Abstract

Shootout at Penas Blancas: The C.I.A.'s War in Costa Rica

This article focuses on the war of Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) in Costa Rica. On September 28, 1983, at the Peñas Blancas border crossing on the Pan American Highway, firing broke out shortly before dawn and continued sporadically throughout most of the day. Buildings on both sides of the frontier were hit. Damage was heavier in Nicaragua, where at least three border officials were killed. By nightfall Sandinista troops were several hundred yards inside Costa Rica, and the situation was defused only by a telephone conversation between Costa Rican Security Minister Angel Edmundo Solano and Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomás Borge. Solano recalled recently that it "was the closest Costa Rica had ever come to being at war." Now it is known that the entire incident was staged by the C.I.A. More than three years later, Angel Edmundo Solano says that when he investigated the Peftas Blancas incident, he discovered that the confrontation had been instigated by the C.I.A., using anti-Sandinista guerrillas of Pastora's Democratic Revolutionary Alliance.