In Review
Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador by Charles Clements, M.D. Bantam Books, 320 pp. $15.95 (cloth). A good number of Report readers will already have come across...
...Weakness and Deceit: U.S...
...There is the shy comandante Raul Hercules, who came to the FMLN through the pastoral work of priests like Rutilio Grande...
...But the predicaments of other regions were presented by contributors including Celso Furtado and Amartya K. Sen...
...13.95 (cloth...
...newspaper...
...Dorr interprets the term as a personal choice to address the structural injustices of poverty...
...They suffer headaches, eye strain, acid burns, chemical hypersensitivity and a range of as yet unspecified occupational illnesses...
...They are forced to submit to sexual harassment, while their relative "independence" stigmatizes them at home...
...Using hundreds of confidential cables and classified documents-some obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and some by additional meanscontrasted with his own eyewitness ac14 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS counts and accounts of other journalists in the field, Bonner convincingly argues the case that Washington has repeatedly misled and lied to the public to justify its own ill-conceived policies...
...Policy and El Salvador by Raymond Bonner...
...But Bonner has produced more than a memoir in this impressive book-he has written a detailed indictment of U.S...
...They are continuously exposed to carcinogenic acids, solvents and toxic vapors...
...7 (paper...
...The Nation Thief is a novelization of Walker's exploits, told by key actors' testimonies...
...Field Foundation, 46 pp...
...Option for the poor" is an ecclesiastical term which detractors define as the unlikely combination of Marxism and Latin American Catholicism, while advocates recognize the concept's Biblical roots and advocate its application throughout the developing world...
...the other medics who share Clements' rough field clinics, like the cantankerous Lupe and "the macho caricature" Marco with his uncomfortable designer jeans and aviator glasses...
...Air Force Academy, and a C-130 pilot in Southeast Asia in 1969-70...
...the city is visible from its slopes...
...Clements is a Quaker, and has taken seriously the Friends' message to "speak truth to power...
...And most movingly, there is Magdaleno, at 62 the oldest combatant on Guazapa, who decided to "incorporate" after his first meeting with the Christian peasant group FECCAS led to three days of torture at the hands of the Army ending in castration...
...But the characters do not convincingly pull this action together...
...All the by now traditional elements are there: twisted justifications for intervention, the eschewing of legality, the power of the press, the cheapness of native life compared even to that of American mercenaries...
...This society has made a cult of computers-those Weimaresque boxes that will one day elevate this civilization to an unknown plateau, and help us get the Russians...
...But the human component in the high tech industry betrays its inscrutable, futuristic facade...
...He arrived in El Salvador from the unlikeliest of backgrounds...
...It is a setting that is at times nightmarish, at times inspirational, at times wearying and banal...
...A clearer feeling for the impact of this venture upon the Nicaraguan people, is missing from this otherwise enjoyable book...
...Even at the end, the Salvadoreans fail to understand how this strange gringo can refuse to use a weapon, even when his experiences on Guazapa have led him to talk of "the enemy" rather than "the government...
...That is why, ultimately, it may be the most important book yet written about the war in El Salvador...
...In his own wry phrase, he was "an officer and a gentleman...
...There is Nico, the 12-year-old correo, or messenger...
...These illuminating personal encounters, together with the careful scrutiny of the previously undisclosed documents, make this book essential reading for all...
...This peculiar episode certainly lends itself well to fiction-and Houston's book is compelling reading, yet something is lost...
...11.95 (paper...
...The Nation Thief by Robert Houston...
...Victor L. Urquidi, the president of El Colegio de Mexico, addressed Latin American case histories...
...In an outline of proposals for aiding such development, Lernoux directs individuals and institutions to consciously protest this Administration's policies and to provide concrete support, via private Church channels, to the base community groups working in the region...
...He has spent much of the last year, since his return from El Salvador, crisscrossing the United States on the lecture circuit and speaking on radio and television talk shows...
...its sensibilities will be recognizable to almost any American eligible to vote in November...
...In the Nicaragua of the 1850s, a southern surgeon named William Walker led a series of forays into Central America that set a precedent for the shape of things to come...
...In the end, he was defeated, but only by the combined efforts of several Central American countries, the British Navy and Vanderbilt...
...Orbis Books, 328 pp...
...Most circuit boards are assembled by Third World women aged 17-25 who peer through microscopes for nine hours a day bonding chips to boards with fine gold strands...
...policy toward Central America, the seventh in a series of papers on policy issues to be funded by the foundation...
...The Rich and the Poor: Development, Negotiations and Cooperation-An Assessment edited by Altaf Gauhar...
...The author believes that working with the democratic grassroots organizations is an appropriate conduit for direct support and democratization...
...Fear and Hope: Toward Political Democracy in Central America by Penny Lernoux...
...no charge on individual orders (paper...
...His reports naturally sparked a considerable amount of controversy...
...The women are too savvy, the blacks too hip and the bigots too blatant...
...If Ray Bonner had written a book based solely on his experiences as a New York Times correspondent, that in itself would have constituted a major contribution to the literature on El Salvador's bloody civil war...
...By consciously opting for medical neutrality and pacificism, he is able to write of the Salvadorean revolution with a sense of distance that sets Witness to War apart from any other behind-the-lines report...
...The Field Foundation commissioned Penny Lernoux, an investigative journalist widely respected for her work on Latin America, to prepare a paper on past and present U.S...
...Once victorious, Walker turned against the Liberals, installed himself as president and sought to annex Nicaragua as a slave state...
...Clements describes that war in vivid detail, drawing on the field diaries he kept through aerial bombing raids, mass evacuations of civilians, all-night house calls and his own bouts with dysentery and malaria...
...For a year in 1982-83, Clements was doctor to 9,000 civilians and 1,000 guerrillas in villages around the Guazapa volcano, which lies just 20 miles from the capital of San Salvador...
...Institute for New Communications/ South End Press, 64 pp...
...Specifically, Bonner addresses the myths of El Salvador's much touted land reform program, of a moderate government beseiged by two extremes and soon to be under the leadership of the "centrist" Napoleon Duarte, and the death squads that allegedly operate outside of the highest levels of the Salvadorean officer corps...
...The Third World Foundation for Social and Economic Studies, 273 pp...
...Pantheon Books, 241 pp...
...Lernoux draws on her intimacy with the region-she has lived in Latin America for over 20 years-and her familiarity with its political relations with the United States to provoke a framework for democratic development...
...Bonner's findings are complemented by a range of in-depth interviews with the revolution's key personalities...
...3.75 (paper...
...Father Dorr is an Irish missionary priest who has done pastoral work throughout Africa and in Brazil and has studied at length the theology of development-that is, the extent to which the Roman Catholic Church is committed to supporting the poor or oppressed...
...Bonner's coverage of that nation, in a period framed by the 1979 coup and the 1982 Constituent Assembly elections, was the most thorough and compelling to appear in any U.S...
...Times Books, 391 pp...
...Most vital, it is a book for the as yet uncommitted reader...
...In Third World nations, they earn perhaps $1 a day...
...And Vanderbilt becomes the voice of reason...
...Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching by Donald Dorr...
...And it forms the backdrop for a gallery of characters who in their separate ways explain the origins of the revolution...
...Conditions are even worse in the garment industry, where many women turn to prostitution to supplement their pitiful incomes...
...Women in the Global Factory by Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich...
...In April 1983, the London-based Third World Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences invited 70 Third World scholars and statesmen to the first South-South conference in Beijing to review strategies of development adopted by Third World nations over the past 30 years...
...Every appalling aspect of the "global factory" is explored in this informative, simply stated and devastating report...
...He also took the unique step of confiscating Cornelius Vanderbilt's $2 million a year transit company...
...This is a remarkable and deeply moving book...
...He elaborated on some standard recommendations including: population control, autonomy, decentralized planning and technological development only with respect to the non-industrial sectors, with a set of interesting theses on Latin America's stunted and erratic economic growth...
...A good number of Report readers will already have come across Charlie Clements...
...Son of a military family, he was a distinguished graduate of the U.S...
...all five FMLN organizations have forces there...
...The reply is memorable: "We do not sing the song for you, gringo...
...He is never a full insider...
...Coverage of' the massacres at El Mozote in December 1981, in particular, provoked several attacks from the editorial page of' The Wall Street Journal, which bolstered its viewpoint by misquoting Bonner's casualty figures...
...Guazapa ("about the area of Denver, Colorado") is a microcosm of El Salvador's peasantbased war...
...on one occasion, he half-jokingly complains to a campesino about the lugubrious Salvadorean national anthem...
...16.95 (cloth...
...The key word in the book's title is "witness...
...policy toward El Salvador under both the Carter and Reagan Administrations...
...Most of the participants were Chinese and debate centered on that nation's development history...
...Future South-South conferences will expand on these themes...
...Walker and his "American Phalanx of Immortals," sailed to Nicaragua to fight for the Liberals against the Conservatives...
...This study analyzes specifically the teachings of the Vatican, beginning with the social encyclicals of Leo XIII, and continuing through to the works of John Paul II, providing a fascinating look at internal Church disputes over "theological dogmatism...
...They are non-union, manipulated by sexist and racist stereotypes and often live in cramped and restrictive company dorms...
Vol. 18 • May 1984 • No. 3
