My Reaction To Reagan

First, RIP. I wish no one’s family to go through such a disease and certainly hope he was at peace as the disease progressed.

While I often describe myself as a fairly partisan Democrat who nonetheless argues for non-traditional solutions to problems (i.e. market incentives in environmental regulation and school choice with accountability in education) there is one area where I absolutely am at the left end of the U.S. political spectrum: Latin American policy. Having visited Nicaragua in 1991 and originally planning a career studying it, that then, probably inevitably, turned toward my long obsession with American politics, few places have the same draw on me.

My view on Latin America, and Central America in particular, is that we have never lived up to the Declaration of Independence there. We claimed to be supporting those who were freedom fighters, but were really thugs and rapists. In Nicaragua we met with Alfredo Cesar. He had originarlly been the spokesperson for the interim government after Somoza was thrown out and would become a leading opposition figure to the Sandanistas.

Cesar was interesting to me because he was highly critical of the Contras–far more than when he spoke to the American press. This comes up because a wonderful blog, Beautiful Horizons, that often concentrates on Latin America mentions Violetta Chamorro’s son who says this:

In Nicaragua, Reagan’s financial and military support for anti-government rebels “caused a lot of damage in our country, a lot of suffering, a lot of death and destruction,” said Carlos Chamorro, a journalist and political analyst, whose mother, Violeta Chamorro, became president in elections in 1990 that ended the rule of the Marxist-led Sandinistas.

“There might be a group that was supported by Reagan that may have a different memory of him. But I have the impression that a majority of the people will associate him with the war and with the destruction,” Chamorro said. The U.S.-backed war killed at least 20,000 people.

The Washington Post and Beautiful Horizons miss an important part of the story. Chamorro’s father, Violetta’s husband, was murdered, most likely by Somoza’s son–a kid who can be fairly compared to Saddam’s offspring. And he and his father were tools of the U.S. Government.

The Sandinistas were problematic. They were authoritarian and they did not accept free speech as they should. But the effort to destroy them that resulted in the raping of literacy workers and other wide ranging human rights abuses were not worth the effort. It was wrong.

Randy quotes Oscar Arias who is far more eloquent than I ever could be on the issue:

I know well you share what we say to all members of the international community, and particularly to those in the East and the West, with far greater power and resources than my small nation could never hope to possess, I say to them, with the utmost urgency: let Central Americans decide the future of Central America. Leave the interpretation and implementation of our peace plan to us. Support the efforts for peace instead of the forces of war in our region. Send our people ploughshares instead of swords, pruning hooks instead of spears. If they, for their own purposes, cannot refrain from amassing the weapons of war, then, in the name of God, at least they should leave us in peace.