History Lesson

I was enjoying a drink with some other travelers in celebration of yet another spectacular sunset when Michelle, an American at our table, remarked that most of the people present were Canadian. In fact, a disproportionate number of the foreigners she had met in Nicaragua were from Canada. It was helpfully pointed out to her that Canadians love to travel and perhaps only the Australians are as prone to itchy feet. Michelle rejected this idea, however, arguing that the United States' larger population should compensate for Americans' lower propensity to venture abroad.

I offered that Canadians have a very positive relationship with Nicaragua. Many had supported the Sandanista revolution and thousands came as volunteers during the 1980's to help the country rebuild after the destruction caused during the revolution and subsequent war against the United States. Also, I cautiously observed that the perception of Nicaragua among Americans is still somewhat coloured by the Reagan era propaganda campaign that had portrayed the country as a Soviet-backed terrorist state. As a result there remains a residual prejudice against Nicaragua, a situation that the current security hysteria in the US doesn't help. In my own experience, passing through the Atlanta airport on my way here I was thoroughly searched and questioned simply because I was flying to Managua. In response to Michelle's blank look of incomprehension, I took a deep breath and elaborated.

The United States has a long and unflattering history in Latin America, nowhere more so than in Nicaragua. Domination of the Nicaraguan economy by US corporate interests goes back to the late nineteenth century and the US Marine Corp actually occupied the country, employing the same kind of brutality Iraqis are currently experiencing, for seven years starting in 1927. During that period, the Marines abducted and murdered legendary Nicaraguan nationalist leader Augusto Sandino as he was leaving a dinner in celebration of a peace accord intended to bring democracy to the country.

To insure against future popular uprisings, before departing for home the US military trained the Nicaraguan National Guard to be the most viciously effective weapon of repression in the region. For the next few decades the US appointed dictators of the Somoza dynasty, a small group of wealthy families and American corporations ruled the country as a tyrannical kleptocracy, with the full approval and support of Washington.

Finally, in 1979 a broad coalition of Nicaraguans, united behind the Sandanista National Liberation Front, forced Somoza from power after some 50,000 people had given their lives in the struggle. The United States government did not accept this challenge to their authority and in response created a counter-revolutionary force known as the Contras. Recruited, organized, trained, financed, armed and supported by the CIA, the Contras were a US mercenary force that carried out a terror campaign against the Nicaraguan people for ten long years at the cost of another 50,000 lives. In addition, US Special Forces destroyed infrastructure in the country and the US Navy mined the harbours as part of a parallel campaign by the US administration to wreck the economy.

Illegal under both international and American law, Washington's war against Nicaragua continued until the United States Congress realized that the commanders of the Contras, characterized as “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers” by Ronald Reagan, were in fact criminals, former National Guard officers and death squad leaders who were prosecuting a war against their own people primarily to facilitate the siphoning off of US gun money into Swiss bank accounts. The Reagan administration, however, chose to disregard Congress when it refused further funding and continued financing the Contras illegally with the proceeds of covert weapons sales to Iran.

When their plan was discovered, Reagan and his staff feigned ignorance and offered up a Marine officer named Oliver North as a scapegoat. After a brief stint in a country club prison, Colonel North wrote a book exonerating himself and entered Republican politics. As a result of its war against the Nicaraguan people, today the United States shares only with Libya the distinction of having been convicted of state terrorism by the World Court. Of course, the irony of a War on Terror carried out by the world's foremost terrorist state is lost on most Americans.

Peace returned in 1990 only after a war weary Nicaraguan public elected the Washington financed UNO coalition in response to a US ultimatum threatening continued economic warfare if they did not. The terms of peace with the United States demanded a roll back of social reforms and left Nicaragua with a crushing debt. Persecution by Washington continues, regrettably, and in one example financial aid and IMF loans to support the economy after Hurricane Mitch ravaged the country in 1998 were held up until the Nicaraguan government agreed to sell off its national telephone system and state oil company to foreign corporations at fire sale prices. However, generous US financing of opposition political parties could not stop the Sandinistas from being re-elected to power in 2006.

Michelle is not an ignorant or untraveled woman. She is an oncologist from Seattle who spent six months traversing the length of Africa just last year, yet everything I told her about Nicaragua came as news. Although others at the table nodded in agreement with my telling of history, it was obvious that Michelle's had stopped listening. Her response was to utter, “Huh”, turn to someone else and change the subject.

I have sometimes felt sorry for Americans, often ashamed of their country's actions and at odds with its leaders. Embarrassing as their history may be, it is Michelle's kind of willful ignorance that permits their government to get away with its crimes and will probably cost at least three more US soldiers their lives in Iraq today.