Edén Pastora

Who is Edén Pastora?

Edén Atanacio Pastora Gómez is a Nicaraguan politician and former guerrilla who ran for president as the candidate of the Alternative for Change party in the 2006 general elections. In the years prior to the fall of the Somoza regime, Pastora was the leader of the Southern Front, the largest militia in southern Nicaragua, second only to the FSLN in the north. Pastora was nicknamed Comandante Cero.

His group was the first to call itself "Sandinistas", and was also the first to accept an alliance with the FSLN, the group that was to become more popularly identified by the name. At the end of 1982, a few years after the revolutionary victory, Pastora became disillusioned with the government of the FSLN, and formed the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance with the object of confronting the "pseudo-Sandinistas" politically and militarily.

As of 2010, he is reconciled with the FSLN and holds a ministerial post in the government of Daniel Ortega. His role in a boundary dispute with Costa Rica and allegations of environmental damage to territory claimed by that country has led to legal indictment by the government of Costa Rica.