Next Step : Post-Cold War Identity Crisis Locks Sandinistas in Bitter Power Struggle : Feud’s latest victim is newspaper editor fired for publication’s impartial tack.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — On the day he was fired after more than a decade as editor of Barricada, the newspaper of Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement, Carlos Fernando Chamorro packed up a portrait of his crusading-newsman father and a statue of the revolution’s hero and namesake, Augusto Cesar Sandino.

Ousted by hard-line Sandinistas in October, the 38-year-old scion of one of Nicaragua’s most storied families stood in the newsroom and said an emotional goodby to friends, colleagues and a political vision. In the days that followed, most of Barricada’s veteran reporters were purged, and the paper, which had evolved into Nicaragua’s most professional, was thrown into journalistic anarchy.

“It was an act of extreme political intolerance,” Chamorro said afterward.

Chamorro and Barricada are the latest casualties in a divisive Sandinista identity crisis. Fifteen years after they came to power in an armed revolution, and as they begin to plot their return to power, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas--arguably the single most powerful political and social influence in recent national history--are locked in a bitter struggle that threatens to split the movement forever.

The Sandinista crisis mirrors the internal battles of the left throughout Latin America, where onetime guerrilla armies have moved into civilian politics but must redefine their roles, direction and goals in the post-Cold War world.

On one side of the Sandinista rupture are moderate party reformers such as Chamorro and Sergio Ramirez, vice president during the 1979-90 Sandinista rule. They want to modernize the party and move it closer to the center to attract a wider following.

On the other side is the traditional core leadership, including stalwarts such as former President Daniel Ortega. They speak of defending the achievements of the Sandinista revolution, but their real commitment to democracy and nonviolent protest has been called into question.

The leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which maintained formidable unity during its war with U.S.-backed Contra rebels throughout the 1980s, has been torn by internal debate ever since its stunning loss to a center-right coalition in 1990 elections that delivered the presidency to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, mother of Barricada’s ousted editor.

But never before have the disputes been so public and so acrimonious as now, with the Barricada episode as evidence.

At the heart of the debate: What does it mean to be a Sandinista today?

Critics of the Ortega faction--which by all accounts still commands most of the party apparatus and grass-roots following--say the leadership is charting a path of self-destruction. Many of the party’s best-known intellectuals are being driven out or have opted to leave as the quarrels feed widespread disillusionment with politics in general in a country still recovering from a decade of civil war.

Reflecting what critics see as their authoritarian tendencies, Ortega and the rest of the hard-liners have sought to stifle moderate voices in recent weeks: taking Barricada from Chamorro; ousting Ramirez from his seat in the National Assembly, where he led the Sandinista legislative delegation, and stacking internal leadership posts with their own supporters.

Ernesto Cardenal, the famous poet and priest who served as culture minister in the Sandinista government, accused Ortega of hijacking the FSLN and, in a dramatic gesture, renounced his party membership. “This,” he said, “is not the Sandinista front that we fought for, that so many martyrs died for.”

The Sandinistas started out as a motley army of young rebels who fought and, in 1979, finally toppled the 43-year Somoza family dictatorship. The victorious, Soviet-backed Sandinista government drew fire from Ronald Reagan Administration officials, who launched an insurgency by supplying arms to former members of ousted President Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s National Guard and thousands of disaffected peasants.

The Contra war of the 1980s claimed about 30,000 lives and ended with Ortega’s electoral loss to Violeta Chamorro in 1990. Support for the Sandinistas eroded further in the waning days of their government as officials and militants made off with the titles to hundreds of properties, houses, businesses and goods. The pinata , as the seizures became known, was followed by reports of other ways in which the Sandinista commandantes had become rich while in office.

Now, while Ramirez and his moderates portray themselves as true proponents of a democratic system based on law and justice, Ortega and his faction claim to be the protectors of the poor from the current government’s free-market policies.

The hard-line faction maintains that it is the authentic nucleus of Sandinista ideology. Many of the diverse groups that joined the FSLN to oust Somoza were not committed to social revolution, this faction argues, and it is natural that they gradually leave.

Ortega and others accuse the moderates of trying to dilute the socialist legacy left by the Sandinista regime. Specifically, the hard-liners mention the moderates’ enactment of laws that would return most confiscated property to original owners. Meanwhile, the moderates also insist on the disavowal of violence as a political tool.

“They (the moderates) think that, to be a viable political (force), you have to ‘de-Sandinistacize’ the party as quickly as possible,” said Rene Vivas, the former Sandinista police chief who was recently elected to the National Directorate, which oversees the FSLN.

“They can call themselves whatever they want,” he said, “but if we see (them) dismantling the social gains of the revolution . . . then that is a new type of Sandinismo that has nothing to do with our Sandinismo.”

But others argue that the hard-left Ortega approach is outdated and will only further isolate the FSLN, reducing it to a hard-core, faithful--but small--number of Sandinistas.

In a recent sign-up campaign, the FSLN registered almost 340,000 members, making it the largest party in the country. But the number represents only 16% of Nicaragua’s voters.

“The front could become a ghost ship, with the same loyal crew but without any passengers,” said Silvio Prado, a Sandinista political analyst and dissident who is critical of both sides. “People are beginning to understand the difference between the Sandinista front and Sandinismo. . . . What could die is the front, not Sandinismo, which is a tradition, a way of seeing the world and of organizing.”

The Sandinista crisis is intensified by presidential politics as the jockeying begins for the 1996 national elections. It is no secret that both Ortega and Ramirez have designs on the presidency, which under a new set of constitutional reforms requires a candidate to receive more than 45% of the vote to avoid a runoff.

Ortega and Ramirez are men of completely different styles. Even as they governed as president and vice president through most of the past decade, Ortega was the fiery revolutionary, Ramirez the learned novelist lending international credibility to a movement.

Nowhere has the conflict that engulfs Sandinismo been more visible than at Barricada.

Ousted editor Chamorro and other leading Sandinistas founded the newspaper in 1979 as the official party mouthpiece, a role that it fulfilled throughout the Contra war. But after the 1990 Sandinista loss at the polls, Chamorro changed the paper into a more professional, pluralistic publication.

Chamorro’s family has been at the center of the political intrigue that has marked modern Nicaraguan history. His mother is the country’s president, and the 1978 murder of his father, publisher Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, who ran the newspaper La Prensa, helped galvanize the forces opposed to dictator Somoza.

The family was divided during the 1980s into pro- and anti-Sandinista camps. Carlos’ sister Cristina runs La Prensa, now a conservative paper and often shut down by the Sandinistas when they were in power. His uncle Xavier Chamorro publishes the vaguely pro-Sandinista Nuevo Diario.

In a country where most newspapers and radio and television stations follow a strident political line, Barricada, remarkably, evolved into a balanced journalistic outlet. Even U.S. diplomats, once sharp opponents of the Sandinistas, said Barricada gave them the fairest treatment.

But Ortega and the hard-liners decided they wanted back a vehicle for the party line, and they knew Carlos Chamorro would not go along with that.

“The party did not need an impartial newspaper,” said Victor Hugo Tinoco of the National Directorate. “It needed a newspaper that reflected its point of view.”

Tomas Borge, the former Interior minister and lone surviving founder of the FSLN, appeared at Chamorro’s office one morning in October and read out the letter of dismissal. By the end of October, 17 reporters--almost the entire staff--had quit or been fired. But that came only after the reporters and Borge argued day and night over headlines and stories.

Despite longstanding personal animosities between them, Borge and Ortega became allies in this fight. The new Barricada suddenly began to publish harsh editorials--on its front page--against the moderate Ramirez, and coverage of the National Assembly’s debate of constitutional reforms, most of which Ortega opposes, was decidedly one-sided.

Chamorro and the others, who had guided Barricada from the clandestine underground to a respected paper, felt betrayed by the men they once revered.

“We began work at this paper, many as young people, with a project in mind. We designed it, carried it forward, defended it,” said Sofia Montenegro, who quit as editor of Barricada’s weekly supplement, Gente. “Everything we achieved in the last four years fell apart in a week.”

Montenegro and the other journalists have begun legal proceedings against Borge. When he appeared in court early last month to respond, the scene that unfolded would have been unimaginable just a short time ago.

“Liar! Liar!” several of the out-of-work Sandinista reporters shouted at Borge as he left the courtroom. One challenged him on the wealth he has allegedly secreted over the years.

“How dare you make such accusations!” a tense, grim-faced Borge retorted. The man who had once been as feared in some quarters as he was worshiped in others left quickly.

Montenegro said the goal that she and other dissident Sandinistas now share is to demystify the legendary Sandinista figures like Borge. “It is the best favor we can do for Sandinismo,” she said, “and for the country.”

FOR PIC SLUGGED CARLOS