The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua [Hardcover]

Timothy C. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2001

The Contra War and the Iran-Contra affair that shook the Reagan presidency were center stage on the U.S. political scene for nearly a decade. According to most observers, the main Contra army, or the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN), was a mercenary force hired by the CIA to oppose the Sandinista socialist revolution.

The Real Contra War demonstrates that in reality the vast majority of the FDN’s combatants were peasants who had the full support of a mass popular movement consisting of the tough, independent inhabitants of Nicaragua’s central highlands. The movement was merely the most recent instance of this peasantry’s one-thousand-year history of resistance to those they saw as would-be conquerors.

The real Contra War struck root in 1979, even before the Sandinistas took power and, during the next two years, grew swiftly as a reaction both to revolutionary expropriations of small farms and to the physical abuse of all who resisted. Only in 1982 did an offer of American arms persuade these highlanders to forge an alliance with former Guardia anti-Sandinista exiles--those the outside world called Contras.

Relying on original documents, interviews with veterans, and other primary sources, Brown contradicts conventional wisdom about the Contras, debunking most of what has been written about the movement’s leaders, origins, aims, and foreign support.

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1979, the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua was overthrown and replaced by the radical regime of the Sandinistas. Almost immediately the Sandinistas themselves faced armed rebellion from a group that became known as the Contras. Supporters as well as detractors assumed the Contras to be merely a U.S.-funded mercenary force of former soldiers of the Somoza era. Brown, senior liaison to the Contras for the State Department from 1987 to 1990 and now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, contends the Contra uprising was primarily a peasant rebellion among the long-neglected and discriminated-against indigenous people of Nicaragua's Segovian highlands, or as one of Brown's interviewees put it, "a whole bunch of really pissed off peasants." Traditionally rebellious, alarmed by Sandinista plans to collectivize their private farms and distrustful of the ethnically different lowlanders sent to implement this plan often quite brutally the peasantry took up arms. While eventually this peasant force did align itself with former Somoza soldiers, as these were the groups receiving U.S. arms and funding, their success lay not in U.S. largesse but in their deep roots among the highland peasantry. Today, while the Sandinistas are gone from power, defeated in elections in 1990, the highland rebels have become a peaceful but influential political force. Brown makes an interesting case, but also neglects certain issues. For instance, while he writes in detail on Sandinista human rights abuses against the highlanders, he has nothing to say on Contra abuses except that they did occur. Without such discussion, this remains a partial, though important, account of the complex phenomenon of the Contras. B&w illus. (Mar.) Forecast: The Contras were a hot topic in the 1980s (thanks to the Iran-Contra affair during Reagan's presidency), but interest now will be primarily among specialists in Central American history and politics, and perhaps among former activists who either supported or opposed the Contras efforts.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This meticulously researched work promises to transform the historiography of the Contras' war against Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. Brown (fellow, Hoover Inst., Stanford), a former State Department liaison to the Contras, paints a picture of the Fuerza Democr tica Nicarag ense (FDN) that is sharply at odds with the conventional portrayal of a vengeful remnant of the deposed Somoza dictatorship, hired by the Reagan administration to harass a burgeoning Socialist regime. The author concludes, first, that the movement was made up overwhelmingly of highland Indian peasants combating the revolution's brutal assault on their way of life; Somoza's thugs actually comprised a tiny, albeit influential, minority within the U.S.-backed FDN. Second, the Contra movement enjoyed far more popular support than previously believed. Third, peasant resistance began spontaneously in 1979 not with the formal activation of the FDN in 1982. Future accounts of the war will ignore Brown's views at their peril. Based on recently declassified documents and interviews with former Contras, this book belongs in all academic collections. James R. Holmes, Ph.D. candidate, Fletcher Sch. of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts Univ., Medford, MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (March 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806132523
• ISBN-13: 978-0806132525
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #591,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > History > Americas > Central America > Nicaragua

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond left and right -- the revolt of the 'indios puros', November 23, 2006

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Hardcover)

When career American diplomat Timothy Brown was assigned to oversee the Contra war against the Sandinistas in 1987, he believed, along with everybody else, that the counterrevolution had been started by defeated Somocistas with arms and money from Ronald Reagan.
The war had, by then, been going on for five years, he thought.
In 1990, when the Sandinistas were voted out of office, the Contras were disarmed by an agency of the Organization of American States. OAS was astonished to find itself dealing with more than 10,000 fighters -- they called themselves Comandos, not Contras -- and 80,000 unarmed supporters.
These could not possibly have been ex-Somocistas, as there had never been so many. But it did not seem to occur to anyone else but Brown to ask, who were they?
Brown, now at the Hoover Institution, surprised himself with the answer.
Contrary to the "Black Legend" of the Contras as a small band of mercenaries, Brown discovered that the counterrevolution was started by Chibcha Indians who make up 52 percent of Nicaragua's population, that the revolt started in 1979, that it continued for almost three years before outsiders and ex-Somocistas joined and that it had the unanimous support of the highlanders.
"Alone among the major antagonists in Nicaragua's recent wars, the MILPAS (the name the rebels gave their combat units) of 1979-82 had no foreign military support. . . . The much-feared and widely demonized 'Contras' turned out to be only poor dirt farmers from Nicaragua's equivalent of Appalachia, historically marginalized but insistently independent mountain 'hillbillies.' "
Brown traces this revolt back more than a thousand years, to the collision of Nahua Indians expanding from Mexico to Nicaragua's Pacific lowlands and Chibchas expanding from South America to the highlands.
Though the Chibchas were defined out of existence following a revolt in 1881, when it became national policy in Nicaragua to claim that there were no more "indios," only mestizos and "espanioles," the Chibchas themselves knew who they were.
In oral interviews, Brown discovered that the anti-Sandinistas identified themselves as "indios" or even "indios puros," versus the mestizos and "whites" of the lowlands.
The question arises: Can the analysis of a Reaganista be trusted?
The answer is yes. Brown conducted a sociological-ethnological inquiry using standard academic research protocols, and the documents are on deposit at Hoover for inspection.
Some of the most important points can be cross-checked with outside, even with Sandinista publications.
Of all the proofs Brown offers, the most extraordinary and persuasive is the question of the Literacy Brigades.
We know from many studies of peasants that in societies divided between literate and illiterate, peasants will extend a great measure of goodwill to a regime that teaches their children to read, even if the regime is harsh otherwise.
Observers as various as the historian Alexander Werth writing of Stalinist Russia and University of Hawaii sociologists Geoffrey White and Lamont Lindstrom writing of Micronesians under Japanese rule have commented on this phenomenon.
Thus, the admission of the Sandinista regime, in a broadcast on April 9, 1980, that it had sent soldiers and special militias to the mountains to protect the teachers from their students suggests an extraordinary popular revulsion against the revolution.
This is understandable, as the Sandinistas came in murdering, raping and robbing.
No one, from any political position, thought it necessary to ask the indios what their opinion was. Oxfam America, in a document called "A government we can work with," explained that the Sandinistas were committed to "empowering" poor women.
Poor men who saw their wives and daughters molested by Sandinista soldiers and cadres did not agree, and they took to the jungle.
If the Sandinistas had had any knowledge of the history of their own country, they would have left the independent farmers of the highlands alone and turned their energies to the many problems of the lowlands.
But they were Marxist-Leninists, and their intention was to instruct history, not be instructed by it.
Later, after a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign in the Atlantic lowlands, other indios (Miskito, Rama, Sumu and so-called "Black Creoles") joined the rebellion.
With five separate armies in revolt, the Sandinistas lost at the polls in 1990.
Even then, according to Brown, the new Conservative President Violeta Chamorro united with the Sandinistas against the indios, who were Liberals.
They were Liberals in the 19th century sense, individualists; they had nothing in common with the statist views of American Democrats.
The Sandinistas, with Chamorro looking the other way, continued a campaign of murder against the indios leaders until the election of 1996, which both the Conservatives and the Sandinistas tried to rig by faking the census and refusing to register the highlanders.
International observers thwarted that plot, and the indios voted 90 percent for Liberal Arnoldo Aleman, who won the presidency, the first peaceful change of power in the country's history.

5.0 out of 5 stars heroes silenciados, March 27, 2009

By 

Juan A. Martinez "heroes silenciados" (ma ,usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Hardcover)

La odicea del pueblo nicaraguense ha sido de explotacion,terror y muerte,recuerdo cuando estudiaba en nicaragua,recien despues del 16 de julio,agosto 1979,mi padre organizo una busqueda de restos humanos en un lugar de las segobias montanas de nicaragua,su padre ( mi abuelo),junto con aproximadamente 95 personas casi todos familias fueron asesinados por la genocida Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua,enterrados en fosas comunes en las montanas silenciosas de las segovias,"ninos,mujeres enbarasadas,ancianos...su delito,muchos inocentes,otros como mi abuelo,por luchar por la livertad del pueblo de nicaragua...
Los verdaderos y primeros cobatientes o contras,fueron hombres honestos,valientes heroes ..que vieron antes del triunfo de la revolucion sandinista el camino que sus dirigentes maximos estavan tomando,caminos equivocados rumbo al marxismo leninisno comunista,..hombres que no aceptaron las ofertas de trofeos de guerra que los comandantes ortegas y compania ofrecieron a muchos comandantes de zonas despues de la guerra
(haciendas de los Zomosas...etc...),Algunos heros murieron misteriosamente como Carlos Fonseca Amador, EL TIGRE,EL DANTO ...TODOS ellos fueron hombres honestos humildes pero de gran valor MORAL, Hacia su Nacion,Gracias Mr TImothy C brown,todavia puede seguir escriviendo sobre estos hombres y su biografia...atte juan martinez

12 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Research vs. Propaganda, July 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Hardcover)

In Nicaragua, as in the United States, there are still holdout areas of Marxists, still waiting for the Great Revolution to show the world that communism should be the way. In Nicaragua, it is in Leon where there are still murals of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas on many buildings. In the US, it's places like Seattle and college faculties.

But for those who don't find it "reactionary" to hold the belief that communists are the bad guys, this book is a great source. Instead of still fighting the war for the Sandinistas, this book offers a well-researched and documented history.

Having a brother that is married to a Nicaraguan from Corinto, where the CIA mined the harbor, it has been surprising to learn how much the majority of Nicaraguans appreciated Reagan's decision to fight the communists in their country.

For those who don't remember, when the Sandinistas were forced to hold elections, the US media and most of the world had predicted a resounding Sandinista victory. They are still bitter that they were wrong, and that the Nicaraguan populace kicked their fellow leftists out of office.

For those interested in a rational view of the Contra war and the Sandinistas, this book and Glenn Garvin's "Everybody had his own Gringo" are the best bets. For those who still aren't sure which side to believe, do a little research on what the Sandinistas did to the Moskito indians. And to see who it was in the US that supported, and still supports, the Sandinistas as well as Castro's dictatorship, read "Covert Cadre" by S. Steven Powell.