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Out of Sync
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20389 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1992 |
4,326 Words |
| Author
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Daniel James
Daniel James has written extensively on Cuba. He is the author
of Cuba: First Soviet Satellite in the Americas and Che
Guevara: a Bibliography, and editor-translator of The Complete
Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents. |
BLOOD OF BROTHERS
Life and War in Nicaragua
Stephen Kinzer
New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1991
450 pp., $ 24.95
THE CONTRAS, 1980-199
A Special Kind of Politics
R. Pardo-Maurer
Washington, D.C. CSIS Books, 1991
151 pp., $ 34.95
"It was all so cozy. I was in Managua filing stories for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. Karen DeYoung, the regular Post correspondent, was sharing a house with several other journalists, and invited me to move in. Besides Karen, the reporters living there were Alan Riding of the New York Times, Bernard Diederich of Time magazine." The writer, Stephen Kinzer, then twenty-six and on his maiden visit to Nicaragua, was beside himself with joy. He had found housemates who were liberal soulmates as well.
Kinzer continues, breathlessly:
Most mornings began with a search for news about Nicaragua on the Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Havana Over breakfast, we would discuss what seemed to be happening, and try to decide how best to cover it. Alan had good ties to some well-informed Sandinistas, and he telephoned one of their strategists [future Sandinista vice-president] Sergio Ramirez…. To find out what was new. He and Karen circulated in opposition circles, and were able to piece together a fairly coherent picture of guerrillea strategy. While they were moving among hideouts, Bernie [Diederich] mingled with National Guard officers and [Somoza] government officials, trying to learn their plans that left me with the job of circulating around Managua to view damage interview victims, and try to judge how much of the city was under control of one side or the other.
For this unusual "inside" glimpse into how the independence of major U.S. media was subverted, by journalists who collectively processed news on the Nicaraguan conflict with a common ideological stamp, we are indebted to Kinzer's new book, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. It encompasses a decade of reporting on Nicaragua, during which Kinzer rose from free-lance to bureau chief of the New York Times and reflects the same pro-Sandinista bias as his
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