2023-07-28 22:28:48
Shortly after Nicaragua ended more than four decades of Somocista dictatorship, Ronald Reagan arrived at the White House.
In the midst of the Cold War, the coordination of the Governing Board established in 1979, in the hands of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), represented a threat to the new republican administration.
Under this argument, Reagan decided to deploy one of the harshest interventionist policies on Central America to stop the consolidation of the FSLN in Nicaragua.
armed opposition groups, known as the “cons”came to be endorsed by the White House, despite opposition from the United States Congress.
Eugene Hasenfus, a former US Marine, was part of the gear. And a photo in which he appeared sparked a scandal.
Getty Images Ronald Reagan at the presentation of the bill to finance the armed opposition in Nicaragua.
Hasenfus’s capture
Hasenfus was shot on October 5, 1986 while flying over southern Nicaragua. The cargo plane purchased by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which he was traveling carried ammunition, automatic rifles, jungle boots and reserved documents.
Three people were killed in the attack, including the pilot. But Hasenfus survived, was taken prisoner and recognized that he was working delivering supplies to armed opposition groupsknown as the “contras”, in a series of flights supervised directly by members of the CIA.
“I’m guilty. I cannot say that I was not there, that I was not carrying small arms and ammunition for the resistance. Everything they loaded is there,” Hasenfus admitted at the time of his capture.
The first reaction of Reagan and the members of the CIA was deny any connection to Hasenfus. The evidence was among the wreckage of the downed plane.
In that place, documents were found that showed that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North was executing the program illegally from the White House.
The event revealed that some members of the Reagan government together with CIA officials were selling military equipment to Iran in exchange for US hostages and diverting profits to continue financing armed groups in Nicaragua.
The government’s maneuvers violated laws established by both the UN and the US Congress, which prohibited selling weapons to Iran and financing armed groups in Managua.
The event sparked a political scandal known as the Iran-Contra case, which toured the entire world.
The photojournalist Lou Dematteis managed to capture the images that would serve as evidence.
The photo that traveled the world
Dematteis was in Nicaragua when a colleague in El Salvador alerted him that there were some planes said to be carrying supplies from the United States.
In those days, he received a call from the news agency Reuters: “We heard that a supply plane left and did not return. They say it was shot down. There would be someone who survived. We want you to check it out and get pictures“.
Dematteis was aware that they were not asking for just any images. they asked for some photos that would cause a political storm.
But the path was not easy. Lou was not one of the small group of journalists chosen by the Nicaraguan government to cover the story. But he was not willing to give up.
I was aware that it was a unique opportunity to show your work.
After insisting, Lou managed to get on the helicopter that was taking journalists to the crash site. From above he saw something that the rest hadn’t: bottom left was Eugene Hasenfus surrounded by a group of people in military uniform.
Upon arriving at the location, the Nicaraguan government officials offered the journalists at the location to participate in a press conference. But he knew that the story was elsewhere.
Getty Images Graffiti in Nicaragua made by the FSLN against Ronald Reagan.
“I made a decision in a split second: I was going to the accident area. So I started running down a path and as I was running I saw all these military boots everywhere“, Dematteis tells the program Outlook from the BBC.
Those military boots were part of the cargo that the US had sent to the counterrevolutionaries, which had been scattered through the jungle after the plane crashed.
“The supplies went everywhere, they were scattered all over the jungle. Then I ran and got to see the soldiers taking weapons out of the plane. Also the three guys who were dead. They had a tarp over them,” he says.
After seeing that, Dematteis ran back to the press conference. It was there that she saw two soldiers climbing Hasenfus by a mountain right in front of him.
“You had the soldier leading it with his hands tied. So there was a little bit of space. And then behind him was another soldier with an AK-47 standing guard from behind,” he says.
Lou photographed everything he could.
Also on that hill was NBC reporter John Siceloff, who asked him his name and how he got there, according to the photographer.
“And that’s when Hasenfus looks up and says: ‘I was shot from the sky’. That moment was incredible. Hasenfus went from thinking he was going to be shot to having an international group of journalists around him.”
Thus, was that Dematteis sent the images of the survivor and the place of the accident to Reutersknowing that he had something good.
Especially one of them, that of the pilot being taken by the Sandinistas, which ended up flooding the front pages of the main newspapers and magazines in the world.
“The impact was immediateDematteis recalls.
Reagan’s endorsement of the contras
Reagan had decided openly support armed opponents in Nicaraguain his attempt to weaken the first government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front elected by the polls.
But as reports of crimes against civilians spread, American public opinion was divided. Many in Congress questioned the legitimacy of supporting the rebels.
Congress thus approved in 1984 a law that prohibited the financing of these groups.
“Any proposal that abandons more than 15,000 members of a democratic resistance to the communists is not a compromise, but a shameful surrender,” Reagan said before Congress’s decision.
Getty Images Ronald Reagan in a T-shirt that reads: ‘I stop communism in Central America.’
There was no doubt that the Republican administration was willing to keep sending supplies no matter what Congress ordered.
“If Congress ever passes such a proposal, it would expedite the consolidation of Nicaragua as a communist terrorist arsenaland would give the green light to Soviet-sponsored aggression throughout the Americas,” the president had said.
But despite Reagan’s objections, in October 1984 a ban on all aid provision to the Contras was passed.
That could have been the end. But she was not.
“They said they stopped, but it wasn’t true. They were still supplying the contras. But there was no proof,” says Dematteis.
Until finally Dematteis managed to capture the images that would serve as evidence of the actions of the United States in Nicaragua.
Concern in Washington had prompted the House of Representatives to launch an investigation in which government officials would be questioned.
A country called Nicaragua
When Dematteis entered the University in San Francisco, he hardly knew of the existence of Nicaragua.
It was there that he met Carlos Somozaa young student with whom he shared a room and in a short time became one of his great friends.
“I remember that he told me that his uncle was the president of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza. And elections had just been held. The opposition said that there was electoral fraud and they said that they had won the elections,” recalls Dematteis.
The nephew of the Nicaraguan dictator did not recognize any type of electoral fraud. He said that his family had ruled Nicaragua for 45 years because the Nicaraguan people “loved his family very much.”
“They always vote for us.”Carlos told him.
Courtesy Lou Dematteis, author of the internationally recognized photo of Eugene Hasenfus.
“At the time, I didn’t know anything about Nicaragua. But when I heard that… I didn’t say anything to him at the time. I just thought, well, running a country for 45 years without exactly any type of interference sounds questionable.”
At the time, before his big photo, Dematteis wrote to Reuters letting them know he was available to work with them but the reply was: “We have nothing for you. good luck in your career“.
So he decided to go on his own to Nicaragua in 1985., for the assumption of Daniel Ortegawho had won the presidential election in 1984.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front had won the first general elections in the history of Nicaragua, after almost half a century of Somocista dictatorship.
It was an exciting time for many Nicaraguans on the left, but for the US government it represented a threat.
The photographer’s adventure implied a risk.
The danger was real. On one side, the Sandinistas, Nicaragua’s democratically elected socialist government. On the other hand, the US-backed contras.
After exposing one of the most important political scandals in US history, Dematteis spent almost six years in Managua.
*This article is based on this interview made to Lou Dematteis by BCC World Service Outlook, presented by Mobeen Azhar and produced by Tommy Dixon and Andrea Kennedy.
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