Contra Attacks in Nicaragua

In evaluating Matamoros’ piece, it helps to note that he is a Washington-based contra representative.

1--It is an outright lie on several counts for him to state that “Sandinista army regulars” died in “combat” along with Ben Linder and that those “army regulars” were “buried in oblivion.” Two widely respected and good friends of mine were on the scene when all three men were held up in honor as virtually the whole town of Matagalpa (thousands of people) turned out to celebrate their lives. The two men who died with Linder were in fact civilian construction workers on a hydroelectric power dam. Rather than dying in combat, the men had just arrived at the site and were sitting on the ground reviewing the day’s work plan when they were ambushed by the contras.

2--The notion that the Nicaraguan government is to blame for the civilian deaths inflicted by the contras (because the contras warned the civilians not to bear arms) is both absurd and cynical. The issue is not civilians doing things like traveling in military convoys. The contras call themselves an army; but they avoid the Nicaraguan army and focus on civilians in isolated areas--farm and health workers, school teachers and religious lay leaders. Isolated civilians bear arms to protect themselves as best they can from typically barbaric contra attacks designed to terrorize the whole civilian population and thus stabilize the government.

3--The war in Nicaragua is in no sense a “civil” war. It is in fact a brutal creation of the Reagan Administration’s illegal efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, through the surrogate contra army, in the all-too-painful ways now becoming more exposed to public view. The contras have been created, developed and sustained by the Reagan Administration from a base of only a few hundred far-right-wing military and political elitists in 1981.

The primary “blame” in all of this lies with our government’s nationally and internationally illegal intervention in a nationalistic effort to turn around massive exploitation of the many by the few. Certainly the Nicaraguan government has serious faults--but they in no way add up to a right for the also seriously faulted U.S. government to so egregiously intervene. There are legitimate and effective means to protect our legitimate interests regarding Nicaragua--and it is high time, in tune with our heritage, to focus on such means.

TOM CLAGETT

Los Alamitos