Suddenly, it was gone. For seven years, Radio Impacto had been one
of strongest Latin American shortwave stations - and one of the
most controverial. But, in one feel swoop, it was gone.
"Mission accomplished?" some asked. Perhaps so. Let's
take a close look at the station and its sudden end.
When such an entrenched regime falls, it doesn't just disintegrate.
Thousands of members of Somoza's national guard and many Somoza
family associates fled north across the border to Honduras. With
help from the US, they would become the nucleus of the FDN,
Nicaraguan Democratic Front, the primary contra group.
Later, as the Sandinista government moved increasing leftward,
many Sandinistas became disenchanted with Daniel Ortega's
government. They moved southward to Costa Rica, where former
Sandinista Eden "Commandante Zero" Pastora formed ARDE,
the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance.
At first, Costa Rica was very supportive of the Sandinistas. The
government of President Rodrigo Carazo (1978-82) openly supported
the Sandinistas in their overthrow of Somoza. Later, Carazo
strongly resisted efforts of the US government to turn Costa Rica
into a Contra base. However, Luis Alberto Monge, elected in 1982,
was much more compliant to the needs of the contras - at least
the ARDE band who weren't tainted by connection to the former
Somoza dictatorship.
Radio, of course, is important in any revolutionary effort, and
the contras had their share of stations. The FDN's Radio Quince de
Septiembre began broadcasting not long after their move to
Honduras. Eventually ARDE followed suit with La Voz de Sandino -
claiming to be the true spirit of Sandinismo. Other clandestine
stations such as Radio Nicaragua Libre and Radio Miskut aimed for
different slices of the counter-revolutionary audience pie.
Meanwhile the Sandinista government fought back on the airwaves
with Radio Sandino and La Voz de Nicaragua, and a chain of AM
stations such as Radio Frente Sur and Radio Poder Popular. It
was into this chaotic, highly politicized radio scene that Radio
Impacto stepped in 1983.
Jiron's first job was to get an official Costa Rican license and
frequencies - this was to be a legitmate operation, not another
contra clandestine in the mountains. Getting shortwave
frequencies wouldn't be hard as there are a lot of free channels
in Central America, but because of band-crowding in San Jose, AM
frequencies are impossible to get except by buying out another
licensee. Jiron hired Roberto Hernandez Ramirez of Radio Centro
to find an AM frequency for Impacto. Under Hernandez's
direction, they bought out the license of a failing San Jose
station, ABC Radio, 980 & 6150 kHz. (In the early 1970s, this
station used the name Radio Atenea, and was an easy log on 6150
SW in North America.)
The frequencies were now in hand, but ABC radio's transmitters were
too puny for what Radio Impacto needed. Twenty-kilowatt AM and
SW transmitters were installed at the antenna site in Alajuelita,
southwest of San Jose. Radio Impacto, following the example of San
Jose's principal AM stations, operated AM repeaters elsewhere in
the country. There was an interesting difference, however. The
other stations had high power transmitters in San Jose and low
power one kilowatt repeaters in other principal Costa Rican
towns. Radio Impacto installed a huge 50 kilowatt repeater in
remote northwestern Guanacaste province, near the Nicaraguan
border. No one had ever heard of installing such a huge
repeater, two and a half times more powerful than the main
station!
Programming began to emphasize events in Nicaragua from an anti-
Sandinista viewpoint more and more. In a program called "Love
Letter to Nicaragua", former Somocistas and renegade
Sandinistas criticized the Sandino government and boasted of the
day they would take over. Radio Impacto began occasional relays
of both Radio 15 de Septiembre and La Voz de Sandino. All of
this seemed quite out-of-character for a station purported to be
a local Costa Rican broadcaster. At one point, Radio Impacto
even carried regular newscasts in the Miskitu Indian language,
spoken on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, although there are no
Miskitus in Costa Rica. Thus, it wasn't long before DXers, and
Central American news analysts, began to suspect that there was
more than a casual relationship between the Radio Impacto and the
Contra rebels. Radio Impacto wasn't, however, without its
humorous moments. In December, 1983 it had to stop its all-night
broadcasts because of problems with the announcers drinking on
duty!
Radio Impacto did little to hide its Contra connection. On its
staff were an official spokesperson for the FDN, some announcers
from former Somoza radio stations in Managua, and several former
staffers for La Prensa, the the primary anti-Sandinista
newspaper in Nicaragua. Elsewhere, Impacto's Tegucigalpa
correspondent actually doubled as the FDN's local spokesman. The
strongest evidence for the contra connection came from Edgar
Chamorro, former director of communications for the FDN, who told
the World Court that Impacto was a CIA operation. Despite this,
in 1987 Alfredo Cesar, then head of the Contras in Costa Rica,
denied to Radio Sweden DX editor George Wood that there was any
contra connection to Impacto.
As a established legal member of the media, Radio Impacto was
allowed by the Sandinista government to keep a correspondent
inside Nicaragua. The Sandinista government, however, expected
him to restrain himself to the normal duties of a correspondent.
This became especially clear when he was arrested for
destablizing the country by, among other things, recruiting for
the ARDE guerillas!
Eventually Radio Impacto found permanent reporters by recruiting
two opposition FDN-associated deputies in the Nicaraguan General
Assembly. Under Nicaraguan law, their actions were protected by
parlimentary immunity.
Each of the three visitors had comments on Radio Impacto's
programming. Inoue noted that there was much greater emphasis on
reaching a Nicaraguan audience than a domestic, Costa Rican, one,
and concluded "Though they pretend to be a usual commercial
radio station, I would rather call them a 'semi-clandestine'
station," (Inoue, 1987). Zettl reported that the Costa Rican
media was anti-Sandinista in general, but that Impacto was the
most outspoken, and the Nicaraguan focus was obvious from their
newscasts. In fact, Costa Rican journalists told him that
"Radio Impacto is controlled by anti-Sandinistas with close
ties to the FDN and that its SW is aimed at Nicaragua".
Even the Costa Rican government was in the dark when it came to
Radio Impacto. On November 24, 1988, Costa Rican Public Security
Minister Hernan Garron Salazar, talking to reporters, called
Impacto a Contra station and admitted that his department had no
idea of who really owned the station. However, he noted, it was
a legally licensed station under Costa Rica laws, and as a
democratic government Costa Rica had no right to censor or
interfere with it in any way.
According to sources in Costa Rica, Contra belt-tightening included
a decrease in funding for Radio Impacto. Without a new source of
income, Radio Impacto's continued existence was in jeopardy. Radio
Impacto was in luck, as it was just then that the Manuel Noriega
affair reared its head in Panama. The U.S. was now out to get
Noriega, and radio propaganda would again be an important part of
the campaign. Radio Impacto was in the perfect position to
become the primary anti-Noriega station. A new fifty kilowatt
repeater was installed near Cahuita, on Costa Rica's Caribbean
coast, south of Limon. Huge directional antennas towards Panama
took advantage of the all-water path to make Radio Impacto one of
the best heard stations throughout Panama.
By the time Manuel Noriega held elections in Panama, in Spring,
1989, Radio Impacto had become the most listened to station in
Panama. The Sandinistas had clearly taken a back seat to Manuel
Noriega in Radio Impacto's war of words. Noreiga's election was,
of course, a fraud, but oddly Radio Impacto denounced the
election as being fraudulent before the foreign observers in
Panama did! Ten months later Radio Impacto kept watch as U.S.
forces invaded Panama. While reports that Radio Impacto
transmitted coded messages to U.S. forces may have been the
result of overactive imaginations, cleary Radio Impacto was
"the station of the invasion", as some maintain. No other
broadcaster followed the fall of Manuel Noriega so closely.
Noriega was gone, but it was time for Radio Impacto to turn its
attention back to Nicaragua because President Daniel Ortega was up
for reelection on Febrary 25, 1990. After ruling the country
under a revolutionary junta for five years, Ortega had been
elected president in 1984 in elections that were certified as
free and fair by numerous neutral international observers, but
were ignored by the Contras. In the 1990 elections, the Contras
and other Sandinista opponents united under the Union Nacional
Opisitora (UNO) party. At its head was Violeta Chammorro, widow
of Pedro Chammorro, a popular Nicaraguan journalist who was
assassinated in 1978 by henchmen of the former Somoza
dictatorship.
Although Chammorro was well known, most observers and all the polls
indicated that Ortega would win by a wide margin. UNO, however,
had a very deep campaign chest (so deep that it seemed unlikely
the money only came from Nicaraguan sources) and lavishly spent
on promoting Chammorro's candidacy. Radio Impacto did its part
by airing numerous commercials for UNO, in direct violation of
international agreements prohibiting interferance in the
elections of other nations. Almost everyone, including Radio
Impacto, probably was surprised at Chammorro's victory. While
Impacto may have been surprised, it was also jubiliant. Still,
Radio Impacto closely followed the Nicaraguan scene until
Chammorro was officially sworn in as Nicaragua's president on
April 25, 1990. Now, suddenly, Radio Impacto no longer
had a purpose.
A few days after arriving, I visited Radio Reloj (700/4832/6006)
for a long visit with station manager Roger Barahona, a long time
veteran of Costa Rican broadcasting. When I asked Senor Barahona
what he thought of Radio Impacto, he expressed the usual answer I
got from Costa Ricans - that it was a political station, somewhat
of an embarrassment, and probably financed by the CIA. I had, of
course, heard that it was for sale, hadn't I? My mouth dropped
open. Yes, he continued, the timing was very interesting - just
days after Chammorro's inauguration in Managua. With the
Sandinistas out, what was left for Radio Impacto to do?
Senor Barahona wasn't very optimistic for the future of the
station. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to buy it - it was
"a white elephant." No one in Costa Rica needed those 50
kilowatt repeaters in Guanacaste and Cahuita, nor the 20 kilowatt
shortwave transmitters. Even the main 20 kilowatt AM transmitter
in San Jose was more powerful than needed to reach the San Jose
metro area. The electric bills would break anyone without deep
pockets. Only the AM frequency of 980 kHz had some value, but
not with those power-gobbling transmitters. A few days later,
Senor Lafuente of Radio Rumbo (530/6075) agreed with Senor
Barahona, adding that Impacto was, in fact, "a BIG white
elephant."
So, a few days later Theresa and I took a local bus to suburban
San Pedro de Montes. San Jose does not use street numbers; instead
addresses are given in terms of how many meters they are from an
important landmark. In typical San Jose fashion, the telephone
book gave an address of "25 meters southeast of the
Higueron". With the help of passersby, we located the
Higueron, which turned out to be a large tree on an island in the
middle of the street! We looked around, but there was no sign.
Nor did any of the houses have guards, as others had reported.
The presence of a radio station was only marked by a fifty foot
antenna in the middle of the block - obviously a studio
transmitter link. But, it was impossible to tell exactly which
house it belonged to. We began asking passersby and nearby
shopkeepers where the station was. It took eight tries to find
someone who knew - Radio Impacto had kept itself well hidden,
even from the neighbors!
Radio Impacto was like a skeleton. Once bustling rooms were now
deserted. The recording studio in the back of the house was now
dusty and unused. Desks were empty and cleaned out. Cardboard
boxes were piled on tables. Cassettes, papers, and odd
electronic parts were scattered everywhere. In the newsroom, the
teletype machines were turned off. A Kenwood R-600 receiver that
had been used to check the latest news from the major shortwave
broadcasters was now gathering dust. Still, signs of Impacto's
past abounded, such as the bumper stickers on the walls. One
proclaimed "In Costa Rica for the democratization of
Panama", while another with a Panamanian flag said, "With
the OAS or without the OAS, we shall continue the fight."
The only thing that remained the same was the studio. The
cassette decks, cartridge machines, and turntables were still
there, and records and tapes lined the tables. Posters of pop
groups covered the walls and "Radio Impacto" was spelled
out on them in huge red letters.
Perhaps because of the experience of years of secrecy, Juan
Carlos avoided giving much detail about the station's operations.
However, he seemed happy at the lack of security at the station,
which he pointed out was no longer necessary since they were up for
sale. The closest he came to giving some background about the
station was when I asked why Radio Impacto didn't have a sign.
"We're in an unmarked house because we're a political station
. . . no, because we want democracy like Costa Rica has for those
who don't have it."
As Juan Carlos explained, everyone at Radio Impacto had been
ecstatic after Violeta Chammorro's victory and then inauguration as
president of Nicaragua. But, it was just days after the
inauguration that the staff was called in to a meeting and told
that the station was being sold and would be closed down in early
June. Layoffs among the 20 person staff began immediately. A
month later, at the end of May, only five were left; an
administrator, an accounting clerk, and three announcers,
including Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos explained that this made his
job "polyfunctional": between the usual DJ duties of
spinning disks, he had to answer the phone (which now rang in the
studio), answer the door, show visitors around, and in general
keep an eye on things. He lamented about how in the old days
announcers were pampered so they could could concentrate on their
jobs. "Before someone would bring you coffee if you wanted it,
but now you must make it yourself."
Obviously Juan Carlos' duty as an announcer now was simply to
fill up air space. During the hour we were there, he played entire
LP sides, inserting taped ID announcements and maybe a live time
announcement after each side. A little dead air wasn't important;
nor was it important when the telephone rang beside the microphone.
His duties did not extend to security, which had fallen by the
wayside. A few years before, a Costa Rican reporter had been
interrogated by Impacto's security staff for taking a picture of
the front of the building. Yet while Juan Carlos was on the
phone, we were free to roam the rooms to take pictures.
I asked Juan Carlos how much time he had left at the station. He
would be there until the end, which was scheduled to be June 10.
After that, I asked? He wasn't worried about finding a new job.
He pointed out that he had lots of experience and plenty of
contacts in the San Jose radio scene. I wished him luck.
At the end of July, a buyer was found - for the AM frequency and
the 20 kilowatt AM transmitter. Parmenio Medina, a long time staff
member at San Jose's Radio Sonora had put together the money.
Reportedly he paid six or seven millon colones, with 500,000
colones down. In dollars, that was about sixty to seventy
thousand dollars, wth five thousand dollars down! The new
station would be called Radio Cordillera and was to have begun
transmitting on September 1, 1990.
The shortwave transmitters took a little longer to sell, but were
not quite the "white elephant" some imagined them to be.
Small scale international broadcasting is an up-and-coming
industry in Costa Rica. There were reports that Radio For Peace
International bid on the SW equipment, but apparently, their bid
was not enough, or the conservative owners were uncomfortable
with RFPI's politics. Instead, the shortwave equipment and the
50 Kw medium wave transmitters were purchased by Adventist World
Radio's Costa Rican station. AWR has moved all their new and old
transmitting equipment to the old Impacto medium wave site at
Cahuita. By the rule that transmitter sites are stations, this
creates a new shortwave station, even for those who have already
verified the original AWR site at Alajuela and Radio Impacto.
That's the story of Radio Impacto. It's gone, and we won't hear
anymore about it. At least not until someday in the remote future
when secret U.S. government documents about the contra war are
declassified . . . or a CIA agent involved in Central America tells
all in a kiss-and-tell book. It may never happen, but if it
does, it will be interesting. There are surely many more secrets
to be told about Radio Impacto!
Check the
Costa Rica Radio Gaphics & Photos menu for some photos and other graphics of Radio Impacto.
Frederick, Howard H., Ph.D. The Radio War Against Nicaragua.
Reveiw of International Broadcasting #107.
FRENDX, monthly journal of the North American Shortwave
Association. February, 1984; January, 1989; July, 1989.
Inoue, Takayuki, et. al., eds. LA-DXing, 4th edition.
Radio
Nuevo Mundo, Tokyo, 1987.
La Guerra de 'Impacto' Crece Bajo la Paz de Costa Rica.
Semanario Universidad, August 18, 1989.
McVicar, Richard. A Visit to Radio Impacto. DX
Ontario August, 1990.
Review of International Broadcasting. Issues #78, 85, 90,
95, 104, 106.
Soley, Lawrence, & John Nichols. Clandestine Radio
Broadcasting. Praeger, 1987.
Wood, George & Hermud Pedersen. The Radio War in Nicaragua.
Monitoring Times September, 1988.
This article is copyright 1992 by Don Moore. It may not be printed
in any publication without written permission. Permission is
granted for all interested readers to share and pass on the ASCII
text file of this article or to print it out for personal use. In
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Radio History
Clandestine Radio
The Last Days of Radio Impacto
By Don Moore
A slightly edited version of this article was originally published
in the February, 1992 issue of
Monitoring Times
magazine.
THE BEGINNINGS
The events all still seem so recent. It was only in July, 1979
that the Sandinista guerillas, aided by massive strikes and a
general uprising of the Nicaraguan people, overthrew the Somoza
family dictatorship in Nicaragua. The dictatorship had been one
of Latin America's most ruthless, and its lenghtiest. Starting
in 1932, the country was ruled first by father Anastasio Sr.,
then after his 1956 assassination by eldest son Luis, who died of
cancer a few years later and finally by youngest son Anastasio
Jr. Family friends occasionally held the presidency, but there
was never any doubt where the real power lay. GETTING STARTED
It's unlikely we will ever know who originally decided to put Radio
Impacto on the air. It is known, however, that Manuel Jiron
Castrillo was the man given the job of doing it. A former
broadcaster at Managua stations Radio Mi Preferida and Radio
Amor, Jiron had close Contra connections. Officially, the owners
of Radio Impacto were a group of Venezuelan businessmen in the
firm "Inversiones Feranto, S.A.". Little is known of
this company, other than that it helped channel U.S. government
funding and supplies to the contras. IMPACTO ON THE AIR
AM transmissions began on April 11, 1983, with an ad in the local
newspapers, and shortwave followed several weeks later. At this
time, Impacto was a nondescript Latin station playing mainly
Spanish pop music. The first reported loggings of the new
station were made on May 28 by Ernie Behr of Ontario and Fritz
Melberg of Iowa. Both noted strong reception and that the
station was asking for reception reports. A few days later, on
June 3, Robert Mills of California logged it and noticed there
were no ads, which was rather strange for what was assumedly a
commercial station. 
Gradually, Radio Impacto's programming began to evolve. In August,
1983, the station started its first Impacto Noticioso
newscast, every half hour. Radio Impacto's extensive news
broadcasts came from a variey of sources. The more convential
ones were via UPI and Agencias Latinoamericanos Noticias
teletype. In addition, the station maintained a regular
telephone contact with the FDN in Tegucigalpa. Official
government press releases from Honduras and El Salvador were
relied on for news from those countries. For news of
the war in El Salvador, Radio Impacto reported directly from
official Salvadoran Defense Ministry Reports, hardly an unbiased
source. MORE STRANGE HAPPENINGS
Unusual goings-on surrounded Radio Impacto from the beginning. By
the end of 1983, station director Manuel Jiron had been fired by
the powers behind the station. Rather than leaving quietly,
Jiron wrote a book, Exilio, S.A., in which he denounced
the station he set up. He then sued the station for good measure,
although he lost the court case. 
The Sandinistas, as would be expected, reacted to Radio Impacto.
For a while Radio Impacto and Radio Sandino played a game of
frequency cat-and-mouse in the 49 MB as Radio Sandino plopped
down right next to Impacto's frequency, and then Impacto hopped
around trying to find another clear channel. Eventually Radio
Sandino moved up to 6200 and Impacto settled on 6150, with the
eventual addition of 5030/5044. "In 1985, the powerful signal
from Radio Impacto was one of the most clearly heard throughout
Nicaragua" (Soley & Nichols, p246). A few years later, Radio
Sweden's George Wood wrote that "The biggest media threat to
Nicaragua comes from Radio Impacto." Adrian Roque, head of
the news department at La Voz de Nicaragua agreed with him,
stating that Radio Impacto "... (is) our most important
competition . . . we're forced to be better, especially in our
news coverage." SECRETIVE NATURE
While Radio Impacto was loud and boisterous on the air, locally it
tried to remain secluded in suburban San Pedro de Montes, outside
San Jose. No sign was ever put up to advertise the station's
presence, and visitors were not given friendly treatment, quite
unusual for a Latin American station. Japanese DXer Takayuki
Inoue visited Radio Impacto in 1985 and noted "The station
building is in an ordinary house, and it is hard to imagine a
radio station from the outside . . . I was quite embarrassed by
the cold attitude to me," (Inoue, 1987). Austrian Christian
Zettl stopped by not long afterwards and wrote "It appears
the station is not very interested in visitors - I had to try two
times until they finally let me in, only after declaring
precisely the purpose of my visit and after handing over a
personal identification. The person in charge of receiving
visitors turned out not to be very willing to provide any in-
depth information" (RIB 104). Later, when Radio Sweden DX
editor George Wood tried to visit the station, he wasn't even
allowed inside. PANAMA CONNECTION
As the 1980s progressed, the contras didn't succeed on the
battlefront, but continued to be a formidable military force in the
region. The biggest threat to the contras came not from
Nicaragua, but from Washington D.C. When the Iran-Contra scandal
surfaced, the U.S. Congress became far less compliant to the
Reagen administration's requests for funding the contras. But,
with the help of a little belt-tightening, and some say drug-
smuggling on the side, the Contras survived. HUNTING DOWN IMPACTO
Like everything else about Radio Impacto, its end was shrouded in
secrecy. By chance, it was then that my wife and I made a long-
anticipated trip to Costa Rica, which would of course include
numerous station visits. THE LAST DAYS
Unlike other DXers in the past, we had no problem getting inside
Radio Impacto. The gate was unlocked, so I went up and knocked on
the door. A few moments later, the door was opened and a friendly
face appeared. I explained who we were, and we were invited right
in. Our host, Juan Carlos Aguero, knew all about DXing. He had
been a DXer himself for ten years and a ham operator for five.
He had worked at Radio Impacto since its beginning and was now
helping close it down. POSTSCRIPT
Radio Impacto didn't close down on June 10, as expected.
Canadian DX Richard McVicar, who was studying Spanish in Costa Rica
in preparation for working at HCJB, stopped by on June 21 and had
a long visit with Juan Carlos. By that time, Juan Carlos was the
only staff member left. Programming was simply cassette tapes of
music with occasional IDs. Sometime after that, Radio Impacto
finally did go off the air forever.
Bibliography
Bermudez, Manuel. En la Guerra de las Ondas, Costa Rica no fue
Neutral. Semanario Universidad, May 11, 1990.
Association of North American Radio Clubs
DXer of the Year for 1995.