Edén Pastora
Edén Atanacio Pastora Gómez (November 15, 1936[1] or January 22, 1937[2][3] – June 16, 2020[4]) was a Nicaraguan politician and guerrilla who ran for president as the candidate of the Alternative for Change (AC) party in the 2006 general elections.
He began his rebel career when he decided that the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle was corrupt and formed the southern Nicaraguan ARDE from local peasant farmers (called campesinos) and aboriginal tribes living according to more traditional ways.
On December 27, 1974, an FSLN commando unit, headed by Pastora, burst into the house of Josè Maria Castillo, president of the Banco Central, and took his guests hostage (including two relatives of the dictator Somoza).
After negotiating a USD$500,000 deal with Somoza and Cardinal Miguel Obando, Pastora, Ortega and other released prisoners left for Cuba, where he claimed to have been a "prisoner" lavished with women and luxury, but not allowed to leave the country until Martín Torrijos, the son of then Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos and Pastora's personal friend, voiced his concern and went to Cuba to rescue him personally.
In reaction to Pastora's widely held reputation, Somoza sent his best troops against him and as a consequence the Southern Front made little headway while suffering heavy casualties.
However, the Southern Front contributed to the Sandinista victory by tying down over 2,000 heavily equipped Nicaraguan National Guard forces, as Somoza remained fixated on stopping Pastora, even as major cities fell to the rebels.
Pastora became disenchanted with the turn of the revolution when most of the Sandinista leaders moved to the luxury residences of Managua;[citation needed] he felt the leadership was doing too little to benefit the campesinos and aboriginal tribes he represented and was overly concerned with propagating ideological consistency in a poorly concealed bid to consolidate Ortega's political power.
He once again began military operations in southern Nicaragua, loosely federated with northern forces which, composed mostly of highly paid former National Guard members and some Miskito Indians, were collectively referred to as the Contras.
[21] In November 2010, in perhaps the most publicized Costa Rican arrest warrant issued in years, prosecutors in northern Caribbean canton of Pococí announced that Pastora, now 73 years old, had been indicted for severe environmental damage caused in the eastern Limón Province near the Río San Juan that the Republic of Nicaragua claims to be a part of their territory.
[22] Pastora and his soldiers invaded the Caleros Island in order to create a channel connecting the San Juan River with the Atlantic Ocean.
[citation needed] In April 2015 photos show the now 78-year-old Pastora watching as the canal that provoked the international incident was filled with sand.
