28 NORTH from 8
people resist the regime in Managua from spreading their ‘revolution without frontiers’ throughout this hemisphere.” This wasn’t just rhetoric
for the visiting “gringos.” Calero meant it — and lived it. His integrity, wis- dom, steadfast resolve and fidelity to the cause of freedom were crucial to building and sustaining an unprecedented politi- cal-military organization committed to a democrat- ic outcome in his home- land. It worked. Despite eight years of on-again, off-again support from the U.S. and other govern- ments, his Contras forced the Soviet bloc/Cuban- supported Sandinistas to the negotiating table and to agree to an internation- ally supervised secret bal- lot. Thanks to Adolfo and those he led, the Marxists were defeated in the freest and fairest elections in Ni- caraguan history. So great was Calero’s credibility among his countrymen that when he asked his
THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, June 14, 2012
soldiers to lay down their arms, they did. Their victory came at a
heavy price. Thousands of his Contras were killed and maimed during their quest for freedom. The long fight also took
a heavy toll on Adolfo and his family. From 1983 to 1989, he traveled inces- santly to rally political and financial support for his Nicaraguan Democrat- ic Resistance throughout Latin America, to Eu- ropean capitals and to Washington — home of his most fervent support- ers and critics. Though Calero ac-
cepted assurances that his troops would not be abandoned in the field, he asked for a personal audi- ence with the man who had promised to sustain them “body and soul” — President Ronald Reagan. A private, “off-the-books” White House meeting was arranged in 1985, and during the session, Adolfo gave the president an FDN lapel pin. President Rea- gan turned to the camera
and said, “I’m a Contra, too.” On one occasion in the
mid-1980s, I flew to Miami to visit him when he was briefly hospitalized for ex- haustion and respiratory distress — the malady from which he eventually succumbed. But when I arrived, he wasn’t in his hospital bed. I found him in a visitors waiting room lecturing a group of ob- stetricians, pediatricians and nurses — many of them children of Cuban refugees — on why they should volunteer to come to Honduras on weekends to treat the families of his anti-communist combat- ants. His powers of per- suasion were such that many of them did just that. After Congress barred
the CIA from assisting the Contras, I accompanied Adolfo on numerous visits to the Contra camps along the Honduras-Nicaragua border. He ignored fre- quent and credible intel- ligence about Soviet, Cu- ban, Sandinista and even
Palestinian assassination plots, eschewed an offer of a phalanx of bodyguards and insisted on attend- ing memorial services for his fallen fighters at their bases. One of my enduring
memories of Calero is captured in a photo of him taken at a border camp in 1985, listening to one of his young “column” commanders. Adolfo was then just 54 years old and armed only with a pistol. The image is on the cover of his book “Crónicas de un Contra” (“Chronicles of a Contra”). The work is more than a saga of ex- traordinary courage and commitment. It also pro- vides the only accurate list of those Adolfo credits with “winning against the communists” — his field commanders. In the aftermath of the
victory he had forged, Adolfo and his family braved death threats and returned to Nicaragua to rebuild their lives and re- claim their home, though much of the Calero prop-
erty never was returned. Until his health began to fail early this year, Adolfo remained active in Nica- raguan politics and di- plomacy — and, most importantly, as a forceful, articulate advocate on be- half of his FDN veterans and their families. The epitaph for the
Adolfo Calero I knew ought to read: “He fought the good fight. He finished the race. He kept the faith.”
Oliver North is the host
of “War Stories” on Fox News Channel, the found- er and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance, and the author of “American Heroes in Special Opera- tions.” To find out more about Oliver North and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators. com.
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