‘FRONTLINE’: AT LAST, TV DIGS IN

TV news is swift and immediate. It’s also amnesiac, though, a medium with neither memory nor sense of history, snapping off headlines of the moment, showing the present without a past and events without a context.

Crises are generally reported as inexplicable phenomena, mysterious massive headaches with no cause. A little file footage for background and that’s it. We’re treated to the violence, because that is the kind of meat-and-potatoes, bang-bang action that makes for good TV.

But the seeds of the ferment, the long-festering problems behind the explosions that capture all the headlines? Leave those to musty scholars.

So goes the crisis in TV journalism.

Bravo for “Crisis in Central America,” an important four-part “Frontline” documentary tracing this nation’s tumultuous relationships with Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador. No razzle-dazzle instant news here.

If, like many Americans, you are muddled about Central America’s volatility and the history, nature and extent of U.S. involvement there, this valuable set of programs is for you.

Although “Frontline” usually airs Tuesdays, PBS is wisely airing these hour programs on consecutive evenings (Tuesday-Friday, 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15; Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday, 8 p.m., Channel 50). They are interconnected, revealing the complex patterns of U.S. involvement--some would call it self-serving interference and imperialism--in a region that continues to command our interest.

The programs are incisive, yet admirably take no sides, documenting their respective accounts with rarely seen footage and interviews with observers and key participants.

One is struck by the balance and clarity of these programs, which have been separately produced by some of the people associated with the acclaimed PBS series “Vietnam: A Television History.” The executive producer is Austin Hoyt.

The first hour, “The Yankee Years,” is a half-century overview beginning with the Spanish-American War and ending with the CIA’s support for the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in the early 1950s.

Concerned about secret Communist arms shipments, the CIA supported exiles seeking to depose the existing regime. Sound familiar? That’s because many of the themes in the Guatemala story also emerged in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The second hour--chronicling the rise of Fidel Castro in a strategically important Cuba that was repressed and exploited by the U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista--contains the most interesting footage.

There is a young Castro, powerless and beardless, being released from a Batista prison. There he is later, speaking fluent English, and still later, visiting New York three months after taking power and astounding Westerners by not asking for U.S. aid.

The program shows Castro’s evolution as an avowed Marxist closely allied with the Soviet Union and his success as an exporter of revolution.

But it also notes that the Cuban leader is not always the Kremlin’s man in Havana. That was underscored on CBS recently when Dan Rather interviewed Castro in Cuba when other Soviet aligned foreign leaders were in Moscow attending the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko.

Why would Castro choose a U.S. television audience over the Chernenko funeral? Rather concluded that Castro may have been responding to what he felt was a desire by President Reagan to soften toward Cuba the way Richard Nixon did with Red China.

The third “Frontline” program traces the ascent and collapse of the Somozas in Nicaragua and profiles the troubled Sandinistas whose revolution the United States “first tried to prevent, then tried to court, then tried to undermine.”

“Undermine” seems almost too gentle a description in light of the Reagan Administration’s avowed support of anti-Sandinista rebels.

“There is an attitude . . . which exists in the United States where it is considered impossible for countries to act for themselves, to think by themselves, to find their own answers,” says Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega. “The United States wanted our government to look only to the United States in every way . . . .”

Although there are Marxists in the present Nicaraguan government, the “Frontline” hour sees a sharp distinction between Castro’s acutely defined Cuba and the still-evolving infant revolution of the Sandinistas.

The fourth program, “The Battle for El Salvador,” examines inequities which ultimately led to a civil war whose outcome is yet to be determined.

“Crisis in Central America” is intensely violent and gory in depicting nations where the line separating oppressor and reformer is sometimes blurry. The terror and suffering, though, are graphic.

And for once the history is on the screen.