rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/09/86)
<Mangiare, mangiare.>
First, some introduction by way of knocking Richard Carnes' posting
"Re: Politics of Oxfam America". Despite its facetious humor, which
I enjoyed, its reductio ad absurdam (into Good Guys and Bad Guys) is
itself absurd and wide of the mark.
The first step in understanding any historical situation, or any
present situation in depth, is to acknowledge existing information
whatever its quality, then to divide it into verifiable facts, and
then to let these facts suggest further facts or hypotheses. If
conditions prohibit much verification, then all you can do is to
resort to analogy with verified facts and established inferences
from other situations.
At least this to me is what a genuine "desire to know" is, whatever
your initial or later biases. It's not merely an effort to defeat
opponents by seeking flaws to enlarge, or "exposing" underlying
rhetorical strategies, or caricaturing arguments and evidence given,
in order discard any information unfavorable to your views. Such
tactics may be fine for chess or trial law but not for knowledge.
Bias doesn't invalidate all testimony, lack of "neutrality" doesn't
disqualify a source of information, and imperfect presentations don't
vitiate all that's presented, unless your aim is not to know but to
win.
Devil's advocates and rigorous critics are valuable, but add nothing
if they only preempt the possibility of any knowledge of or insight
into situations where facts are hard to come by and nothing is certain.
Much of "the news", ie, contemporary affairs, the only events in which
we can participate or policies can be implemented, consists of such
situations.
I'm belaboring the utterly obvious here, but some people talk and act
as if they weren't aware of this.
That said, the readings offered below are remarkably free of flaws,
aware of bias, and careful about weighing information and building
cases, given the generally poor quality of much, maybe most, coverage
of Central American conflicts. The selection heavily reflects my
reading habits, as well as a few leads I've followed, and is in no
way complete.
The authors, such as Joan Didion, Shirley Christian, and Julia Preston,
are among the best correspondents to report on Central America. None
of them are notably rightwing: the Leikens are mildly left-of-center;
Franqui was a revolutionary socialist.
Some of the articles represent the latest, most and best that has been
published on specific subjects: Preston on Salvadorean guerillas, Leiken
on the 1984 Nicaraguan elections, Didion and Preston on collusion between
the government and death squads in El Salvador.
I am currently (as usual) trying to determine what is happening in
Nicaragua, etc. Any assistance will be appreciated.
Annotated Reading List on Central American Conflicts
====================================================
The New Republic, 10/8/84, pages 16-23, "Sins of the Sandinistas" :
Robert Leiken, "Nicaragua's Untold Stories"
Sam Leiken, "Labor Under Siege"
Joshua Muravchik, "The Cruz Alternative"
I posted the text of these articles last year; I have xeroxes
of them. If anyone would like copies, send me mail.
Robert Leiken, ed., CENTRAL AMERICA: ANATOMY OF CONFLICT, 1984,
351 pages, Pergamon Press in cooperation with the Carnegie
Endowment for Peace (commisioned in 9/83 and published 1/84).
An anthology commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment, it
covers all major topics; there are essays by Arturo Cruz
(former Sandinista ambassador to the US) on Sandinista
foreign policy, Morris Rothenberg on "The Soviets and
Central America," Leikin on the Salvadorean guerillas,
and much more. The book is a liberal-leftish compilation
offered as an alternative to Reaganoid policy.
Shirley Christian, "How the Press Covered the Sandinistas,"
Washington Journalism Review, March 1982, Vol.4 No. 2,
pages 32-38.
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Shirley Christian,
foreign correspondent for the NY Times, surveyed all
major press coverage to date of Nicaragua and here
describes in detail how the press even in the early
'80s prettified Sandinista behavior and aims, and
failed to be sufficiently critical. Not quite the
damning critique that, eg, John Silber implies it is
in his Boston Globe of Christian's book (below), but
it does illustrate press myopia from the late 70s on.
Shirley Christian, NICARAGUA: REVOLUTION IN THE FAMILY, Random
House, 1985, 337 p.
The only book-length study of Sandinist Nicaragua in English,
aside from apologies by foreign sympathizers (which fill up
a couple of bookshelves, and are not worth much except as
documents of human gullibility in the 1980s). Using many
interviews with all major figures, firsthand observation (she
has sojourned in Nicaragua frequently & at length), and Sandi-
nist documents & Spanish memoirs, Christian demolishes much
of the Sandinist mythology that passes for fact about the
Nicaraguan Revolution (eg, Sandino detested the Communists
precisely because they were internationalist). While occasion-
ally making a shaky inference, overidentifying with an oligar-
chical opinion about events, or skipping over contra brutality,
Christian supplies a basically sound narrative & reasonable
interpretation based on accumulation of evidence & fairly
incisive argument, features that pro-Sandinista writing lacks.
Arturo Cruz, "Nicaragua's Imperiled Revolution," Foreign Affairs,
Summer 1983.
An account by Cruz of how the 1979 revolution was betrayed.
Cruz was ambassador to the US for the Sandinistas, working
with them long after many others gave up hope.
Mother Jones, August/September 1985, pages 21-35:
Deidre English, "We Are Sandinistas"
Deidre English, "North Americans in Nicaragua"
Gloria Emerson, "Haskell Wexler Zooms in on Nicaragua"
Good examples of the hackwork that too often passes for coverage
by the North American left & not-so-left: completely uncritical,
often absurd, & patently serving Sandinista propaganda aims.
Carlo Franqui, FAMILY PORTRAIT WITH FIDEL: A MEMOIR, 1984, 262
pages, Random House.
The only member of Castro's inner circle (during the curcial early
years of the regime) to "tell all", fellow revolutionary Carlos
Franqui provides an intimate glimpse into the workings of Fidel's
power and the Cuban state. The picture of Castro that emerges is
strikingly similar to Mussolini: a totalitarian caudillo, a non-
Marxist who imported a closely soviet-style apparatus of control
to uphold his personal rule, who then purged the army and packed
it with officers directly loyal to him, thus preventing even the
Party from challenging him (and duplicating the feats of Stalin
and Mao), and who then imposed a permanent militarization on Cuban
society, with a resultant state cult of machismo: a combination
of sexism, athletics, nationalism, homophobia, and military adven-
turism virtually identical to Fascism.
New York Review of Books, 10/11/84, pages 3-8:
Robert Leiken reviews Franqui's FAMILY PORTRAIT WITH FIDEL
New York Review of Books:
Joan Didion, "In El Salvador," 11/4/82, pages 9-17
Joan Didion, "In El Salvador: Soluciones," 11/18/82, 31-54.
Joan Didion, "El Salvador: The Bad Dream," 12/2/82, 23-31
Perhaps the best essays written on the Salvadorean nightmare,
the above three articles were also published together as a
paperback book.
James Chace, "Getting Out of the Central American Maze," 6/24/82,
20-25.
[Lack of annotation doesn't imply inferior value, only my bad
memory.]
Americas Watch, "On Human Rights in Nicaragua," May 1982.
Describes how freedom of expression and of travel abroad
has been curtailed by the Sandinistas.
Americas Watch, "Extermination in Guatemala," 6/2/83, 13-16.
James Chace, "The Endless War," 12/8/83, 46-52.
James Chace, "Kissinger and Central America," 3/1/84, 40-47.
Christopher Dickey, "Saving Salvador," 6/14/84, 25-31.
Julia Preston, "What Duarte Won," 8/15/85, 30-35.
A detailed recent assessment of Duarte and death squads,
guerillas and atrocities, and the continued suffering of
ordinary Salvadoreans. Preston furnishes some damning evi-
dence of guerilla brutality and hypocrisy. Until recently,
public awareness of who the guerillas are and what they've
done has been at best shadowy, submerged by the bloodletting
of the rightist death squads. Leiken's anthology (above)
provides histories and portraits of the various guerilla
groups: Leiken holds out a (to my mind myopic) hope that
the guerillas can be draw into a genuine goverment to rebuild
El Salvador; but his very account reveals them to be violent
and faction-ridden, with murder being one of the means of
promotion within their ranks. If in the near future time allows,
I'll post extensive extracts about the guerillas from Preston's
article.
Robert Leiken, "The Nicaraguan Tangle," 12/5/85, 55-64.
The first of three long articles on Nicaragua to
appear in upcoming issues of NYR, it's devoted to
the pivotal 1984 elections. Leiken updates his
account from the New Republic article (see above)
which stopped at the end of August 1984, providing
more interviews with ordinary Nicaraguans from all
walks of life plus firsthand observations and tours
he made himself in Nicaragua during the campaign
and election. The new information paints a picture
of calculated and relentless electoral fraud by the
Sandinistas that far exceeds the abuses and rumors
detailed in the New Republic articles.
Leiken quotes a secret May 1984 speech by commandante
Bayardo Arce (who along with Tomas Borge and Humberto
Ortega, Daniel's much more powerful brother, form the
ruling triumvirate, according to Shirley Christian):
[All quotations are made without permission.]
"Elections are a nuisance as are a lot of things
which make up the reality of the revolution,"
Bayardo Arce, one of the most powerful COMMANDANTES,
said during a meeting last May with the Marxist-
Leninist Nicaraguan Socialist party (PSN), at which
he represented the Sandinista National Directorate.
"If it were not for the state of war forced on us
...elections would be absolutely inappropriate,"
Arce said, confuting the widespread opinion that
military pressure had prevented the Sandinistas
from fulfilling their commitments to pluralism.
What is needed, he continued, are not "bourgeois
formalities but the dictatorship of the proletariat."
"Nonetheless," he argued, these "bourgeois details"
can become "arms of the revolution," in the same
way as it has been "useful, for example, to be able
to point to entrepeneurial class and private produc-
tion in a mixed economy while we get on with our
strategic goals." [page 56]
Leiken notes the speech was published in the Spanish news-
paper La Vanguardia, 7/31/84, recently republished in full
in Douglas W. Payne's THE DEMOCRATIC MASK: THE CONSOLIDA-
TION OF THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTION (1985, Freedom House --
a New or Far Right press), and that "Sandinista authorities
have acknowledged the speech and PSN officials confirm its
authenticity."
In February 1984 the FSLN lowered the voting age to 16,
provoking accusations of "foul play": most youth were under
tight continuing FSLN control by now in the army, militia,
schools, and youth organization. Leiken notes that Payne
claims
...the Sandinistas commissioned a secret survey by the
Strategic Institute of Spain [currently ruled by the
Socialist Party] which showed they would obtain 35 per
cent of the vote if the voting age remained at eighteen,
but that the vote would increase significantly if the
voting age were lowered to sixteen. See also Dennis
Volman's article on the effects of lowering the voting
age in The Christian Science Monitor (March 2, 1984).
[Leiken, page 61]
It took 9 days to count the votes in November 1984. The
...numerous foreign observers...assumed they were
attending a protracted "election-night vigil" in a
tropical setting. Meanwhile Nicaraguan journalists,
academics, and opposition leaders described the
waiting period in terms more reminiscent of a
smoke-filled room at a US party convention.
...
No one produced documentary evidence of a preelectoral
pact [some leftwing opposition parties claimed rough
%'s of votes for each party allowed to register and
campaign (though not without harassment) were "allocated"
by the Sandinistas BEFORE the election] or of tampering
with the ballots; nor have they done so during the last
year. Opposition poll watchers were present at fewer
than 20 percent of the pooling sites. However. Jaime
Chamorro, the new editor of La Prensa, compiled a
statistical analysis of the partial and complete offi-
cial registration and election figures. (He was allowed
to publish only a part of it.) He noted numerous discre-
pancies and concluded that the FSLN padded the registration
count by 400,000. These votes, he argued, were later
added to the FSLN election totals." [page 62]
As of 1/6/86, the second article in Leiken's series hasn't yet
appeared. The remaining articles may be spread over a couple
of months, as is NYR's practice.
Robert Leiken and Barry Rubin, THE CENTRAL AMERICAN CRISIS READER, forth-
coming in 1986, Summit Book. It will include key articles, interviews,
speeches, and documents.
Better well-read than Red,
Cheers,
Ron Rizzorrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/10/86)
<followup to Richard Carnes> The reading list IS weighted toward reporting guerilla and