No place to be neutral:

...after a three-month training period in Puerto Cabezas, they were allowed to return to Musuwas...

...Having helped out Steadman Fagoth in 1981, Lopez was arrested by Sandinista authorities late that year or early in 1982 and sentenced to fifteen years in prison...

...In the course of a massive counterinsurgency operation in Morazan province in December 1981, troops entered El Mozote and massacred more than 480 residents, many of them women and children...

...Eran was said to travel frequently to the mining town Bonanza, which Misura considered grounds for suspicion...

...Because the guerrillas had succeeded in winning over some Indians to their cause, all Indians became subversives in the eyes of the Guatemalan military...

...But the Salvadoran army did not see it that way...

...The fifteen had recently repatriated to Nicaragua and were traveling back to their original village of Musuwas to clear the ground for planting when Palacios descended on them...

...His crime was to remain neutral...

...Palacios quickly "escaped" from confinement in Honduras and returned to his terror tactics...

...It peaked in February 1981, when the Sandinistas arrested most of the Indian communities' leaders who had announced audacious demands for Atlantic coast autonomy...

...Others hid for months in the mountains of Nicaragua...

...Their numbers reduced to less than 10,000, the Sumus now speak openly about their possible extinction...

...If you are with us, we'll feed you...

...They said they would kill us the same way they had killed Rodolfo,'' the Sumu told Donald Strome, Jr., a volunteer with the World Relief Corporation, "that if you stay in Nicaragua you're a Sandinista...

...This state of more or less blissful ignorance by the authorities ended abruptly with the Sandinista revolution of 1979...

...In early December, 1987, Palacios kidnapped six Sumus from Musuwas, forcing them to march with his troops to Honduras...

...In doing so, the British placed the Miskitos, with their new supplies of guns and machetes, in a position to tyrannize the other Atlantic coast Indians, who had only bows and arrows...

...In Honduras, Lopez was detained for weeks by the police intelligence section, the Direction National de Investigation, where he was badly tortured, receiving electric shocks on his eyes...

...It began with efforts to"incorporate'' the coast, making its people appreciate a revolution they had nothing to do with...

...Protestant evangelical residents of El Mozote, El Salvador, apparently believed their neutrality and religion protected them from the ravages of that country's guerrilla war...

...Long after the British were gone, the Miskitos dominated the Atlantic coast...

...Eight managed to escaped the first night, five remain unaccounted for, and the remainder were freed only after intense pressure from international relief and human rights organizations...

...Yet both the government and the contras appeared determined to force the Sumus to choose sides...

...On May 24, 1986, Palacios and his men kidnapped twenty-six Sumus from Tapalwas...

...The DNI released Lopez after the president of the Honduran Bar Association's human rights commission interceded on his behalf...

...On their way home, the unarmed men were murdered by Salvadoran troops, who threw their bodies into a well...

...some former Musuwas residents say he was shot trying to escape arrest...

...Thirty-two Sumus were rounded up and taken away by helicopter...

...In February 1987, Palacios and his fellow contra, Nacilio Miguel, seized a group of fifteen Sumus just outside of Bonanza, Nicaragua, and took them to Honduras...

...There is an opportunity now, with the Arias plan and the defeat of contra funds in the U.S...

...These days the army sometimes dresses in guerrilla garb while passing through villages, to see where residents' true sympathies lie...

...Often resisting intense pressure to choose sides, those who manage to remain neutral believe their best strategy for survival is to avoid making enemies...

...In Honduras, the Sumus encountered as great, if not greater troubles than they had experienced in Nicaragua...

...Beginning in 1984, the Sumus began searching for ways to escape from the grip of Misura...

...Apparently they believed the residents supported the guerrillas...

...The Sumus' troubles began in the late sixteenth-century, when the Spanish and British battled each other for control of the Americas...

...The story of the alienation of the coast people by the revolutionaries is well known...

...In March 1987 Ampino Palacios and his men killed three young Sumus who refused to continue on a forced march into Honduras after being seized with a group of some thirty-five Sumus in Nicaragua...

...While three of the fifteen were allowed to flee to Tapalwas, the rest were taken to Palacios's remote armed camp in Walakitan, Honduras...

...There are countless examples...

...The fate of small indigenous peoples has often been toyed with by nations at war, from Southeast Asia to the Middle East...

...The eastern Zelaya province did not formally become part of Nicaragua until 1894, but even afterwards, attracted little interest among the "Spanish" Nicaraguans of the West...

...The Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua for forty-five years, also ignored the sparsely populated Atlantic coast and its Indians...

...Some Sumus learned the hard way that contra death threats are not idle...

...Misura fighters captured Sumus seeking to move and threatened them with death...

...Congress, for the government and insurgents in Nicaragua to demonstrate their professed concern for the welfare of the people by allowing the Sumus to rebuild their lives, rather than forcing them to become casualties in a war they want no part of...

...Shortly after the arrests, the mercurial Miskito leader and former Somoza agent, Steadman Fagoth, formed the Indian contra force, Misura, as several thousand young Miskitos crossed the border into Honduras...

...Witnesses say the troops stayed three days, confiscating everything of value, knocking coconuts out of trees with automatic weapons, and installing themselves in the church and school-house...

...They have suffered acutely when they have chosen sides, and just as badly when they chose not to choose...

...More dangerous still, they have brought a considerable drop in Sumu birth rates, prompting concern for the fragile group's survival...

...Sometimes to complete their mission they took twenty, sometimes they took fifteen...

...One little-noticed plank of the Arias plan commits Central American governments to "give urgent attention to the groups of refugees and displaced persons brought about by the regional crisis" and help those who want to return to their homes...

...Dozens of Sumus enlisted the help of UNHCR and the World Relief Corporation to relocate to a distant refugee camp called Nueva Musuwas...

...Yet conditions were hard in refugee camps, and by 1985, the Sumus began to filter back into Nicaragua, aided by the UNHCR...

...Other versions of these events hold the Sandinistas to blame for the killing of two Sumu women, Gloria Simion and Sindila Simion, up-river from Musuwas, as well as for the rape of two twelve-year-old girls...

...Forced recruitment by Misura became a permanent fact of life both in Mocoron, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees camp that became their first stop in Honduras, and in Tapalwas, the all-Sumu camp where most of the refugees moved in January 1983...

...The Sumus desperately need such attention and assistance...

...The breaking point came in late June or early July 1982, when several hundred Sandinista soldiers occupied Musuwas, reportedly in an effort to re-recruit the sixty young Sumus...

...The combination of pressure from Misura and fear of the Sandinistas prompted almost 2,000 Sumus to flee to Honduras...

...But the return home did not protect the Sumus from contra forced recruitment...

...By morning he was dead...

...Donald Strome, who was facilitating the Sumus' relocation, was repeatedly threatened as well...

...On the first day of the occupation, soldiers seized twentyfive-year-old Crecencio Tanacio (or Atanacio) and dragged him to the schoolhouse for questioning about his alleged involvement with Misura...

...In May 1987, five young Salvadoran men in San Miguel province succumbed to pressure from guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front to provide three days' worth of assistance...

...Then they took them again and again the Sumus deserted...

...Having spent the last five years in flight from government and contra forces, the Sumus want to return home...

...If the enemy were encountered, the Sumus would be the first to fall...

...Soon afterward, however, the Indian contra force Kisan (which had replaced Misura as Washington's favored Indian insurgent force) captured Lopez and turned him over to the Honduran army, with the improbable charge that he was a Sandinista spy...

...Palacios and two of his warriors, known as "zebra" and "jardin," were sentenced to seven-to-eight years in jail by a contra tribunal, according to the U.S.-funded Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights...

...Several mass kidnappings were carried out by Ampino Palacios, a Sumu warrior allied with Adolfo Calero's Nicara-guan Democratic Front (FDN...

...NO PLACE TO BE NEUTRAL THE PLIGHT OF THE SUMU INDIANS ANNE MANUEL One of the most tragic aspects of Central America's wars has been the victimization of people who try to stay neutral...

...During his incarceration, Lopez was badly beaten and he still bears a scar on his head from the abuse, according to Gotz von Houwald, the former West German ambassador to Nicaragua, foremost expert on the Sumus and a friend of Lopez's...

...An army officer quoted by Raymond Bonner in the New York Times described the prevailing military attitude towards peasants that lay at the heart of the guns and beans program: ANNE MANUEL is reports editor for Americas Watch in Washington, D.C...

...The Sumus remained on the periphery of the Miskito-Sandinista conflict, as their principal community, Musuwas, was located over thirty miles south of the border which had become the scene of the constant confrontations...

...if not, we'll kill you...

...Many Sumus were actually enslaved by the Miskitos and forced to participate in raids against the Spanish throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...

...Efforts by Sandinista militants to organize Sumu workers and propagandistic elements of the Sandinista literacy campaign damaged relations between the Sandinistas and the Sumus...

...In spite of this effort - in many cases because of it - Sumus have been kidnapped, forced to fight by both government and insurgent forces, tortured, and murdered...

...In Guatemala, thousands of Indians were massacred as the government of General Efrain Rios Montt imposed its "guns and beans" counterinsurgency campaign in the countryside...

...A series of bloody battles between the Miskito insurgents and the Sandinistas rocked northern Zelaya, and by early 1982 the Sandinistas responded with the massive relocation of Indian communities from their traditional villages on the Rio Coco to resettlement camps in the interior...

...Their effort has been thwarted by a lack of resources on the part of the Nicara-guan government, and by a campaign of terror by some contra forces...

...living their lives as they always have while their homes become battlegrounds...

...Eventually, the Sumus fled up to the headwaters of the coastal rivers, where they lived in total isolation, their population continuing to diminish...

...These forced recruitments terrorized the Sumus in Tapalwas...

...A Sumu who had been in Misura's logistics section recalled the lesson Sumus were supposed to glean from Eran's fate...

...Tanacio's interrogation began between 11:00 P.M...

...Yet by refusing to choose, they often win the suspicion and enmity of both sides...

...It would be a breakthrough not only for the Sumus but for all the peoples of the region.us but for all the peoples of the region...

...But many Sumus say Eran was killed because, like most of the Sumus in Musuwas, he had resisted pressure to join Misura or seek refuge in Honduras...

...Once living in thirty-two villages, the Sumus are now practically all housed in temporary camps: either the crowded and poorly supplied resettlement camps in Nicaragua or the equally destitute Honduran camps...

...The years of exile and forced relocation have devastated the Sumus' ethnic identity and cohesion...

...But such a tragedy could be avoided, if the Sandinistas and contras agree, in the spirit of the Arias plan, to allow the Sumus to return to their homes and patch up their broken lives in peace...

...Sixty were inducted against their will in 1981...

...Even the Honduran military had a hand in the persecution of Frank Lopez, a Sumu whose treatment typified the brutality the Sumus have experienced from all sides...

...Among the Sumus, there is a stoic sense of fatalism...

...They still could not move back to Musuwas because of continued fighting in the area...

...The contras attacked five Sumu communities - killing an infant and wounding six other Sumus - kidnapped fifty-eight others, and in Bonanza burned sheds where a group of Sumu lived...

...Shortly after the Sandinistas had left Musuwas, Misura forces entered the settlement and murdered a Sumu youth, Rodolfo Jacobo Eran, claiming he was a Sandinista spy...

...Seeking to shake Spain's grip on what is now Nicaragua and Honduras, the British armed the Atlantic coast Miskito Indians, crowned one of them the "Mosquito King,'' and urged them to attack Spanish settlements...

...In Nicaragua and Honduras, this process of victimization threatens the survival of the Sumu Indians, an indigenous group which - with the exception of one small rebel band - has sought desperately to stay out of the conflict...

...and midnight...

...These efforts enraged the Misura leadership...

...A Sumu who had been recruited by Misura described the situation to Strome, the World Relief worker: The Miskitos arrived in Tapalwas armed and carried away young men...

...By the middle of 1984, more than twenty-five Sumus had been killed in the war against the Sandinistas, and the Sumu mortality rate was an extraordinary 21 percent...

...By 1987, about half of the 1,800-2,000 Sumu refugees in Honduras had returned to Nicaragua...

...Once recruited, the Sumus were treated as dispensable and given the worst duties to fulfill, such as "walking point...

...During the same occupation, soldiers are said to have killed another young Sumu man named Miguel Benjamin...

...After three years, Lopez was released and moved to Honduras...

...Peasants and villagers in conflict-ridden areas of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, where guerrillas and soldiers demanding allegiance and assistance are a constant presence, know the finer points of this dilemma all too well...

...The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear...

...The Sumus' small number makes it difficult for them to survive being uprooted, forced to flee, and subjected to detention, torture, and murder...

...A December 20 sweep of the mining area of northern Zelaya province, hailed by the contras as their greatest military victory yet, further terrorized Sumus who had repatriated to Nicaragua...

...But the sentencing had little impact...

...The Miskitos cemented their domination of the coast through miscegenation with the dominant foreign culture, while the Sumus remained apart, their numbers dwindling as the Miskitos' swelled...

...The Nicaraguan war has shattered the Sumu way of life...

...Still others were swept up in the Sandinistas' massive relocation...

...Soon the CIA began training Miskito insurgents, according to former Washington Post correspondent Christopher Dickey...

...They took them and they deserted...

...Other Atlantic coast Indian tribes such as the Kukra and the Prinzu were long ago overcome by such difficulties...

...With the protection of the Honduran military, however, dozens of Sumus eventually made the trip to relative safety...

...But the most serious strain came from the drafting of young Sumu men...