Bermúdez Varela, Enrique, 1932-1991

Founder and commander, Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense.

From the description of Enrique Bermúdez Varela papers, 1980-1990. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 754866125

Biographical Note

Bermúdez was the founder and for ten years the the top official military commander of the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN-Northern Front), also known as the contras. In that capacity he met with US president Ronald Reagan and other top officials, as did more overtly political leaders, including Alfonso Robelo, Adolfo Calero, and Arturo Cruz. The contras' target was the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), or Sandinista, government.

Bermúdez graduated from the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and from the Inter-American Defense College in Washington. He served as chief of the Nicaraguan Delegation at the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington, DC, in 1976 and as military attaché of the Nicaraguan Armed Forces at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington during the country's civil war, which formally ended in 1987 with the Esquipulas II Peace Agreement, brokered by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. In 1991 Bermúdez was lured back to Managua, where he was shot in a hotel parking lot with a small-caliber East German assassination pistol, one of several that had been delivered to Sandinista defense minister Humberto Ortega some years earlier.

From the guide to the Enrique Bermúdez Varela papers, 1980-1990, (Hoover Institution Archives)