Communists and Contras
Latin America
On March 20, 1986, Cuban General Nestor Lopez attacked Las Vegas. Lopez was in Nicaragua, head of a group of Cuban officers providing leadership to the troops of the Sandinista government. Las Vegas was the name of the base camp for troops of the Nicaraguan Democratic Forces (FDN), better known as the Contras. It was located just beyond the border of Nicaragua in central Honduras.
Earlier in March, a fractured United States Congress had voted to suspend military aid to the Contras. Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega decided to take advantage of the capitalist political bickering. He ordered an attack on Easter weekend aimed at cutting off the supply pipeline to the anti-communist guerillas once and for all. The result was not what he hoped.
The Cuban-led Nicaraguan army sent in a heavy force of infantry, armor and attack helicopters. However, the base was heavily fortified, and it got plentiful air support from a CIA base further into Honduras. Even worse for the Communist forces, they were surprised on the flank by a large group of Contra insurgents returning from a mission in Nicaragua. The attack fell apart and the Nicaraguan troops withdrew.
This battle is recreated in the first and smallest scenario included in the game Central America, published the following year by Victory Games. By then, U.S. arms sales to Iran as a means of funding the anti-communist insurgents have become a major political scandal. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North was a regular on prime time news as he testified about the scheme to Congress. While U.S. President Ronald Reagan vigorously supported efforts to push back against Communists around the world, the scandal marked a turning point in American public opinion about Cold War confrontations.
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This is a massively complex game. It uses a conventional hex grid on the mapboard, but enables simulation of the many aspects of civil war, including insurgency, counter-insurgency and foreign intervention. There is a 64-page rulebook for the Conventional game, and additional 40-page booklet for the even more complex Intervention game, and a further 68-page booklet laying out a wide range of scenarios.
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The playing pieces include counters representing 23 different countries and political parties, divided into two main factions: Communists and Allies. The former include the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Nicaragua), Cuba, the Soviet Union, Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN), the Communist International, Libya, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Revolutionary Movement of Honduras (MRH), Movement 19 (M-19), and the People’s Revolutionary Movement (MRP).
On the Allied side can be found units representing Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Columbia, Mexico, Israel and the United States, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, Nigaraguan Democratic Forces (FDN), Revolutionary Democratic Alliance and Army (ARDE) and the Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional.
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In addition to the full range of armor and infantry units on the ground, there are helicopters for both transportation and attack, and air units capable of electronic warfare, standoff air attack, tactical bombardment and defensive close air support, as well as the optional use of cluster, incendiary and smart bombs.
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The scenarios range from some simple actual and hypothetical engagements all the way to World War III.
Two other historical scenarios cover the full Sandinista campaign to overthrow the regime of Anastasio Somoza and the final stages of that conflict in July 1979.
There is a scenario covering the 1969 Soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras and another set within the long-running civil war in El Salvador.
This lasted from 1979 until 1992, and pitted the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a left-wing coalition, against the country’s military-led junta.
Most of the game’s scenarios, however, are hypothetical. These include reaction to the placement of Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles in Nicaragua; Sandinista attacks on neighboring countries, notably Honduras and Costa Rica; American response to such adventurism by landing Marines on the Nicaraguan coast; and all-out war in Central America following an invasion of Germany by the Warsaw Pact.
Nicaragua! is another game on the conflict in that country. It was published in Strategy & Tactics magazine in 1988. This is a simpler and more subtle take on the long but successful campaign of the Sandinistas to take down Somoza and of the subsequent unsuccessful attempts by the Contras to recapture power. Game turns are quarterly, and the map is divided into zones called Departments. Any military conflict is resolved within individual Departments. Political conflict also gets resolved by Departments, each of which have icons representing the interest groups with significant representation in that region.
While it has a military component, victory in this game depends much more on the political struggle to win popular support. Players must still use military forces to battle those of their opponents.
But they also must carry out intelligence operations to uncover hidden forces, and use psychological warfare and propaganda to demoralize enemy forces and build popular support. Players must court interest groups within the country including Somocistas, the middle class, workers, peasants, intellectuals, native Indians and the Catholic Church. They also vie for support from foreign governments that can range from better supplies to actual military reinforcements.
The Guatemalan Civil War was the subject of the 1986 game Bullets and Ballots: A Learning Game on Central America. It was designed as a classroom exercise for 20 to 40 players. The goal was to simulate the real-world issues and struggles convulsing Latin American states. Like Nicaragua!, it includes military conflict, but it is even more focused on talking rather than fighting.
In the real world, the Guatemalan civil war involved decades of bloodshed. Military dictators took over government in the 1950s, and the first attacks by leftist guerillas came in the early 1960s. The country saw widespread insurgency by the 1970s, and more than 200,000 people had died by 1996, when fighting finally came to an end. Military conflict accounted for many of those deaths, but the civil war saw tens of thousands of civilians “disappear” in secret operations, and the military slaughtered entire villages, especially those of the Maya indigenous peoples.
In the game, players are divided into five teams: the Guatemalan Government; the Army/Wealthy Class; the Guerrillas; the Peasants/Workers; and the United States Government. Each team must develop Position Statements and plot strategies for winning power. Each team may use means ranging from moral suasion to military force. The Army/Wealthy Class and Guerillas may both launch military offensives. The Army also can declare a takeover by coup, and can then “silence” members of any other team. The team that wins power then has the option of declaring an election. Those silenced along with guerillas do not get votes. The Peasants get two votes. The purpose of the game is less about winning than teaching players about the complexities facing leaders both in Central American countries and in the United States.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the wars of ideologies by superpower proxy tended to wind down. The Cold War was over, and a whole new world of conflict was beginning.
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