Nicaragua Remembered

I am writing to let you know how much I appreciated the review of “Turning the Tide, U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace” by Noam Chomsky. My folks were missionaries in Nicaragua where I grew up. U.S. interventions there started many years ago. As a child, I saw fighting and U.S. Marines in Nicaragua. The U.S. general, I think his name was Phelan, used to say in interviews that Sandino and his men were bandits. Later on when Carleton Beals, an anthropologist (Harvard), asked him about that, Phelan said that his statement referred to Sandino’s being the leader of a band!

CHARLES BARNES

Costa Mesa