The Hoosier Pulse/Stealing It Fair and Square
Owen, Kent
AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS 9 - J PILGRIMS FROM THE HEARTLAND The wind whips up the dust on the road and tousles Sister Mary Hartman's iron-gray hair as she describes the unique qualities of...
...Wednesday: Our initiation into the revolutionary process begins at the program's Managua residence with a slide Joan Frawley reports on Central America for the National Catholic Register...
...The generic World War II movie, for example, is about a small band of men, from almost every conceivable ethnic group, battling what always appeared to be a better-armed, smarter, and terrifying enemy, and winning anyway...
...Now, they're hearing four assertions about the Sandinista reforms that don't add up: first, that the Sandinistas have inherited 21 percent of the land from Somoza and his cronies...
...We have not been here for twenty-four hours andalready we sense that the Sandinistas' achievements must be measured by different, perhaps metaphysical, standards...
...compound total return ''~ * " " " ''~ i~ ~.~ ClvClt ~ 1 4.1...
...And that mistake was not involvement, it was defeat...
...There, according to our tour literature, we observed "the reality of poverty and injustice in Latin America" and examined its "root causes" through interviews with human rights groups, peasants, liberation theologians, and government spokesmen...
...Depending on his daring and politics, the traveler to Nicaragua can participate in a voluntary work brigade and pick cotton or coffee, go to the Honduran border and protest U.S...
...We sit in our pews and wait for the signal that we'll depart for our dinner at a local restaurant...
...When we ask why the FSLN acronym appears in the title of most government agencies and the popular militias, they explain that the label does not suggest party control, but patriotism...
...What they like is the familiarity...
...But naturally, they know the political reasons for malaria and other diseases...
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...some spent their youth on family farms...
...The evil bureaucrat in charge of the operation explains it to Rambo's C.O.: "Do you really want us to open that wound again...
...Jack Nelson doesn't know...
...During our regular "reflection" periods, we "shared feelings" about political and economic options for the region's ills...
...The moving and beautifully acted Uncommon Valor is far and away the best of the four, so it is not as if people were going to see these movies for the novelty...
...It is the fourth movie in three years to feature a story about a Vietnam veteran going back to Indochina to bring back some of those still listed as "missing in action...
...cotton and coffee brigadistas troop to the microphone and express their enthusiasm for the revolutionary process...
...Most urge lobbying at congressional district offices and participation in protests against the renewal of covert aid...
...These are Rambo's words at the beginning of the movie, and they are the film's most important...
...But this time our program directors, immersed in the revolutionary process, have forgotten to prepare us for the confrontation with the other Nicaragua: the Sandinista mobs, the house-to-house searches for draft dodgers, the harassment of dissenters...
...Period covered is from December 31, ] 974 through Decem[~.'r 3 ] 1984 Tbeannua[rateoftolalreturndoesvarvandrangedduringh e1 )-re I~' c r)m +4 3'!, in 1980 to -- I. 1% in 1984 18 16% 10 year annual ,. J1171/= 77 CItlcP Dfll.3~l' 11...
...Embassy...
...Sunday...
...At the granja we're about to inspect, an inmate is an "intern," not a "prisoner...
...He insists that U.S...
...When I get back home and talk about the issues, conservatives are going to ask about the problems here and I've got to have some answers," gripes the university professor, who has put aside his bicycle tour plans after observing the country's mountainous terrain...
...economic and military initiatives in the region...
...Watts) 1-800-325-8180 (All Other States) Or Write: Drexel Burnham "~ambert Ann: Tony Kirk, ls...
...That afternoon, we take a brief walking tour through our neighborhood...
...Far from being terrified of "another Vietnam," audiences seem to relish the sight of Americans back in Indochina correcting their past mistake...
...The program directors have heard the grumblings about the tour's pro-government militancy and they want to share feelings...
...The army is the new class...
...Although physicians and medicines are still in short supply, the woman says, that does not lessen the importance of the government's ideological support for health rights: The Sandinistas "declared that health is a right of everybody, that health is a responsibility of the government with the people's organizations...
...But our litany of complaints continues...
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...We must ask," he tells his primarily foreign audience of Americans and Europeans, "how do we become new people through the revolution and new people through Christ...
...The priest who celebrates the mass is the unofficial leader of the pro-government "popular church...
...The distinction, she implies, reflects the government's subtle effort to mold new men for the new Nicaragua...
...Our guide senses a residue of disbelief, and urges us to talk informally with the workers for confirmation...
...These Minnesotans understand land...
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...hemispheric dominance...
...Today we attend a Catholic church service which Sara NelsonPallmeyer describes as a "campesino mass without any campesinos...
...The events of each movie are telegraphed at the beginning, and thus are rather predictable: Men tramp through the jungle, find a small crew of MIAs in prisoner-of-war camps, fight their way out, and get them home...
...Our doubts are confirmed when we search for the bathroom and chance upon the servants' squalid living quarters...
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...Someone asks if the seamstress gets paid according to the piecework she completes...
...Indeed, the commission's representative seems to be the gatekeeper to an entirely different world...
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...Sister Hartman's audience consists mostly of Minnesotans on a "travel seminar" organized by the Minneapolisbased Center for Global Service and Education, and sponsored by the World Hunger Task Force of the Lutheran Church of America's Minnesota Synod and the Lutheran Social Ministry of Arizona...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS 9 - J PILGRIMS FROM THE HEARTLAND The wind whips up the dust on the road and tousles Sister Mary Hartman's iron-gray hair as she describes the unique qualities of the Sandinista government's model prison farms...
...When we ask about the food shortages or the expulsion of the ten foreign priests, they insist ultimate blame lies with the U.S., not the Sandinistas...
...The former national coordinator of the Politics for Food Program with Clergy and Laity Concerned, Nelson is the author of Hunger for Justice: The Politics of Food and Faith...
...A representative of the government human rights commission, Sister Hartman attacks the independent commission as a nest of counterrevolutionaries and insists there are not over 2,000 political prisoners, as the commission reported, but a mere 300 or so--mostly ex-national guardsmen...
...conditions change...
...Then the son pipes up...
...Sara presents a decidedly cheerful interpretation of government policies...
...His lecture begins on the right foot with a short history of failed U.S...
...In the evening, Jack NelsonPallmeyer, the program's co-director, offers a lecture on the Sandinistas' economic policies...
...Murals depicting the FSLN flag and the party's founder, Carlos Fonseca, decorate the church wall...
...Delivered by a burly woman from the government's Center of Information and Accessory Services for Health, the presentation provides us with statistics on the inadequacy of Anastasio Somoza's social programs and the subsequent liberality of the Sandinistas' free health care...
...Thursday: With Sara NelsonPallmeyer, the program's co-director, 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 and a Sandinista union representative who serves as our guide, we explore a state-owned textile factory visited weekly by tour groups...
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...Do you think she's translating his words correctly, or do you think she's toning it down...
...Saturday: Early in the morning we set off for the city of Leon...
...one of the pastors whispers...
...Just like you did in World War II," he says...
...Without their careful guidance, the testimony on economic pluralism begins to unravel...
...Free reinvestment of all dividends and capital gain distributions...
...She admits that some Nicaraguans, like Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, are unhappy with the revolution, but that's because they don't live the Gospel and so can't adjust to the new Nicaragua...
...The first, Uncommon Valor, was released at Christmastime 1983 with almost no publicity and starring only Gene Hackman, who is far from a boxoffice draw these days...
...There's something screwy about the agrarian reform numbers...
...the action is...
...Now, responding to our guide's enthusiasm, we almost feel the shacks' allure of revolutionary austerity, defiant in the face of the U.S.-inspired dependency that plagues the region...
...The interview serves as one of our few opportunities to taste the revolutiori's bitter fruits...
...The few arguments he does offer are neutralized during a subsequent interview with a handsome, articulate FSLN spokesman...
...Their plots are almost identical, based largely on the exploits of former Green Beret Col...
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...crime-watch groups...
...The slides document the health brigadistas" unusual and rudimentary approach to preventive medicine, which seems to attest to the revolution's benign, homegrown origins...
...Then it's back to a presentation on post-revolutionary daycare, followed by refreshments at a former "bourgeois social club" rehabilitated into a "revolutionary discodiscotheque," and lunch at a restaurant cooperative run by reformed prostitutes...
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...7701 Forsyth Blvd., Ste...
...So when Rambo (who has lost his camera in a mild contretemps with some pirates) takes one of the MIAs out of the camp 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985...
...aggression, not Marxist ideology, is to blame for such political controls as the "burden" of censorship...
...There the machinery for channeling newly inspired activism remains solidly in place, and will not soon be dislodged by a few hardened skeptics...
...The lack of balance irks even our group's firm Sandinista supporters...
...But these Christians' strict adherence to Sandinista doctrine raises suspicions about their commitment to social justice...
...Public opinion (possibly generated by Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action, though this is left unstated) has demanded a complete accounting of our soldiers...
...The war movie is one of Hollywood's traditional pay-dirt boxoffice winners, and each war has its own kind of movie with its own kind of plot, made and remade and remade still again...
...we won't advance this tropical revolution as a prophetic model for its Latin neighbors...
...Sharing isn't easy," she explains...
...I will read the material carefully before I invest or send money...
...We volunteer to pick cotton, to join the militias, to work in the Sandinista Defense Committees," says one of the middleclass Christian leaders, "because we believe we must offer an example, and because we see the revolution is addressing the problems of the poor...
...But our program directors have not 9 Professional management by Kemper Financial Services...
...America, she says, is like "Germany in the thirties...
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...One letter remarks: "We have had special insight into the struggle and hope in Central America...
...Much to the wonderment of everyone in Hollywood, Uncommon Valor was the thirdlargest hit of the season, making $70 million at the box office, in the spring of 1984, Chuck Norris's Missing in Action also proved to be a surprise monster hit, occasioning an extraordinarily rapid sequel, MIA H, in December 1984...
...second, that the revolution has launched a moderate land reform program that respects economic pluralism and does not unfairly expropriate any property...
...Compared with most of the 17,000 U.S...
...The woman acknowledges that her paycheck does reflect her productivity...
...has come to spring him from jail to go back to Vietnam and do reconnaissance...
...Under a sunny Cuernavaca sky, we made crayon drawings which expressed our frustration with Mexico's static poverty and our guilt over U.S...
...The brash, prophetic style of Sister Mary Hartman restores us to the official version of Nicaraguan life...
...The Catholic deacon, a member of the pacifist Catholic Worker movement, leans over and whispers, "Where do I join the contras...
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...3ir, do we get to win this time...
...called Rambo: First Blood Part II, a hilariously lamebrained and preposterous Sylvester Stallone vehicle that improves on most other Stallone vehicles by keeping Sylvester's mouth almost entirely shut and his pectorals almost constantly flexing...
...The factory owner says he has no problems with the government, though he knows foreign aggression may force the regime to take complete control over the means of production...
...about how badly Americans have treated the Vietnam veterans, and is, Christlike, sent to jail for their sins...
...Several blocks down, we encounter a few dilapidated barrio dwellings, similar to the ones we'd deplored in Mexico and Salvador...
...But though public opinion demands answers, Washington wants the issue to die completely...
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...The factory produces 40 percent of the country's leather...
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...estment Manager and Principal Underwriter._ . . . . . I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 25 not accompanied us to Leon...
...We find Rambo on a chain gang, where he has been sent because of the transgressions he committed in First Blood, the 1982 movie to which Rambo is the sequel...
...By the time we met Sister Hartman we had already spent a week in Cuernavaca, Mexico and San Salvador, El Salvador...
...Afterwards, someone asks our speaker whether the brigadistas receive any political education...
...He carefully outlines government human rights violations: torture, political prisoners, censorship, and religious persecution...
...So when Hollywood wanted to make a generic Vietnam war movie, i~ had to figure out just how to do it without getting bogged down in a defeat...
...By film's end, the town is a wreck, Rambo has made a passionate speech to his former C.O...
...Our contingent doesn't belong among these fervent believers...
...It limited exposure to Third World elements but guaranteed plenty of photo opportunities and statistics to beef up parish slide shows, testimonials, and visits to congressional district offices...
...The harried consular official who paces in front of us provides only a perfunctory explanation for the Reagan Administration's opposition to the regime...
...A bit later she condemns U.S...
...As we head for the door, the lanky Lutheran theologian pauses to note my Catholicity and remark, "Just remember she's one of yours...
...We're learning to torture the central nervous system...
...Industrial strikes are unnecessary now as unions and management work with a common purpose...
...by Joan Frawley show on the government's health reforms...
...A late afternoon meeting with progovernment Christian community leaders does little to lift our spirits...
...A message many of us return with is to 'tell the people and the government of the United States what you saw.' This is the time to do it...
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...aggression, take Spanish and political education classes...
...Could our questions about poverty and injustice be resolved in our imminent confrontation with the Sandinista revolution...
...Finally, Rambo decides that he has had enough, and brings to bear on the town all of the skills he perfected in the jungles of Vietnam...
...This brilliant gambit is most powerfully demonstrated by an excrescence John Podhoretz is an editor and critic at the Washington Times...
...His approach excludes the emotional outbursts and political appeals that typify most human rights presentations on our tour...
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...third, that it has distributed land titles to 40,000 families...
...As I write, Rambo is raking in about $25 million a week across the country, and should it continue at this pace it will end up as one of the most successful movies ever made...
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...I do it for the state," she says...
...Just over a month after our return, the "travel seminar alumni" mailings begin...
...The first week's program encouraged a sense of optimism as we anticipated our final stop in Managua...
...In Rambo, his C.O...
...36 II~A~ 21~ 21Vi- , J23 13~ Clevl~l m.4O 15...
...Clad in tight designer jeans, aviator glasses clipped onto his Lacoste T-shirt, the son smirks at the irony of his father's tolerance for thegovernment's strict controls...
...But we soon discover that our peculiar reaction will have no impact on our tour's Minnesota headquarters...
...or he can simply meet with government officials, church and development organizations, and opposition groups...
...Like most of his colleagues, he came to the country with a tolerance for bold, young revolutions...
...20 percent of its production is devoted to combat boots...
...No one in the group speaks much Spanish' so our guide turns to a nearby seamstress...
...The Sandinista Defense Committees, the network of neighborhood political organizations, officially called the "eyes and ears of the revolution," are compared with U.S...
...Vice Pres...
...citizens who have surfaced in Managua since 1979 we were stodgily mainstream, reflecting the Lutheran Church's liberal, not to say radical, politics...
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...and fourth, that the government still owns 18 percent of the land...
...Friday...
...aid to the contras...
...During the homily's "dialogue" session, U.S...
...There are twenty of us: a Lutheran bishop, a handful of other Protestant pastors, a Catholic deacon, several social workers, as well as a tire dealer, a theologian, a real estate saleswoman, a retired painting contractor, and a university professor who hopes to lead a bicycle tour of the country...
...Like many recent visitors to Nicaragua, our group traveled as pilgrims rather than tourists...
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...One slide depicts a young brigadista writhing on the floor, simulating the painful effects of a tropical malady...
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...Bo Gritz, who led a widely publicized hunt through Laos for MIAs and POWs in 1981...
...We have been promised an interview with a leather factory owner who will testify on behalf of the country's pluralistic economy...
...Finally, the older man admits, "The educated people, the bourgeoisie, are constantly threatened as a class...
...The factory inspection's upbeat tone is not sustained during a meeting at the independent (non-government) Permanent Human Rights Commission...
...And, with its typical ingenuity, Hollywood came up with a solution: It just requires our going back to Indochina in the 1980s and fighting the war over again, on a small scale to be sure, and getting it right for once...
...Before, we had been prepped on the correct interpretation of opposition viewpoints...
...How can the government create so many new land owners by relinquishing only 3 percent...
...They are not well-educated, but they are powerful...
...First Blood had the Special Forces veteran wandering aimlessly through America and getting mistreated and roughed up by the populace of a small northwestern town...
...She asks that visitors "demonstrate sensitivity" by not asking interns why they've been imprisoned, "or anything else about their pasts, which they have put behind them...
...Annual compound total return is based on c hanges in net asset value ~ith all rn( ~)me dividends and capital gain distributions reinvested, and atter adjustment for an 8 :~% initial sales charge...
...But that is not why she works so hard...
...We can't help noting Sara Nelson-Pallmeyer's sour expression as she translates the commission's figures...
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...The brigadistas are too busy for much classroom work," she brusquely replies...
...The answer is simple: We lost, and a war movie about defeat is not something anybody wants to see...
...Our group chose the latter route...
...In the end, they promise to dampen their revolutionary passions and we promise to curb our nasty remarks about their ideological commitments...
...In Leon, these remarkg ~ are the closest we come to the gritty facts of real people's lives...
...But as the figures documenting the Sandinista government's subsequent largesse are displayed on the blackboard, the audience grows restive...
...It requires conversion...
...Yet, Sara's obvious bias chafes against his sense of fair play, and the rumor about her devious translating spreads...
...In the afternoon we drive to the U.S...
...While the businessman makes his case, his young U.S.-educated son stands by...
...Most of us stop taking notes...
...THE TALKIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . ~ TWENTY YEARS TOO LATE by John Podhoretz It has long been a matter of discussion why Hollywood hasn't made more movies about Vietnam...
...Though our tour literature promised a balanced series of encounters with both Sandinista representatives and opposition groups, this is one of the few exceptions to the pro-FSLN drumbeat we hear repeated throughout our stay...
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...As we inspect the factory, which primarily produces underwear for the armed forces, she blithely repeats our guide's endorsement of the advances that the statecontrolled unions have made in labor relations...
...He is only to go in from their base of operations in Thailand, take photographs, and get out...
...We scribble down statistics on the extent of Somoza's greed...
Vol. 18 • July 1985 • No. 7
