention away from your own government's deficiencies.

[A] Ortega: People say that we're like the boy who cried wolf. The problem is that Nicaragua is a country that has already been invaded on several occasions by the United States. Unlike the boy in the fable, Nicaragua has already had the wolf come. And now we have the same wolf showing us his teeth and sticking out his claws at us and talking about invading us. No matter what is going on with the Iran/Contra affair, every day we see more evidence that the U.S. has not discarded the possibility of an invasion. Recently, I spoke with a group of U.S. Congressmen and asked them if Reagan would try to invade Nicaragua and they answered, "Considering the characteristics of some of the men who surround Reagan and of Reagan himself, anything could happen." Even they think this danger exists.

But what Reagan and his people don't understand is, there will be no short-term victory here. They won't even achieve a victory in the long term. They could miscalculate. We've seen that happen, despite the United States' intelligence capacity.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Ortega: Iran at the time of the shah. What was the information that the Carter Administration got from its embassy in Tehran? "The shah is fine--there's no problem. So let's continue supporting the shah." They make the same miscalculations here. CIA agents here tell Reagan there is great discontent with the Sandinista revolution; that when [opposition leader] Cardinal Obando holds activities, 500,000 people show up. They are crazy with their reports. If half a million people came to see the cardinal, it would be one sixth of the country!

So this is the kind of information that Washington has to make its judgments on.

[Q] Playboy: But we hear reports from more objective sources of great discontent here. As we travel around Nicaragua, we sense it. We've seen antigovernment posters and graffiti everywhere. We've heard grumblings from people on the street. You'd have to be blind to miss it.

[A] Ortega: But where is there not discontent? Even in the Vatican there's discontent! There are criticisms and sanctions there. And there's plenty of that here.

[The Dantos capture the championship with a home run--and Ortega rushes onto the open field and offers his congratulations to the managers of both teams. An hour later, he is driving Playboy's interviewer in an American-made jeep through his home town, Managua, a wild, tropic version of Berlin after World War Two, a mass of empty lots, rubble, bougainvillaea and tin shacks.]

[A] Ortega: This is where the neighborhood was that used to be known as the Colonia Somoza. It's where I was brought up after my parents moved to Managua. Everything in the district was named after Somoza: the baseball stadium, the park--we grew up in the shadow of this most hideous statue of Somoza on horseback; it was styled in the fashion of Mussolini's monuments to himself. About the only thing around that wasn't named after Somoza was the Sandino lodge I told you about, which was about ten blocks away. The neighborhood kids and I went there every afternoon after school. By 1958 or 1959, I was spending all my time after school there. At the lodge, there were some older men--poets, economists, soldiers--who'd fought with Sandino, and they would recount their stories of him, which moved and thrilled us.

[Q] Playboy: And these old Sandino veterans influenced you?

[A] Ortega: Our whole group of young boys was influenced. Many of us went on to become fighters in the Frente Sandinista.

[Q] Playboy: You were a revolutionary that young?

[A] Ortega: I was carrying out revolutionary activities. I hated Somoza. It was a part of my family's legacy. I wanted to devote my life to getting rid of him, and nothing interested me more than freeing the country.

At that time, there was a generalized anti-U.S. sentiment here, and it affected me very strongly. I didn't participate in a Marxist, Leninist or Communist Party--nothing of that sort. Nor did my father. What provoked us was U.S. policy, all by itself, with all of its errors, all of its interventions: the assassination of Sandino, the support it offered to the Somoza dictatorship. I saw myself as a young Nicaraguan nationalist: anti-imperialist, anti-Yanqui. My neighborhood friends were the same. We were anti-Coca-Cola, anti-comic book, against everything, good and bad, represented by the United States. Except baseball. [Laughs] I remember, once, when I was about 16, we were at a demonstration near the Managua [Catholic] Cathedral. Things got very violent. The Guardia were shooting at us and throwing tear gas. So, as we fled, we ran up the steps of the cathedral. Inside, by chance, we encountered a North American, dressed in military uniform, about to marry a Nicaraguan woman. In a rage, we surrounded the wedding party. Then we tried to attack the groom. We broke up the wedding.

[Q] Playboy: Because you didn't want a U.S. military man marrying a Nicaraguan?

[A] Ortega: No. All we saw was, as we would say, "a bad Yanqui." We just didn't want any kind of Yanqui here. Now, of course, our feelings toward North Americans are much more sophisticated. There are many who've come here to help build our revolution--to offer technical assistance. We like American popular culture; we like many North American things.

[Q] Playboy: But not enough to pay heed to the kind of image you project in North America, apparently. In fact, it might be said that your government has a talent for making moves that guarantee truly terrible press in the U.S. If you do want your government to be seen as democratic and nonoppressive, how is it that you manage to create the opposite impression?

[A] Ortega: The most important thing here is that we are opposed to a power--the United States--that has dominion over world communications. It even has a President who, I think, has the greatest dominion over communications media of all the Presidents ever. I mean, you have an actor for President! I truly admire the facility with which Mr. Reagan reads his speeches with those sophisticated video systems--he doesn't look at the cue cards. I think it would be very difficult for me to read as Reagan does, without looking down. He's always smiling with his actor's smile, with his actor's gestures and with a whole team working to maintain the President's image while creating a bad image of those who wish to disagree with him.

So we are in a totally disadvantageous position. For instance, this revolution has done a lot for our people here--built sugar mills, geothermal plants, dairy projects--but none of that is covered. As you journalists say, we can't get our story across.

[Q] Playboy: But it's not just a question of public relations; you often seem to do things that are intentionally designed to create a bad image. For instance, that trip to Moscow. In April 1985, the week after the U.S. Congress voted against funding the Contras, you journeyed to the Soviet Union. By early June, Congress, under pressure from the Reagan Administration, reversed its vote.

[A] Ortega: First of all, the incident is really an example of manipulation on the part of the U.S. press. In this case, it ceased being professional--it got caught in the trap of yellow journalism.

[Q] Playboy: Mr. President, the press didn't make up the timing. Wasn't that something you did to yourself?

[A] Ortega: But I'm referring to the way in which the U.S. press focused on the trip to Moscow; it gave the impression that it was the first time that I had ever gone to Moscow and that it was the culminating point at which Nicaragua was establishing relations of a strategic nature with the Soviet Union. That just wasn't true. In fact, this was my seventh visit to the Soviet Union. I arrived one day and left the day after to discuss economic matters. I went on to Italy, Spain, France--which the press hardly mentioned. The reason I went to Moscow was that I knew that Reagan was about to impose his economic blockade on us and we had to move quickly to get help. Reagan did not improvise the embargo after the Congressional vote--he already had it prepared, and we had that information. So since the embargo was coming, we had to move rapidly: Our oil supply was about to be cut off.

[Q] Playboy: Since the Contras ended up getting their money, don't you think the Moscow trip was a mistake?

[A] Ortega: No, because the trip to Moscow was only the pretext that many Congressmen used to justify changing their votes. They were looking for an excuse.

[Q] Playboy: Still, one step after another seems designed to disprove your sincerity on such issues as civil liberties. For instance, even your supporters in the United States have a hard time explaining how you could close the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, shut down Radio Catolica and exile the bishop of Chontales, Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega.

[A] Ortega: The problems you mention are political. Sometimes people look at these things and say that we are being antireligious, and this is very far from the truth. This is a revolution that has Christianity very much at the core of what we are doing. There are priests in the government; there are clergy who fought hard to make our revolution. But in Nicaragua, as in other parts of Latin America, there are also elements in the clergy who are extremely conservative. This is important to us--because many of us are students of history, and we have looked hard at what happened to the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the Seventies. When the U.S. Government wanted to overthrow that government, it used newspapers like El Mercurio and right-wing sectors of the Church to destabilize it. We don't want that story repeated in Nicaragua. La Prensa is a newspaper that's been financed by the CIA. Radio Catolica is a radio station that has been the voice of the counterrevolution. That's why it was closed. This had nothing to do with religion.

[Q] Playboy: But it is the Church's station--

[A] Ortega:Radio Catolica is not! One would think that it should be--that all Nicaraguan bishops should have access to the radio station. But this station is only in the hands of the bishop of Managua. There were people working there--including the director, now in the U.S.--who were identified with the counterrevolutionary forces. They took advantage of the Catholic radio to disseminate their counterrevolutionary message, violating the state of emergency and the country's laws. We called their attention to this on several occasions. They paid no attention. So we had to take action.

[Q] Playboy: You also expelled Bishop Vega. It was reported that you deposited him shoeless at the Honduran border.

[A] Ortega: First of all, he wasn't turned over shoeless. He had his normal clothes, his shoes on.

Of course, these are measures that are difficult to understand. But we are subjected to a double standard. The media in North America seem to be unaware of the fact that in Honduras, they have expelled and assassinated priests. In El Salvador, they have expelled and assassinated priests and bishops and nuns.

Since 1979, more than 200 religious men and women have been murdered in Latin America--and none of them have been murdered in Nicaragua. There's one country in which two priests and two religious workers have been assassinated in the past few months. But the United States is not interested in that government, because it is an ally. When Honduras expels a priest, it's news for one day and then forgotten. But when Nicaragua expels a priest, it's news for a year.

[Q] Playboy: All right, Bishop Vega wasn't assassinated. But he was expelled. Why?

[A] Ortega: Because he broke Nicaraguan laws. Every country has its laws. When some North American priests made protests against Reagan's policy in Central America at U.S. military bases, they were arrested, too. Even in the United States! In Bishop Vega's case, he betrayed his country.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Ortega: He defended Reagan's policy against Nicaragua. This is called treason. He could have been jailed for 30 years.

[Q] Playboy: In a democracy, we call it freedom of speech.

[A] Ortega: He didn't just justify Reagan's policy against Nicaragua, he justified the assassination of the Nicaraguan people! When asked by the international press here, "What do you think of the $100,000,000 [which Reagan had requested for aid to the Contras]?" he, supported it. And when they asked him, "What about the ruling of the international court of justice [declaring the United States in violation of international law for mining Nicaraguan harbors]?" he said that the ruling of the international court of justice was not valid. His is an attitude of justification for a criminal policy, an anti-Christian policy under which they're assassinating Christians here in Nicaragua.

So this man is a traitor. We are not judging him as a cleric.

[Q] Playboy: Let's look at another point. You'd always said you supported the free press and offered La Prensa as proof. Then, on June 26, 1986--less than one day after Congress voted on the Contra funding--you closed La Prensa. Doesn't that make it look as if you only tolerated La Prensa as a kind of free-speech present to the U.S. Congress? Don't you think you've given fuel to your critics by what you did?

[A] Ortega: No--this has nothing to do with Congress. We are interested in freedom of the press. But in a situation of war, the press is restricted in all parts of the world. Even in the United States, the press has been restricted in difficult situations. So, when the owners of La Prensa went to lobby the Congress in favor of the $100,000,000, well, they were violating Nicaraguan law by doing that. Then, when Congress approved the $100,000,000, Nicaragua was suddenly suffering a greater aggression. So what the owners of La Prensa did, what Bishop Vega did, was on the order of a crime.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that if Congress had not approved the $100,000,000, you wouldn't have closed La Prensa?

[A] Ortega: We wouldn't have closed it.

[Q] Playboy: Given that, as journalists, we must ask you, under what conditions could you see reopening that newspaper?

[A] Ortega: When the war is over, when the aggression ceases, the country will become normalized. That's why, since we're interested in freedom of the press, La Prensa has not been confiscated.

[Q] Playboy: And could Radio Catolica then open up again?

[A] Ortega: That is under consideration in discussions we're having with the Church right now. The agenda includes the reopening of Radio Catolica and the return of some priests who have been sanctioned.

[Q] Playboy: What about reinstating the provisions for civil liberties that are in your brand-new constitution and that you suspended the day the constitution was put into effect?

[A] Ortega: Well, yes. In a situation without war, the existing restrictions would have to disappear.

[A stop is made for a short speech at the Jesuit university in Managua--Universidad Centroamericana, which is hosting a revival by 50,000 Protestant evangelicals. Then the ride resumes.]

[A] Ortega: This has been a really ecumenical afternoon--Jesuits, evangelicals and Playboy. [Smiles]

[Q] Playboy: We've heard that when you were a teenager, you considered joining a religious order.

[A] Ortega: Yes. That's true. Throughout my adolescent years, I had a very strong mystical attitude. I was always trying to seek communication with the saints. I never missed Mass. And I was an altar boy. For a while, I even considered becoming a Christian Brother. The Catholic academy where I went was promoting religious vocations, and I was among the candidates being considered. I was interested in the aspect of being of service to others--perhaps being an educator. But in the end, I decided against it. You see, I also felt drawn toward political activity--toward changing the country and getting rid of the Somoza dictatorship. And while I didn't see that the political would negate the religious, getting into religious activities would involve abandoning political activity. The latter was more powerful for me.

[They drive to Ortega's home in Managua. It is an upper-middle-class ranch house surrounded by high walls and guards. The house is decorated with Nicaraguan folk art and rocking chairs. Children and dogs abound.]

[A] Ortega: Have you read any of the crazy things that have been written in the world press about this house? For instance, once, some Scandinavian journalist said that I had a square block for my house, that my house occupied an entire square block--100 square meters--that I had a huge swimming pool and things like that.

[Q] Playboy: You and other Sandinista leaders have been accused of having lavish lifestyles. And although this house isn't very luxurious by U.S. or European standards, it's far beyond the standard of most Nicaraguans.

[A] Ortega: Yes, but I think this is like the business with the eyeglasses, exaggerated. With those Scandinavian journalists, I brought them here. We went around the neighborhood. I explained to them who lived in all of the houses around this one. We have neighbors whose relatives live in Miami. They live right next door, behind us. Now, this house, as you see, doesn't have huge gardens. It has a relatively small yard. I don't think it's an ostentatious house--yet these things are always being said about us.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps some of the charges are made against you, Mr. President, because people think it is a long distance from the Colonia Somoza to the house of a former banker--even if that house is not very fancy. What was your social class when you were growing up?

[A] Ortega: My father was educated, but we often had to struggle for the barest of resources. I was born in the town of La Libertad in the Chontales cattle-raising region of Nicaragua--my father worked for the mines there.

My parents were strong opponents of the Somoza regime and they had constant problems with Somoza's [secret-police] apparatus. We didn't have much money, either. My younger brother and a sister died young of infectious diseases. The health conditions in the town were terrible, and the family didn't have the money required to save them. For years afterward, their deaths haunted my parents. My mother's religious beliefs were what helped her--her deep Christian resignation.

Actually, I think the most important things about my parents were their moral, religious and political values. The family was very Christian, but there was also a repudiation of everything that the Somoza regime stood for. Both my mother and my father were the strongest of anti-Somocistas--and they were persecuted for it. They always remembered that Somoza had murdered Sandino. My father had collaborated with General Sandino and was taken prisoner by the first Somoza. This must have been in 1933. And my mother, even before she married my father, had been arrested by the Somoza National Guard and taken to Managua on horseback. She was accused of sending secret messages. There was a story in my family that I think I may have told Playboy when you interviewed me four years ago: When my father was young, he was arrested by the first Somoza and then released from prison and given a packet of money. He sent Somoza this money back, and Somoza returned a telegram that said, eat shit! For much of my childhood, my father would take down this telegram and show it to all of us. He was very proud of it.

In 1956, when I was almost 11, something happened that marked me very strongly. It was in September, when the first Somoza was brought to justice: Rigoberto López Pérez, the Nicaraguan poet and patriot, assassinated him. Suddenly, Nicaragua was a place of great joy and fear. I remember Somoza's burial, and I remember when Somoza was lying in state. Many people went to see him. Some went to the funeral because they were sad. A lot of others went because they wanted to double check that Somoza was truly dead.

[Q] Playboy: And what did the Ortegas do?

[A] Ortega: We didn't even approach the place. However, I do remember when the burial procession went past our house and we were all standing on the chairs and tables to see out the window. There was great curiosity; there was joy because Somoza had died. There was pain because Rigoberto López had been killed. And there was fear of what might come in the wake of it all. This fear turned out to be quite justified, because what we later got were two more Somozas.

A few years later, in 1959, the Somocistas murdered three Nicaraguans who had been linked to the killing of the first Somoza. One of the dead was a relative of mine: Cornelio Silva. Cornelio used to play with me when I was little. Well, Anastasio Somoza, the third Somoza to rule, personally assassinated him.

I remember going to Cornelio's funeral, and people there were very frightened. A few days later, there were larger demonstrations. I went with my father and Humberto and my brother Camilo--Camilo was about seven. We took him by the hand, and we'd all joined the tumult. These were extremely violent demonstrations, riots really. I was perhaps 14. So these kinds of experiences were common in my youth. Indeed, I think they were very common to many young people growing up in this country during that time. There were so many injustices in our society, and one felt an urgency to do something. The elections were rigged. Somoza controlled the political process; he controlled the economy; he repressed with his National Guard. He controlled everything. You felt it was a crime to be young.

[Q] Playboy: We were also told that by the time you were 15, you had made a clear decision to become a revolutionary. True?

[A] Ortega: You make it sound like Simón Bolívar, who rose up to the mountain and undertook the struggle against colonialism. It wasn't that way at all; it was much more evolutionary.

Actually, my first concrete political commitment probably came in 1959, when I participated in the street struggles against Somoza. In 1960, some of us neighborhood boys formed an organization called the Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth. This organization was later broken up by the National Guard. They destroyed it when some of us tried to seize a National Guard barracks. So in the aftermath of our attempt, we suffered very strong repression. They arrested a large number of people in our group. This was the first time I was arrested, and I was beaten. I was taken to the Somoza security offices, interrogated, photographed and tortured. The Somoza men wanted me to say that some older men in the Social Christian Party had put us up to this, and I wouldn't do that. It wasn't true, anyway. That was my ... sort of baptismal fire. The next year, in 1961, I was arrested again. This time, I was accused of setting fire to some vehicles belonging to the U.S. embassy, and, indeed, we had done that. The second arrest was more serious. They took us before the judge, there was a formal indictment and, of course, there was torture. As always.

[Q] Playboy: How did they torture you?

[A] Ortega: Beating. Kicking. They would hit us in karate fashion with fists. We complained when they beat us--and they'd laugh. After the abuse, they sent us before a judge. The judge ruled that we should be on probation--and we got it, because at that point, Somoza's security forces did not see us yet as a true danger, but rather as boys who were involved in--

[Q] Playboy: Pranks?

[A] Ortega: Yes. As if we were just a bunch of crazy kids. And that's what our lawyers argued. So that time, they released us--but other jailings were to come.

[Q] Playboy: And the Frente Sandinista came into existence in what year?

[A] Ortega: The Frente began to do public activities in 1963.

[Q] Playboy: And when did you join?

[A] Ortega: Immediately.

[Q] Playboy: How old were you?

[A] Ortega: Seventeen or 18.

[Q] Playboy: It was an extraordinarily risky thing to do--to join the Frente. It was like asking for death. Why does a 17-year-old from a Managua barrio do such a thing?

[A] Ortega: My friends and I were already exposing ourselves to death. We had seen peers of ours die in demonstrations--we'd witnessed women beaten savagely for no other reason than the fact that they were protesting some Somoza injustice. So for us, the Frente was a new element. We hoped it might make us more effective. The Frente, when it was formed, was really just a fusion of several groups such as ours, each one doing its own activities.

[Q] Playboy: While we're getting the whole story, is there anything you remember in particular about your early arrests?

[A] Ortega: Well, I don't know.... There was the arrest in Guatemala. My friends and I had hitchhiked there. This was 1964. At the time, the Guatemalan guerrilla movement was going strong. Wherever you looked, there were military and police. We had no money--so we slept in the parks. But that proved impossible, and so we rented a small room for one person at a very poor hotel, and the rest of us snuck in at night, one by one. Well, the owner of the hotel quickly became suspicious and he denounced us to the police. We had been in Guatemala for only a couple of days. What followed was really terrible. The judicial police took us to the prison and brought in some anti-Castro Cubans from Alpha 66 to interrogate us. There were beatings, and then they sent us to another prison, where there were some basement cells that were just a half meter wide and ten meters long. They called that the tiger cage. This was a waiting room for death. We found some 40 peasants from a region supportive of the guerrillas being held there. Everyone was crammed in on top of everyone else, and you had to walk over some people to find a spot or just end up sitting on someone else.

One day, they took all the peasants away. Not long after, a news item appeared in the paper saying that the vehicle in which these peasants were traveling had "turned over" on the highway and they were all killed. Who knows what really happened to them?

[Q] Playboy: What happened to you?

[A] Ortega: Well, the Guatemalans decided to turn us over to Somoza. They transported us to Nicaragua--where they turned us over to Somoza's security [forces]. Once in the hands of the Nicaraguan security, we were thrown into the back of a Land Rover. They tied our hands behind our backs. They tied our feet together. They took off our shoes. They tore our zippers so that we wouldn't be able to run and try to escape. They took our belts away. And then they put us in a squatting position, with big stones across our thighs. In that completely helpless position, we were beaten the whole way with clubs, clubs to our head. They picked up garbage along the way. It was filth, pestilence--feathers of dead chickens, leaves, cigarette butts. They made us eat that. We didn't want to eat it. When we didn't, they pushed our head down to the stone to knock against the stone. So as to not lose our teeth, we began to eat it. The man who was inflicting all this barbarity on us was a sergeant in Somoza's security named Gonzalo Lacayo. Lacayo was a special kind of monster. He'd been a butcher before going into the security, and he was the same afterward. During the trip, the moment came when one of the compañeros--his name was Edmundo P¯ he later died--vomited. Lacayo made him eat his vomit. He had us like this from the border to Managua. In Managua, we were put into a different vehicle and transported to the city of Rivas, where we had a trial pending for something else. Again, on the road, we were subjected to similar brutalities.

[Q] Playboy: What about the last time you were arrested?

[A] Ortega: That was in 1967. I was in a much more dangerous situation. The police were looking for me. Once they grabbed me, they subjected me to a very strong period of interrogation. That's when I was left with this scar. I have a scar here--on the right side, right here. I almost lost my eye. I had contact lenses at that time and I wasn't able to get them out before they began beating me. When they first grabbed me, I thought, for sure, that this time they were going to kill me. You see, I had participated in the bringing to justice--or the killing, if you will--of the main executioner of Somoza's security forces, this Gonzalo Lacayo. In August of 1967, I participated in an action, killing him.

[Q] Playboy: You alone?

[A] Ortega: No, there were four of us--including Pérez, the guy he'd forced to eat his own vomit. We did this on an August night in 1967. First, we staked him out--we wanted to make sure that we wouldn't hurt anyone innocent during our bringing this butcher to justice. We drove up to his neighborhood in our car. I was in the front seat. Each of us had a submachine gun, and the other compañero sat beside me with a pistol. When we found Lacayo, he was standing on the sidewalk, chatting with his brother-in-law so we did nothing. Finally, when he returned home, we drove up to him--and, as he walked under a streetlight, he saw us. And from the moment that he saw us, he realized what was happening, and still he tried to pull out his weapon. But we were already firing. The other compañero got out to give the final shots. I shouted, "Long live the Sandinista front!" and we took off.

Now, there's something I want to tell you--an executioner like Lacayo, when we killed him, I felt satisfied. I felt that we were doing something just: eliminating a harmful guy, an executioner.

[Q] Playboy: Was Lacayo the first person you ever killed?

[A] Ortega: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: When you killed him, did you feel any conflict between your religious feelings and what you were doing?

[A] Ortega: No. Because I felt no personal hatred, no rancor in this action. I think that if there had been personal hatred, I would have felt guilty. But there was nothing of that. I saw it as something natural--something that had to happen. It was true that we were taking the life of a person, but this was a person who was taking away the life of the people. I mean, he was the worst torturer and murderer. Did the members of the French Resistance feel guilty about killing Gestapo officers?

[Q] Playboy: Were you arrested after that assassination?

[A] Ortega: Yes. November 1967. It was a terrible moment for the Frente Sandinista. Early in the month, the Somocistas captured four Sandinistas, wounded and killed them and then announced that they had killed the assassins of Lacayo. It was a terrible crime, killing wounded people. What was worse, of the four people they murdered, only one, Edmundo Pérez, had been involved in the action against Lacayo. When the Somoza security finally captured me, however, they had a terrible problem: Given their crime and their announcement, they couldn't say, "Ah, now we have one of the men who got Lacayo." So the only charge they could make against me was bank robbery--even though they had a great number of indications of other things.

[Q] Playboy: Did you actually participate in bank robberies? Heads of state have been known to loot banks--but usually with paper and pencil.

[A] Ortega: [Laughs] Well, yes, I did. During the time when the Frente was clandestine, we robbed banks to finance our activities. We called the actions acts of recuperation, which is what we felt they were. Technically, legalistically, they were bank robberies, of course--but that wasn't how we felt.

[Q] Playboy: So after November 1967, you were sent off to prison.

[A] Ortega: Yes. I was sentenced to 14 years and sent to jail. Colonel Orlando Gutiérrez was the prison warden--a fascist, a real fascist. He bragged that he admired Hitler. An executioner. Horrible. Interestingly, he was on that list of Somocistas we intended to bring to justice--so once I was in his prison, he kept screaming, "So you wanted to kill me!" And he put me in a cell full of common criminals. That cell was perhaps twice the size of this room, and there were always more than 100 prisoners there. The political prisoners were all thrown together with the common criminals. Because there were so few bunks, we slept on the floor. There was a single toilet, without doors or anything, in the middle of the room.

Of course, you develop certain habits in prison. You lose your shyness a bit, especially about things relating to bodily functions. There was, for example, a permanent line for the toilet. There were always at least 50 people waiting to use the single toilet, pressuring whoever was sitting there to get off. Because it was filthy, everyone would stand on the toilet bowl. No one would sit. And you'd go and right in front of you, other people were applauding, saying, "Come on, get going, what's happening?" And people would also insult you, saying, "Oh, you're taking so long!" The shower was the same. There would be sometimes 150 people wanting to use one shower. The total environment gave the impression of one of those slave galleys--that's how it felt.

[Q] Playboy: Did you meet Rosario Murillo around that time?

[A] Ortega: No; actually, I knew her from the neighborhood in Managua. But she was of a higher social and economic situation, and my family didn't have much contact with hers. When I was in prison. I began reading her poetry. And I was very drawn to it, to women's poetry in general. It was very high-quality poetry, and I began writing to her. We would exchange poems.

[Q] Playboy: Why were you drawn to women's poetry?

[A] Ortega: Because it was interesting. Rosario was just one of several women calling attention to the problems of machismo in our society. As for me, I would say that in that time, I was developing a conscientious attitude in terms of struggling against my own machismo, and for that very reason, perhaps, the women's poetry had such a strong impact on me.

[Q] Playboy: So you had a struggle with your own tendency toward being macho?

[A] Ortega: Ah, sí. Definitely, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Can you tell us more?

[A] Ortega: Well, I have a macho formation. Consciously, I oppose machismo. I struggle against it in myself and try to eradicate it. But to what point have we eradicated it? Now, that's a good question! A lot of this is unconscious. I think that the macho attitude that may have the greatest weight on men in our society has to do with being possessive of women. That's where we're most resistant to accepting equality. We resist accepting the fact that we shouldn't possess women in a total and absolute way. We also want to possess one or two or three or four women.

[Q] Playboy: Are you like that?

[A] Ortega: Well, I think one always has something of that within one. But one struggles against it. Anyway, my mother had a lot of contact with Rosario during those years. Rosario visited her--she would sit down and chat with her. Rosario was collaborating with the Frente, so she couldn't go to the jail. It would have exposed her activities. So between us there was more of a political sort of communication there and literary communication.

[Q] Playboy: You were released at the end of 1974, when the Frente Sandinista devised its own parole program for political prisoners and a Sandinista commando unit seized the mansion of José María "Chema" Castillo Quant, former Nicaraguan minister of agriculture and a confidant of Somoza's. At his house, a party was being held--and the guests included most of the Managua diplomatic corps and various Somoza relatives. A Sandinista commando unit seized the building, held the revelers hostage--and didn't give up until they, you and many other Sandinista prisoners had been put on a plane to Cuba. This was the famous "Christmas party." Did you know it was coming?

[A] Ortega: We knew that there were people outside the prison working on something to free us. But the first time I heard of this was at dawn the morning after the action. One of the guardsmen who were friendly with us said, "The Frente's taken a whole series of ministers there, and they're asking for you." We had a hidden radio--which we dashed to. That was the most striking moment in the jail, when we realized that very important ministers of Somoza's--including Somoza's brother-in-law--were in the hands of the compañeros. Later, they played a message from the Frente over the radio. And that was something: to hear, for the first time, in Nicaragua, on a radio station, a message from the Sandinista front.

[Q] Playboy: Was the broadcast part of the deal?

[A] Ortega: Yes. Two or three days later, it was all finalized and we got out. It was on the 30th, in the morning, about noon. We got on the buses with the guardsmen. Some of the guardsmen who had become friends said they wanted to go with us, because they had been working with us. We said, "You can't do that; you have to stay here. You'll be more useful here." I had been in prison for seven years ... and one month.

[Q] Playboy: You told us four years ago that when you got to Cuba, it was so strange--after seven years in prison to be free. Why? Did you feel as if you were still under surveillance?

[A] Ortega: No. It was ... I just had a hard time after so many years' imprisonment. In prison, I had developed certain defensive mechanisms in order to survive. All of a sudden, I was freed from that milieu and I had to adapt to a whole new thing--freedom. You find yourself in an environment in which there's no persecution, no danger--and that's strange!

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Ortega: I felt tense in freedom. Claustrophobic. If I entered a room, I would want to get out quickly. If I got into a car, I would start feeling desperate. It was as if the cell were always with me. For months, I suffered in this condition. I then overcame this.

While in Cuba, I worked for the Frente. I did political work, wrote pamphlets, did studies. The work helped me. And I would say that I did not finish completely adapting myself. When I returned secretly to Nicaragua in 1976, all of the defense mechanisms that I'd developed in the underground life became activated again. And I felt fine--I felt great! The claustrophobia went away; everything went away. I would be in the barrios of Managua, spending days and days in a tiny room, in underwear or shorts, because there was so much heat--working away, drawing up the messages, communications, going out at night to establish contacts, having meetings. There was pressure from the police, the National Guard passing by, the security forces who were watching over the area. I was moving from one neighborhood to another. Some safe houses would fall; we'd have to find someplace else to hide. There would be battles and compañeros would fall. But I felt at ease. I felt better than when I'd been free.

[Q] Playboy: Still, why did you go from the relative safety of Cuba back to the danger of Central America?

[A] Ortega: I needed to. I would have felt compromised if I hadn't. I had a political commitment, and if you have that, you don't feel right within yourself if you're not directly on the battle lines.

[Q] Playboy: From what we've read, some terrible things happened to you when you returned to Central America--the deaths of many close friends and relatives.

[A] Ortega: My younger brother Camilo, for one, was killed. I was traveling in Honduras on a mission for the Frente--and I intuited immediately that something had happened. This was February 1978. Camilo had taken part in an insurgency in Masaya. The Guardia put out a search, they trapped the combatants and they found Camilo and his companions. You know, I always have believed somewhat in parapsychology--I have very good intuition. Well, when I was in Honduras, suddenly, I felt Camilo's death. I began to feel bad. I felt something was wrong, but I didn't know exactly what. Later, I found out that Camilo had died while fighting in the insurrection. Of course, there was no way to go to his burial. My mother took care of that alone.

[Q] Playboy: At what point did you realize that everything was falling apart for Somoza?

[A] Ortega: There is a date that for us is key: October 1977. After that, everything became different for Somoza. At that moment, the Frente was divided into several factions and we did not have a military-offensive capacity. Politically, we were worn down. The factionalization had been incapacitating. Rather than go into the points that separated us, let me just say that the group I worked with decided that conditions were very good for carrying out an offensive. We wanted the Frente to unite again, but we figured we weren't going to achieve unity through discussions. The more we talked, the more screwed up everything would get. So we thought unity could be achieved through offensive actions: politically and militarily. And it was then that we decided to launch an offensive. We said, "We can begin to finally overthrow Somoza now." And, of course, by July 1979, he was gone.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about the final moments of a 42-year dictatorship.

[A] Ortega: Well, the first great moment came when we were in León. At first, it seemed that the National Guard was going to launch an offensive from the Honduran side toward León--and we were all preparing for a battle. What was actually happening was that the National Guard was concentrating its forces so as to escape into Honduras. When we heard the news that Somoza was fleeing, we pushed farther with the offensive and the other troops began to move toward Managua.

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel going into Managua that day?

[A] Ortega: First, we had a mass gathering in León, celebrating the victory. I always said that what was most striking for me was the 18th, at night, when the television station was already taken by the Frente in Managua. We saw for the first time in Nicaragua Sandino's image on TV. It was an old, fast-moving film of Sandino. But there he was: Sandino alive there on the screen. It was not a static photo. It was Sandino moving. This was more impressive than all else. In that moment, I knew we had restored our history.

Then we arrived in Managua on the 20th. Of course, the people were euphoric. Bullets shooting in all directions. There was a great deal of joy. All of us were there. [Then-] Monsignor Obando was also there. This North American, William Bowdler, the envoy of the Carter Administration, was there, too. There was a new beginning for Nicaragua--a future, some hope. We were meeting with the United States in an environment of friendship and with the hope of establishing a new type of relationship.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, that didn't happen.

[A] Ortega: No. Our triumph was the surrender on July 19, 1979. Jimmy Carter was President of the United States still. There were problems with Carter. Before the triumph, the Carter Administration supported Somoza, and it did propose an Organization of American States intervention in Nicaragua, which the O.A.S. refused to do. But after July 19, there developed a certain openness. There was a possibility of finding an understanding.

Then, of course, Reagan was elected in November of 1980, and that was the beginning of his obsession with us, the results of which we are still living with.

[Q] Playboy: To quote Reagan, "Nine times we have sought to bring about direct negotiations between the resistance and the Sandinistas. Nine times the Sandinistas have refused." He said that about the Sandinistas in March 1986 while urging Contra funding. How do you respond to that?

[A] Ortega: That is a lie. At no moment has the Reagan Administration been interested in negotiating. They've used the word negotiation to cover themselves vis-à-vis the U.S. Congress, which has always demanded an effort toward negotiation. So it's nothing more than an act geared to creating an impression that they're making an effort to negotiate and that the party that does not wish to negotiate is Nicaragua. The clearest proof of this is that the one who withdrew from the negotiations at Manzinillo was the United States. It was not Nicaragua.

[The interview breaks and resumes on another afternoon at the César Augusto Silva Convention Center, just outside Managua. In the old days, under Somoza, the convention center was a Japanese-style country club for well-to-do businessmen. Now the building is used for protocol functions--a center where Sandinista officials greet visitors for public events. It is elegant, air-conditioned, filled with plants and Nicaraguan modern art. This is Ortega's unofficial executive office.]

[Q] Playboy: We've spoken over the past few days a great deal about who Daniel Ortega was before becoming Nicaragua's head of state--but we've gotten very little sense of you or your country now. Do you like power? Do you like being president?

[A] Ortega: I don't think so.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Ortega: It's a quite complicated task. One is subjected to many pressures. The state of our economy is something that puts enormous pressure on me--inflation, the war, the standard of living. I feel a tremendous weight on my shoulders when we discuss economic problems. We've struggled to improve the standard of living for the people, and the people have sacrificed themselves for this. So it is a moral obligation on our part.

[Q] Playboy: Mr. President, you say you don't like the high office, yet power in Nicaragua has become centralized around you. On July 20. 1979, you entered Managua as one of nine members of the Sandinista directorate. At that time, the Sandinistas spoke of having a "collective leadership" as a way of breaking the strong-man pattern that has characterized Latin-American revolutions. But now, more and more, one sees news reports of your edging out the other leading Sandinistas. What's happening here?

[A] Ortega: That is a journalist's image--and you know how journalists always tend to look for power in an individual and emphasize it. I suppose that there's a logic to this, because through history in general, there's been a tendency for power to be concentrated in an individual.

Here in Nicaragua, that kind of logic has been broken with. We have a situation where the people were the protagonists and authors of the revolution. This is not a revolution that was done for the people by the national directorate of the Sandinista front. This is not a revolution that was made for the people by Daniel Ortega or Humberto Ortega or Tomás Borge or any of these compañeros as individuals. This is not a revolution made for the people by a group of guerrillas who fought and defeated the National Guard and then came down into the cities so as to be received by the people. This is a revolution that has been made by the people in the true sense of the word. That is, here people fought in the cities.

[Q] Playboy: But Mr. President, haven't you, in fact, consolidated power?

[A] Ortega: We still have a collective leadership here; but, of course, that does not deny our need to develop a hierarchy for operational purposes. So what we have been doing is to strengthen institutionalization of the revolutionary state. When the [Sandinista] directorate decided that I would be the Sandinista front's candidate for president, and when it decided that I would be coordinator of the executive commission of the Sandinista front, it did this conscious of the need to improve our mechanisms of implementation, to better unify our policies. What we have is a gesture of confidence from the Sandinista directorate to one of its members--Daniel Ortega--in giving me this responsibility.

[Q] Playboy: Friends of yours say that in the three years since the November 1984 election, you've grown much more comfortable with the idea of public office. They say that you've finally made the transition from guerrilla leader to politician.

[A] Ortega: Guerrilla work is similar to that of a missionary. You go from house to house in the underground, talking with people, talking with the peasants, with people in the barrios. I've always had that kind of communication--especially before the triumph. And I've tried to maintain it.

But I have more of a problem with the press. I have always fled from that. It is no secret that I am introverted. Even in the underground, when the compañeros wanted to take pictures, I refused. It seemed to me a question of beginning to be like an actor, which I don't want to be. In fact, this kind of public role has always involved an enormous effort on my part. The first time I was in the United States, for example, they put make-up on me when I appeared on TV. I had never put make-up on in my whole life. You feel bad--awkward there. You feel like a fool.

[Q] Playboy: But we sense that you're beginning to get into it. We watched you at that evangelical rally, and you seemed to be enjoying the public attention--the cameras, the crowds.

[A] Ortega: I don't know. I don't think so. I believe that communication with the press is necessary, but I don't enjoy it.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the war. What is your assessment of the Contras as a fighting force? It has been suggested in the U.S. that they just don't fight very well.

[A] Ortega: I wouldn't say that. I do think that in a military confrontation, the moral element determines victory. It is always more important than the technical and material elements. But that is not to negate the technical and combative capacity that the opponent might have. The Contras have shown themselves to be criminal--but I'm not going to say that they don't fight. They do--and they fight hard. I would say they fight as a result of their own mentality. There were some, for example, who killed themselves when they saw that they were trapped by our forces. There was a famous Contra chieftain who blew himself up with a grenade when he saw that he was going to (concluded on page 130)Daniel Ortega(continued from page 78) be captured. So people like that fight with great fury.

[Q] Playboy: Experts have said the U.S. may have trained the Contras poorly to set up a situation that would force an invasion.

[A] Ortega: I think they have made an effort to train the Contras well. They have huge camps in Honduras. They've trained some special forces on military bases in the U.S. And Israeli experts have been brought to Honduras to train them in sabotage and terrorism tactics.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the fact that the Contras have developed a social base in your home region, Chontales?

[A] Ortega: They have no social base in Chontales. The mercenary forces are there, but they don't have a social base. Geographically, the mountainous areas are useful to a guerrilla force. It's easy to get lost in that part of the country. The Contras are operating there because of a military objective. But we can't speak of their finding a large social base there, because what they're doing is destroying cooperatives, terrorizing the peasants, killing them. They did have a certain influence at a certain moment--but they've been losing it, because we've begun to distribute land to peasants in Chontales, to form cooperatives and individual plots there. So these peasants now have a different attitude. They don't want the Contras. That is why the Contras have been carrying out all these attacks on the cooperatives.

[Q] Playboy: It is obvious that you've spent a lot of your life thinking about military matters. Whose books have you read from which you've devised tactics?

[A] Ortega: A basic book was always Clause-witz' book on war.

[Q] Playboy: Not Che Guevara?

[A] Ortega: Of course, Che. But also many novelists--the great Russian novels, War and Peace, Tolstoy. I've also read a lot about World War Two. For example, Mila 18, about the Warsaw ghetto. The European Resistance was very heroic.

[Q] Playboy: We're surprised that you don't mention Che first.

[A] Ortega: The thing is, Che did something very special. Che, for me, is a man who, in the Sixties, fed idealism and mystique to the youth of Latin America.

[Q] Playboy: But was he no good as a military leader?

[A] Ortega: No, I think he was very important as a military leader, and he played a key role in Cuba. And once in Bolivia, I think he had to make a correct military conception--but the political conditions were not right. And this did not make it possible to develop the struggle that he sought to carry out. But I think that Che was convinced that his role was to bring together the struggles of Latin America and the Caribbean peoples. We cannot view Che's struggle in Bolivia as a failure. From the tactical, military standpoint, it was a failure, and he died. But from the political and moral standpoints, which are the factors that are determinant in revolutionary struggles, Che never died. In fact, Che triumphed in Nicaragua on July 19, 1979.

Let me tell you something: What I really would like to be doing is what Che did--not to have stayed in Nicaragua after the triumph but, rather, to have gone on to other lands to struggle. Che left a very strong impression on me. But we have a reality here--the ongoing confrontation--and we've been confronting it for six years. Since 1981, when Reagan was inaugurated. And we continue combating it. So I assume my responsibility in this context. But the Casa de Gobierno is not where I most like being. I remember saying to [vice-president] Sergio Ramírez when we first got here, "This is our new prison." If I were to think from a somewhat selfish standpoint, I would feel more at ease having fewer responsibilities, working and living in the countryside with the peasants. I'm not particularly drawn to the city. I feel more at ease in the country. Don't think that in this work, things are easy--a lot runs completely against my nature.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about poetry--you are, after all, an amateur poet. Your minister of culture, Father Ernesto Cardenal, recently gave us one of your poems--it's called The Fruits. It begins, "When the sowers decided / to cultivate the fields / they knew that they would have to clear / the stones / the thorns / the weeds." And it ends, "That the cleanup would be hard / but that finally / against all odds / they would reap a harvest...."

[A] Ortega: In a way, that poem is a metaphor for the current situation--though it was written at a time when the revolution had not yet triumphed. But we believed, and we hoped, that there would be a change, despite the difficulties, and that a harvest of freedom and peace would be reaped. And of justice, too, for Nicaragua. The revolution triumphed, and the truth is we achieved freedom, we are struggling for justice, but we do not have peace. So the metaphor continues to be valid. Because it's the same struggle--now in the face of a very well-defined policy on the part of the United States. That is, President Reagan, with his policy throughout all these years, has been sowing Nicaraguan fields with weeds. And stones. And thorns. And the people have to clean all of this up, pull all of this out with their own hands, to be able to achieve peace. That is, the people have to defeat all of this so as to have a good terrain for sowing and harvesting the future.

[The final exchange took place over the telephone between Managua and New York as the Iran/Contra hearings wound down.]

[Q] Playboy: You watched the Iran/Contra hearings. What did you think of Colonel North's testimony?

[A] Ortega: What North provokes in me is compassion. There is obviously a distortion in the U.S. Armed Forces in which certain officers--such as Colonel North--commit terrible crimes in the name of God.

[Q] Playboy: Both Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter said they had to keep their activities secret from the American people in order to keep the Sandinistas from knowing what was going on. Did you know?

[A] Ortega: Yes. We knew. And we denounced it. And I think it was disrespectful of Reagan to keep the North American people in ignorance, to hide all those activities and to violate the laws of the United States. But we knew about it. We denounced it every day. And very few people believed us.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about the fact that North's testimony apparently increased support for Contra aid in the United States?

[A] Ortega: I can only conclude that this was planned and prepared by specialists in propaganda work directed by Reagan. As bad an actor as Ronald Reagan was in Hollywood, he now compensates by being a great actor as President of the U.S., by lying to the North American people.

[Q] Playboy: You have often said that Reagan is obsessed with you. Do you think he will willingly leave office in 1988 with your government still in power?

[A] Ortega: It would be the most sensible thing to leave the Sandinista government in place. But we have to pray to God that He illuminate the mind of President Reagan so he won't continue to commit human-rights violations in Nicaragua. I don't think Reagan has been illuminated by God. I think he's closer to the darkness of the Devil. But we hope the light arrives before he commits the insanity of invading Nicaragua.

[Q] Playboy: Then you still believe in God?

[A] Ortega: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: And do you consider yourself a communist?

[A] Ortega: I am a Sandinista.

"As bad an actor as Ronald Reagan was in Hollywood, he now compensates by being a great actor as President of the U.S., by lying to the North American people."

"Reagan has taken us as his thing, like a little kid with his toys, making a little war. His hobby."

"You develop certain habits in prison. You lose your shyness a bit, especially about bodily functions."

"Reagan was elected in 1980, and that was the beginning of his obsession with us, the results of which we are still living with."

"Guerrilla work is similar to that of a missionary. You go from house to house talking with the peasants."