Enrique Bermúdez

Enrique Bermúdez Varela (born December 11, 1932 in León , † February 16, 1991 in Managua ) was a Nicaraguan professional officer of the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua (GN). During the Contra War he was the most important military leader of the largest Contra group , the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN). He was shot dead by an unknown perpetrator on February 16, 1991 in the parking lot of the Hotel Intercontinental Managua .

Life, activity in the National Guard

Bermúdez was born the son of a mechanic and a domestic servant. In 1950, at the age of 17, he entered the Guardia's military academy as cadet No. 3-80. In 1952 he was accepted into the National Guard's pioneer corps and apparently worked as an engineer .

When the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown in the wake of the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, Bermúdez was Colonel (Coronel) and military attaché in the Nicaraguan Embassy in the USA .

As a contra leader

Immediately after Somoza's fall, he and another former GN colonel, Ricardo Lau Castillo (nicknamed El Chino Lau ), founded the Legión 15 de septiembre , named after Nicaragua's Independence Day , as a military resistance organization . Lau was later accused, according to Dillon, of having committed contract killings for the Honduran army; According to press reports from 1985, he is also said to have been involved in the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador . In 1981 Bermúdez moved from Miami to the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and became Comandante of the FDN with the battle name Comandante 3-80 .

As the leader of the strongest Contra faction, Bermúdez 'political role was more important than his military role. He was criticized by other Contra leaders for preferring former GN members, which in 1988 led to a mutiny by some Contra leaders such as Walter Saúl Calderón López ( alias Toño ) or Encarnacion Valdivia Chavarría (alias Tigrillo ). William Meara, a former American Contra instructor, found Bermúdez incapable of leading the Contras militarily.

assassination

Intercontinental Hotel Managua

After the war ended in 1990, Bermúdez returned to Managua. According to Dillon, on the evening of February 16, 1991, in his apartment in the Barrio Belo Horizonte, he received a call from an unknown participant asking him to meet with him on the Interconti. When Bermúdez left the hotel again, as no one was there, he was apparently killed in the parking lot with a single shot from a pistol fitted with a silencer . The funeral took place in Miami ; One of the participants was Oliver North .

The perpetrator was never identified. According to his daughter Claudia Bermúdez, to The Miami Herald in 1994, there were various groups that had an interest in her father's death: the US government, the Sandinista and the government of Violeta Chamorro . In Managua was after him in the III. District named Barrio 3-80, which was founded by demobilized Contras.

literature

• Sam Dillon: Commandos. The CIA and Nicaragua's Contra Rebels , New York 1991.
• William R. Meara: Contra Cross. Insurgency and Tyranny in Central America, 1979–1989 , Annapolis, MD 2006.
• Stephen Kinzer : Blood of Brothers. Life and War in Nicaragua , Harvard 2007.

Web links

• Enrique Bermúdez: THE CONTRAS´ VALLEY FORGE. How I View the Nicaraguan Crisis , 1988 (English)