Preferred weapon of guerrillas and drug cartels.

It’s the 1980s all over again in Nicaragua, but this does not mean a return to skinny ties, big hair, Miami Vice, and New Wave hits by Flock of Seagulls. According to a recent report by investigative reporter Frances Robles of The New York Times, the 1980s revival in Nicaragua means armed rebel groups unhappy with the political status quo.

Unhappy with the government of President Daniel Ortega, who has controversially remained in power since 2007 and is pretty confident about yet another reelection, the guerrilla throwback is taking place in northern Nicaragua. Here is how the NY Times describes the situation:

He calls himself Tyson, wears tattered United States Army fatigues and carries a beat-up AK-47.

He is a rebel fighter in the mountains of Nicaragua, setting ambushes against President Daniel Ortega’s government and longing for the days when covert American funding paid for overt warfare.

The New York Times is hardly alone in reporting Cold War 2.0 in Central America. Last week, Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa printed an interview with Monsignor Carlos Enrique Herrera, Bishop of the Jinotega Diocese, who not only commented about guerrilla activity but also voiced the concerns of the population about the underlying motives of this armed rebellion:

“Within these groups we find certain confusion because some of them are supported by drug cartels while others claim that they are rising against the transgressions of the government. There’s yet another group; they seem to operate more efficiently than the Army.”

La Prensa has also interviewed individuals such Denis Alberto Zúñiga Montano, who is not afraid to describe what groups such as the Council of Peace Commanders, which he leads, are after: a new Supreme Electoral Council in Nicaragua. In other words, they do not want to see an Ortega reelection and have taken up arms to get their point across.

A little over a year ago, The Costa Rica Star published an article that encapsulated reports about guerrilla activity in Nicaragua. That article included an excerpt of an interview between daily tabloid Diario Extra and a man identified only as Tigrillo (ocelot), who ostensibly was in southern Costa Rica on a recruiting and planning mission for the Coastal Democratic Front, yet another armed group that operates in the North Atlantic region:

“In Nicaragua we have been rising up and arming ourselves for two years, and these are news stories that are not published because Daniel Ortega and the [mainstream media] powers that be agree that this story should not be told. They don’t report on what is happening. There is this communist ideology that we want to eradicate. He (Ortega) says that we are armed bandits in the mountains, and that is not true. We are the people trying to turn Nicaragua into a democracy.”

It is important to note that spokespersons for the Ortega administration regularly deny the existence of rebel armed groups, and they often dismiss shootouts between the Army and local groups that work for Mexican drug cartels as minor skirmishes with criminals. Additionally, the Ortega regime is in the habit of dismissing reports by La Prensa, the Catholic Church, the Costa Rican media, and just about all local and international news media outlets that are not aligned with the government.

Over the last few years, crime statistics and a few public opinion polls indicate that Nicaragua is safer than Costa Rica and perhaps the safest nation in Latin America. None of these reports mention guerrilla activity.