‘Heartstrings’: Tugging in Just One Direction

If I had a hammer, I might use it on “Peter, Paul and Mary in Central America: Heartstrings.”

As on-the-spot interpreters of events in volatile Nicaragua and El Salvador, Peter, Paul and Mary are great folk singers.

This somewhat dated documentary traces their fleeting May, 1986, tour of El Salvador and Nicaragua that included a concert or two featuring their old favorites. After a brief theatrical release, the hourlong film arrives tonight on PBS (10 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15, 11 p.m. on Channel 24).

It carries multiple messages, some of them intended.

What a healthy sign, for example, that this program is on PBS at all. Nowhere on American TV but PBS, in fact, would you find such an overtly slanted documentary, one whose strong personal statement is summed up by Peter Yarrow thusly:

“Here in Nicaragua and El Salvador, I found the realities of what was directed by United States foreign policy, and that’s not America to me.”

What’s good about that, you ask?

Well, it means that vulnerable PBS--which has had to rely on the federal government for financial support even while battling White House animosity from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan--has retained at least some editorial autonomy after two decades of existence.

Tonight’s documentary, along with Bill Moyers’ personal essay last week on “secret governments” within this and previous administrations, signals a commitment to diversity of opinion. Both programs erode the argument that PBS is too reliant on government and big-business funding to be independent of outside control at least on occasion.

The more variety, the better--and that includes those intrepid reporters Peter, Paul and Mary.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with documentaries having strong points of view, as long as they are balanced by other programs with opposing points of view.

So you might say that “Heartstrings”--with its animosity toward the government in El Salvador, the Nicaraguan Contras and the Reagan Administration--redresses the imbalance of “Nicaragua Was Our Home.” The rigidly conservative Rev. Sun Myung Moon funded the latter, a one-sided and misleading anti-Sandinista documentary that appeared on PBS last season.

What is so wrong with “Heartstrings”?

For one thing, its attention to celebrities. You see almost as much of Peter, Paul and Mary as you do the ordinary Salvadorans and Nicaraguans they celebrate. There are far too many lingering cutaways to PP&M;, showing them reacting with predictable sympathy, emotion and sadness to horror stories related by oppressed villagers in both countries.

Enough already. It seems almost as if the purpose were to demonstrate the humanity of PP&M; instead of the pain of Central Americans.

For another thing, PP&M; don’t even make a stab at honest reporting.

Many Americans have a deep affection for PP&M;, not only because of their music, but for their commitment to the civil rights struggle and other epic social causes. They stand up and are counted.

But if celebrities or anyone else wants to preach politics on TV or play reporter, they should be held to the same standards as professional journalists.

A creation of New Tomorrow Productions, “Heartstrings” devotes a half-hour to PP&M; in El Salvador and another to them in Nicaragua. It’s directed by Ana Carrigan, whose last PBS documentary was “Roses in December,” a profound and moving account of the 1980 murder of Jean Donovan and three other churchwomen in El Salvador by government soldiers.

Whether or not you share the point of view of “Heartstrings,” the conclusion that it’s pure propaganda is inescapable. Completed before the controversial Central American peace plan was signed in August by Nicaragua and its neighbors, the PBS program is biased and loaded, a bill of goods for the buying.

There are token spokesmen for the “other sides”--a garrison commander who briefly defends El Salvador’s government, and two businessmen who preferred Nicaragua under the former dictator Anastasio Somoza to life with the present Sandinista regime of President Daniel Ortega.

The tokens are swiftly dispatched, however.

Most of the El Salvador half-hour is allotted to villagers and others testifying about alleged government-sanctioned atrocities. Members of a Christian organization beg Reagan to end aid to El Salvador’s government.

Then it’s off to Nicaragua. The tone is almost entirely pro-Sandinista, anti-Contra and, thus, anti-Reagan, with PP&M; reminding you of that classic cartoon showing a windy senator telling reporters why he’s an expert on foreign affairs.

“I didn’t spend two weeks in Europe for nothing,” he boasts.

Ditto PP&M.;

You respect anyone who checks out Central America personally instead of relying on news stories. Yet surely Yarrow has no idea how foolish he sounds as he thinks aloud while traveling on a bus:

“Are we watching here a movement for self-determination or are we watching the formation of a . . . little communist country that threatens the United States? We (are) gonna ask those questions. We’re gonna find it out as best we can. We’re gonna bring back that message. That’s gonna be tough, because it is a little period of time. But we have to be tough. We have to ask (those) questions as best we can.”

Yes, the world is waiting breathlessly for their verdict.

PP&M;’s best is pretty pathetic, as it turns out. Maybe it’s the editing or maybe it’s just them, but they can’t possibly be as naive as they sound here.

After sharing a meal with Ortega and his family, they get down to the nitty-gritty. Mary Travers interviews Ortega briefly and meekly, challenging him the way a tuna challenges a killer whale, lobbing her question down the center of the plate for him to blast out of the park. Why did he close down the newspaper La Prensa (which recently resumed publishing)? As Ortega repeats the familiar Sandinista line, it becomes clear that he could have breezed through this interview in his sleep.

There’s no doubting the sincerity of PP&M;, but. . . .

“We were determined to get a sense of how the Nicaraguan people felt about this revolution,” Paul Stookey says as the group leaves the bus. Next scene: PP&M; are singing “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

All the while, we hear story after story of “Contra atrocities” and “kidnapings.” At one point, translator Kay Stubbs sobs while relating the anguish of a Nicaraguan mother who says her daughter was murdered by Contras: “I wish Reagan would just cut it out. I wish Reagan would stop giving money to these people who come here and kill us.”

There’s no dissent from the Contras. Not being on the concert tour, they weren’t interviewed.

What’s saddest about “Heartstrings” is that PP&M;, through their own ineptitude, almost make a mockery of the anti-Contra position held by many intelligent Americans. In doing so, they sometimes eclipse the real tragedy of Central America. But not always, fortunately.

You see that tragedy tonight in crude pictures drawn by Salvadoran schoolchildren caught in a political cross fire, pictures of themselves being shot by soldiers. And you see it in the faces of Nicaraguan villagers as PP&M; sing “All My Trials” in a 90-second sequence as haunting as anything you will experience.

Born of past causes and struggles, the music of Peter, Paul and Mary not only remains contemporary but also seems especially pertinent to today’s human rights strife in Central America. No one ever said they couldn’t sing.