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No Denial
I don’t mind being the correspon-
dent you use to make a point about
media coverage in Latin America, es-
pecially if the point is an important one,
but I fail to understand how my remark
in Panama illustrated what you said it
did [“Taking Note,” July 1989]. You
quote me responding to a question about
the OAS censure of Gen. Manuel Anto-
nio Noriega by pointing out that the last
time the OAS censured a foreign leader,
it was Somoza, and HE was gone within
a year. But then you leap wildly to the
conclusion that my observation meant
that I had written the Sandinistas out of
Nicaragua’s history…indeed, that I “fail
to understand that there has been a
revolution in Nicaragua.”
Your logic escapes me entirely. To
say in passing that the OAS censure of
Somoza was historically important is
hardly to deny the role of the FSLN in
the overthrow of the dictatorship. The
Sandinistas were, as they claim, the
vanguard force in Nicaragua. But no
serious analyst of the Revolution de-
nies the importance of the political and
diplomatic struggle in Nicaragua in 1978
and 1979. The isolation of the dictator-
ship inside and outside Nicaragua cer-
tainly was a factor in its demise. Lead-
ers of the FSLN and its supporters may
rightly argue that the Revolution would
eventually have triumphed regardless
of the international support it received,
but it would have taken longer had not
the Nicaraguan business class, Mexico,
the OAS (and eventually the United
States) turned against Somoza.
But I wasn’t even making that
modest argument. By referring to the
Somoza censure, I was only pointing
out that the OAS knows a loser when it
sees one. Noriega’s days are probably
numbered, I said, because he is isolated
even in Latin America, and the diplo-
matic isolation of a dictator often pre-
dicts his demise.
Nicaragua, as you correctly point
out, is another matter entirely. I did not
analyze the political situation there in
my reports from Panama. And your
claim that my one casual reference to
Somoza shows that I deny the reality of
the Sandinista Revolution and am
manipulated by the U.S. government
strikes me as both absurd and unfair.
Tom Gjelten
Latin America correspondent
National Public Radio
Unintended as it apparently was,
Tom Gjelten’s remark did indeed illus-
trate a common tendency among re-
porters and policy-makers to view
revolution–and all Latin American
politics for that matter-as an elite af-
fair. For the dominant political culture
of this country, the conscious over-
throw of the established order by a
grass-roots mass movement is an alien
and dangerous notion-one which is
actively denied.
The point of the column was that this
denial colors not only the images of
Nicaragua put forth in the media, but
the design of U.S. policy. Only policy-
makers sufferingfrom historical amne-
sia and imperial blindness could be-
lieve that with $9 million they can buy
enough votes to turn back the clock on
Nicaraguan society.
Gjelten’s efforts to provide a his-
torical context in his letter show up why
his off-hand comment was eminently
quoteable. In mass media reporting,
nothing has a context, or the only con-
text is the United States’ pursuit of
“our” interests, one of which is cer-
tainly to assure us that revolutions never
really occur.-MF
No Anticommunism
As a long time reader of Report on.
the Americas, I was more than a little
shocked and disappointed after reading
“The Real Green Revolution” [March
1989]. Particularly offensive was the
anticommunist thrust of Radil
Gonzilez’s “Coca’s Shining Path.” I
would expect to find something like
this in Time or Newsweek or some other
ruling class mouthpiece. The whole
article has only two footnotes, neither
of which gives us any background on
where Mr. Gonzalez got his informa-
tion.
Statements such as “Peru’s Hualla-
ga Valley in the heart of the Amazon is
the bastion of Sendero Luminoso, the
country’s largest guerrilla movement,
CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
CONTINUED
FROM PAGE 2
known for its ruthlessness,” feed right
into the State Department’s attempts to
use “the fight against communism” as
a justification to fund counterinsurgency
campaigns against indigenous move-
ments.
Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s
latest book Manufacture of Consent
goes to great lengths documenting
“anticommunism” as a major weapon
in the U.S. government’s propaganda
arsenal. I can’t understand NACLA
falling into this trap. How come Mr.
Gonzdlez couldn’t find anyone from
The Communist Party of Peru (Sen-
dero’s real name) to interview? I am not
saying don’t criticize “Sendero,” just
try and present both sides.
I have yet to see an interview with a
representative of the Communist Party
of Peru (Sendero Luminoso) or even
with someone from what has been de-
scribed as their “all-but-official
publication El Diario” in any Left/
liberal or anti-imperialist publication
(other than the Maoist press). I feel
strongly that NACLA owes it to its
readers to at least try to present “Sen-
dero’s” point of view, especially in
light of the rapidly escalating U.S.
military involvement in Peru under the
cover of “the war on drugs.”
Thomas C. Mountain
Hawaii Black History Committee
No Record
I was fascinated to read about Ig-
nacio Rodriguez-Mena Castrill6n’s
baseball career [“A Talk With the
Dean,” September 1989], as I am writ-
ing a book about the experience of
Latin American players in the United
States (titled Foreigners at Their Own
Game). But he is is not listed in the
Baseball Encyclopedia. It is very
common for ex-players to boast that
they played in the majors when they
really played for a minor league team
affiliated with a big league club. If
Rodriguez-Mena Castrill6n did play
major league ball or even if he only
played in the minors, it would be a great
story to include in my book.
Milton Jamail
Austin, Texas
Apologies from NACLA’s fact-
checking department. It seems that
Ignacio Mena never played for the
Senators. He played for minor league
clubs in Galveston, Havana, Orlando
and Dublin, before ending his career
with Greenville in 1954.
