History
The earliest were MILPAS, peasant militias led by former Sandinista supporters. These militias were the majority of the first true Contra groups formed in 1980-1981 in Honduras, Nicaragua's northern neighbour, allying in August 1981 as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense, FDN) under the command of former National Guard (army) colonel Enrique Bermúdez and Jaime Irving Steidel a Honduran-born Field Commander, later replaced by Oscar Sobalvarro. A joint political directorate was created in February 1983 under businessman and anti-Sandinista politician Adolfo Calero.
A second front in the war opened with the creation in Costa Rica in April 1982 of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and its armed wing, the Sandino Revolutionary Front (FRS), by Edén Pastora (Comandante Cero), former Sandinista hero of the August 1978 seizure of Somoza's palace. ARDE was formed by Sandinista dissidents and veterans of the anti-Somoza campaign who opposed the increased influence of Cuban officials in the Managua regime. Proclaiming his ideological distance from the FDN, Pastora nevertheless styled his force the "southern front" in a common campaign.
A third anti-Sandinista force, Misurasata, appeared among the Miskito, Sumu and Rama Amerindian peoples of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, who in December 1981 found themselves in conflict with the revolutionary authorities following what the Sandinista government later called an "ill-judged modernisation drive," and what the Miskitos themselves called genocide. In 1983 the Misurasata movement led by Brooklyn Rivera split, the breakaway Misura group of Stedman Fagoth allying itself more closely with the FDN.
The Misurasata did not consider the actions of the Sandinista government as just an "ill-judged modernisation drive", but an attempt to force the tribes to participate in the revolution. The Misurasata had a number of grievances against the Sandinista government including:
Unilateral natural resource exploitation policies which denied Indians access to much of their traditional land base and severely restricted their subsistence activities
The arrest, imprisonment and subsequent execution of the majority of the Misurasata leadership
The military occupation, bombing, or deliberate destruction of over half of all Miskito and Sumu villages in the region, and the forced conscription of Indian youth into the Nicaraguan military
Forced removal of at least 10,000 Indians from their traditional lands to relocation and re-education centers in the interior of the country, and subsequent burning of their villages
Economic embargoes and blockades against native villages not sympathetic to the government
U.S. officials were also active in drawing the various Contra groups together in June 1985 as the United Nicaraguan Opposition under the leadership of Calero, Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, all former members of the original Sandinista cadre: after its dissolution early in 1987, the Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) was organised along similar lines (May 1987). Splits within the rebel movement emerged with Pastora's defection (May 1984) and Misurasata's April 1985 accommodation with the Sandinista government: a subsequent autonomy statute (September 1987) largely defused Miskito resistance.
Mediation by other Central American governments under Costa Rican leadership led finally to the Sapoa ceasefire agreement of March 23, 1988, which with additional agreements (February, August 1989) provided for the Contras' disarmament and re-integration into Nicaraguan society and politics, and internationally-monitored elections which were subsequently won (February 25, 1990) by an anti-Sandinista centre-right coalition.
Some Contra elements and disaffected Sandinistas returned briefly to armed opposition in the 1990s, sometimes calling themselves recontras or revueltos, but these groups were subsequently persuaded to disarm again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras
