5.5 KiB
| title | aliases | created | updated | category | tags | summary | start | location | ||||||||
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| UDN-FARN |
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2026-05-17 | 2026-09-22 | Paramilitary |
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Early Contra faction based first in Honduras then Costa Rica, commanded by Fernando Chamorro, that shifted allegiances between the FDN, ARDE, and back during the Contra war. | 1980-01-01 | Costa Rica |
Union Democrática Nicaragüense - Fuerzas Armadas Resistencia Nicaragüenses (UDN-FARN) was an early Contras faction based first in Honduras and then in Costa Rica, commanded by the erratic former Sandinistas Fernando Chamorro. UDN-FARN was one of the two groups merged by the Central Intelligence Agency in August 1981 to form the FDN.1
Origins
UDN-FARN grew out of the National Democratic Union (UDN), a group of Nicaragua exiles in Miami that had a small armed branch in Honduras called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Nicaragua (FARN). The group tapped into Miami's Cuba community for financial support and volunteers, including men who had worked with the CIA on the Bay of Pigs operation.
The group made the first donation of military supplies to the Contra cause in fall 1980, scraping together enough money to buy rifles from Miami sporting goods stores and radio equipment, which was mailed to Honduras via the head of the Honduran national police, Gustavo Álvarez.
Leadership
"El Negro" Chamorro was a rabble-rouser who had fought for the Sandinistas against Anastasio Somoza and achieved notoriety by helping shoot rockets at Somoza's bunker from the roof of the Intercontinental Hotel in 1974. He broke with the Sandinistas and joined his brother Edmundo Chamorro in Costa Rica. Edmundo Chamorro served as second in command. Both were only distantly related to the influential Chamorro clan that included martyred newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro.
Merger into FDN
The CIA pressured UDN-FARN to merge with Enrique Bermudez's Legion of September 15. The Chamorro brothers resisted, regarding many of the ex-Nicaraguan National Guard men as war criminals who could never win popular support. "The Legion was entirely composed of ex-National Guards. Naturally one couldn't make a big splash with that in Nicaragua," said UDN-FARN commander William Baltodano Herrera.
The CIA eventually forced the merger by having their Honduran allies withdraw support from the Chamorros and back Bermúdez instead. In August 1981, an Argentine military officer watched as Bermúdez signed a one-paragraph document merging the two groups into the FDN. The Chamorro brothers boycotted the meeting. The CIA inspector general's chronology, drawn from station cables, records that the Nicaraguan Democratic Union agreed in principle with the ADREN and MISURASATA in May 1981 to combine, that the FDN was established in September 1981, and that the merger of the Union and the ADREN was completed in early 1982.2
After the FDN
UDN-FARN Contras were pushed into subordinate roles in the FDN. The Chamorro brothers later broke away and joined Eden Pastora's ARDE faction in Costa Rica, then left Pastora and rejoined the FDN under the umbrella group UNO.3
Drug Trafficking
Multiple UDN-FARN members were implicated in cocaine trafficking. Carlos Cabezas supported UDN-FARN through cocaine sales in San Francisco and testified as a U.S. government witness that his drug profits were going to Contra organizations.4 Julio Zavala, a top-ranking U.S.-based member, was a major cocaine trafficker in the San Francisco Bay Area. Vicente Rappaccioli and Francisco Aviles were directly involved in the 1983 Frogman Case cocaine case.4
Horacio Pereira told Carlos Cabezas he was representing UDN-FARN and the FDN in Costa Rica and that the CIA would control the delivery of drug money. Cabezas delivered drug cash directly to Aristides Sanchez at the Contras' Miami offices and to Pereira or FDN logistics officer Joaquín "Pelón" Vega in Honduras.5 A 1984 DEA report described UDN-FARN's deputy commander Edmundo Chamorro as "well known to 'The Company.'" The CIA described Fernando Chamorro as "playing a major role in the Contra movement. CIA contact with Chamorro began in 1982."5
When Fernando Chamorro and Edmundo Chamorro broke from the FDN in September 1982, UDN-FARN joined with Pastora's group to form ARDE.5
Footnotes
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Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 4: "I never sent cash" ↩︎
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Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General. Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Volume II: The Contra Story, October 8, 1998, section on organizations. https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/ ↩︎
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Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Glossary of Organizations and Locations ↩︎
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Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Cast of Characters ↩︎
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Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom" ↩︎