Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site teddy.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!teddy!lkk From: lkk@teddy.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics,net.motss,net.religion Subject: Re: Re: Definitive expose' of Sandinistas? Message-ID: <1229@teddy.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 09:55:50 EDT Article-I.D.: teddy.1229 Posted: Fri Aug 30 09:55:50 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 12:27:50 EDT References: <1520@bbncca.ARPA> <296@ubvax.UUCP> Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 96 Xref: watmath net.politics:10765 net.motss:2002 net.religion:7512 Here is a rebuttal to Shirley Christian's book (taken from another network): -lk ------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Aug 85 08:14:15 PDT From: upstill%ucbdegas@Berkeley (Steve Upstill) Subject: Nicaragua, ctd. Here is a partial reply to the book review JoSH posted. I may be confused, though, JoSH. Perhaps you posted the original review as commentary, rather than as a pointer to an important book. I will respond soon to the substance of that review, but for now I would just point out that the Kissinger Commission and the previous, well-opinionated reviewer, spent a matter of hours (6?) in Nicaragua on their "fact-finding" tour. "A Contra's-eye View of Nicaragua", by Dan Bellm San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 18, 1985. reprinted without permission ----- Nicaragua's Sandinista government, now six years old, is deeply mired in a war waged on its borders by counterrevolutionaries, or Contras. The Contras' dependence on U.S. dollars and CIA coordination, and the danger that the war may escalate, make it urgent that we learn what has been happening in Nicaragua and why. We could use a well-researched study of Nicaragua's past history and its six-year revolution, a book motivated by a desire for truth rather than political loyalty, either to the Sandinistas or to their armed opponents. "Nicaragua: Revolutioon in the Family", by Shirley Christian, a foreign affairs reporter for The New York Times, is not that book. Although the jacket notes promise "an insider's experience" and "an objective reporter's analysis," Christian's bias emerges soon. The central characters in her Nicaragua are landowners and urban business leaders, a privileged minority who hoped the overthrow of the dictator Somoza in 1979 would involve little more than a change of leaders. Since several of these people -- Adolfo Calero, Alfonso Robelo and Arturo Cruz -- now lead the Contras, Christian's book reads like a publicity drive on their behalf. This campaign involves considerable rewriting of history. Since the Contras include many of Somoza's former National Guardsmen -- a bothersome "image question", Christian admits -- she is careful to downplay the brutality of the Guard and of the Somoza family itself. This is her summary of the record: "The government bureaucracy and National Guard interfered little in the lives of most Nicaraguans. As authoritarian regimes go, this one ceded to its political enemies and critics a relatively large amount of space to act in public life." Elsewhere: "What mattered most to Anastasio Somoza Garcia was amassing and enjoying wealth, and Nicaraguans generally allowed him to do that." Was there a choice? What's wrong with this picture of Nicaragua is that most of the people are missing: the rural landless poor who had everything to gain from a sweeping change and almost nothing to lose. Decades of Somoza rule left Nicaraguan peasants hungry, underemployed, illiterate and prone to early death from disease, yet their voices -- what they hope for or fear, what they now think of the country's changes -- are entirely absent here. (Christian encourages the view that Nicaragua was ruled merely by an annoying autocrat, that nothing was wrong fundamentally with its distribution of political power, land and food. "Nicaragua" develops the thesis that during the late 1970s, when a broad opposition movement favored Somoza's overthrow, a vacillating Carter administration failed to produce a moderate replacement and allowed a small, nearly irrelevant clique of Leninists -- the Sandinista Front -- to seize control. Since 1979, the argument runs, the Sandinistas have built the totalitarian state they envisioned from the start, without regard for political or economic pluralism, religious freedom or other human rights. Christian gathers useful information on the Sandinistas' mistakes, and there have been plenty -- notably their censorship of the opposition newspaper La Prensa and their relations with the Miskito Indians -- but one needn't be a Sandinista to notice an imbalance. Christian failed to interview any Sandinista supporters in order to gather their views of the 1978-79 insurrection or of developments since then. She nearly ignores the social reforms that have led most Nicaraaguans to favor the revolution: the 1980 Literacy Crusade that taught over a million people to read, the proliferation of health centers and schools in even the remotest rural areas, the elimination of polio. Christian's book is weakest on current developments. Her sympathy for the Contras forces her to whitewash their awful record of destroying what are primarily civilian targets, well-documented by Americas Watch and other international human rights observers. Most critically, Christian sidesteps the question of whether the U.S. has an obligation, or even a right, to intervene in another country's political disputes -- especially after Nicaragua's November, 1984 election, which she is unable to discredit. Nor does she consider seriously the Contadora process, a major diplomatic effort by Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama to end the war. "Nicaragua, Revolution in the Family" may be a useful reference on the motivations of the Contra leadership, but its distortions make it otherwise unreliable. -- Sport Death, Larry Kolodney (USENET) ...decvax!genrad!teddy!lkk (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa