That time period is pretty 'personal' to me. They were specifically 'rebels.' Contra is short for la contrarevolucion which means 'counter revolution.' They were typically referred to as 'anti-communist rebels.' Of course, they were probably only referred to as 'rebels' because at the time they were 'anti-communist.' If was after it all that it became publicly known what they were doing to civilians, so today they would be considered 'terrorists.' In fact, since the U.S. supported them (although that may be the true reason why there is no proof of the U.S. government having knowledge of their actions or the support other than the fallguy), the U.S. SHOULD be considered one of the axis of evils as it was involved in state sponsored terrorism at the time.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E7DA1F38F935A15757C0A963948260




>>I think the word ' terrorist' is often misused or abused depending on the political goals that goes with the words. Freedom fighters are not terrorists. The resistance in WWII were no terrorists either.
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>Same goes for "militant" or "paramilitary organization", which are (or were) the hallmark of the bad guys. Just watch it in the news here, who is a militant and who is not. Somehow the "security contractors" are never described as either of these two, and also not as mercenaries, though I wonder why (*).
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>If anyone remembers what the newspaper here used to write about the contras during the Iran-contra scandal, I'd be glad to hear. By definition, they were terrorists: they weren't a regular army of any country, they had training camps in a neighboring country, were intent on dislodging a democratically elected government and their funding came from very shady sources, and they earned their reputation by tearing down schools as hospitals as symbols of the system against which they were fighting. Now the zero bucks question is "how many times were they called terrorists in mainstream US press?".
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>(*) I could list a few reasons, but I don't know in which order to put them.