Eden Pastora, the perennial Nicaraguan maverick, returned to Managua last week in a homecoming more quixotic than heroic. The charismatic former guerrilla will campaign for dark-horse Social Christian presidential candidate Erick Ramirez, touting him as an alternative to both the Marxist Sandinistas and the National Opposition Union, a coalition dominated by the right wing.
Under the nom de guerre Commander Zero, Pastora became a revolutionary superstar in 1978 after leading a raid on the National Palace that helped topple the Somoza regime a year later. Partly because he was unhappy with the Sandinistas' growing dependence on Moscow, he quit as Vice...