The United States sponsored the Contras because they were against the Sandinista government which was in place at the time in Nicaragua. The Sandinista government was a national reconstruction government, but it was a government that the United States viewed as communist. It came at the time where the United States was extremely weary of the Soviet Union and communist rule and a time when Reagan was president and his foreign policy was based very much on stopping opposing ideologies from gaining ground anywhere in the world.