Mule trains and herds of cattle often have to move aside as trucks loaded with troops rumble past on the road to Wiwili, raising clouds of dust. At frequent intervals, there are Sandinista soldiers armed with Soviet-made AK rifles. Some are trudging along the road or waiting for a ride. Others are bivouacked at the edge of the road. Here and there, a naked child with big, curious eyes stands by a roadside hut and takes it all in--the military vehicles, the fighting men, the sense of impending combat.
The road to Wiwili, winding through the mountainous backlands of northern Nicaragua, is a road to war. The Sandinistas are fighting U. That border runs roughly parallel to the Ocotal-Wiwili highway. In the road system of northwestern Nicaragua, Ocotal is where the pavement ends.
At Wiwili, the dirt road ends. Visitors who stop to ask officers for directions are automatically asked for identification. The busiest place in town is the local headquarters of the Popular Sandinista Army. In the last year, guerrilla attacks have concentrated increasingly on government-run farms and vehicles moving along roads like the one to Wiwili. Lucas Zelaya, a farmer who lives near the road, about 10 miles from Wiwili, told a visitor the other day that the guerrillas sometimes march down through a mountain pass from Honduras and cross the road on their way south.
He said that his year-old son, Raul, was abducted on Dec. Zelaya, wearing a baseball cap and a faded shirt open at the front, was leaning on his gray horse as he talked and watched the traffic on the road.
Later, a Soviet-built troop truck came by, and young Sandinista soldiers in it pointed toward the mountains, joking with bravado about the rebels who pass through here. The soldiers called the rebels putas --whores. At San Bartolo, a government cooperative farm, most of the men--and some of the women--were dressed in military fatigue uniforms.
