Puffing at Peter, Paul and Mary

If I had a hammer, I might use it on Howard Rosenberg’s review of “Peter, Paul and Mary in Central America: Heartstrings” (“ ‘Heartstrings’: Tugging in One Direction,” Nov. 13).

In a lengthy review Rosenberg managed to cheapen and trivialize almost every aspect of a film that poignantly depicts the horror of our foreign policy toward Nicaragua and El Salvador. In only one paragraph does Rosenberg grudgingly admit that in only two scenes did it manage to show “the real tragedy of Central America.”

One scene showed the trauma Salvadoran children have experienced through the pictures they have drawn and, in another 90-second scene, we saw the tragedy of Central America captured in the silent faces of Nicaraguans as they listened to PP&M; sing “All My Trials.”

The reader is to conclude from this that all the other scenes that capture the pain and suffering experienced by those in Central America are to be summarily dismissed as so much one-sided propaganda.

The “real tragedy” of Central America is an American foreign policy that equips, trains and funds Duarte’s army to suppress any attempt by the poor in El Salvador to better their lot and which, in Nicaragua, has bought and paid for a mercenary army to usurp the democratically elected and sovereign government of that country.

Of course, Rosenberg won’t discuss these facts because they would violate his precious journalistic integrity. Really, Mr. Rosenberg, which was more one-sided and slanted, your review or the movie?

LARRY SIEGEL

Hawthorne