Cruz, Arturo (1923–)

Arturo Cruz is a banker, former Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States (1981), and former Contra leader. Born on 18 December 1923, in Jinotepe, Cruz attended Georgetown University and earned degrees in economics from the School of Foreign Service (B.S., 1947; M.S., 1971). Cruz joined the Conservative Party at an early age and helped form the National Union of Popular Action in 1948. In 1954, he participated in an unsuccessful effort by young Conservatives to overthrow Anastasio Somoza García, for which he was jailed for eleven months.

Cruz joined the Inter-American Development Bank as a finance officer in 1959. He was one of the architects of the Central American Common Market in the early 1960s. In 1977, the Sandinistas convinced him to join a prestigious group of Nicaraguans, known as "The Twelve," which supported the revolutionary movement. Cruz was president of the Central Bank of Nicaragua from July 1979 to May 1980, when he became a member of the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction. In March 1981, the Sandinista government named him ambassador to the United States; he resigned at the end of that year. Cruz started to run for president against Daniel Ortega in 1984, but never registered as a candidate. In 1985, he helped found the Nicaraguan Opposition Union, the political arm of the counterrevolutionary force. He resigned his post in February 1987 and from 1990 to 1994 served as the alternate executive director of the Inter-American Development Bank's section for Central America. In 1999 he sought information from the United States and Honduran governments regarding the death of his nephew, David Arturo Baez Cruz. A naturalized American citizen, Baez had served in the elite Green Beret division of the U.S. armed forces and then returned to Nicaragua to serve in Sandinista military intelligence. He died while acting as a military adviser in Honduras. Cruz's son, Arturo José Cruz Sequeira, was as of 2007 Nicaragua's ambassador to the United States.

See alsoNicaragua .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Díaz Araujo, Enrique. El sandinismo nicaragüense. Mendoza, Argentina: Ediciones la Rosa Blanca, 2004.

Fonseca Terán, Carlos. El poder, la propiedad, nosotros: La Revolución Sandinista y el problema del poder en la transformación revolucionaria de la sociedad Nicaragüense. Managua, Nicaragua: Editorial Hispamer, 2005.

Grove, Lloyd. "Arturo Cruz," in Washington Post, 19 February 1987, sec. B, pp. 1, 4; The IDB Report 17, no. 9-10 (1990): 6.

Latin American Studies Association, The Electoral Process in Nicaragua (1984).

Matamoros Hüeck, Bosco. La contra: Movimiento nicaragüense, 1979–1990. Madrid: Imaginediciones, 2005.

Smith, Calvin L. Revolution, Revival, and Religious Conflict in Sandinista Nicaragua. Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2007.

                                                  Mark Everingham