Taking Note
MLD
COL."SONNY" SLOAN, U.S. CAVALRY, snapped his fingers. "We're used to overnight success and McDonalds. But that's just not the way you do guerrilla warfare." Dressed in camouflage fatigues...
...The Reagan years have taken us backward, but the fear and contempt need not be lasting...
...On July 19, 1979 we walked into the White House with mud on our shoes and used the familiar tu form, we patted them on the back and said we wanted to be their friend, we wanted a new relationship based on equality...
...The Reagan-Wright initiative hit the isthmus like a bucket of icy water, a parent trying to reign in a precocious child lest she stray too far...
...Dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots, Sloan looked a bit out of place in the office of the U.S...
...These three steps were designed to "retake the initiative from the Sandinistas...
...The Monroe Doctrine is fundamentally in question...
...By consistently blocking a negotiated peace, Reagan has shown his own lack of understanding of a trend exhibited earlier in broad, regional support for the Panama Canal treaties and for Argentina in its bid to retake the Malvinas...
...The contras, the diplomat added, were keeping their side of the bargain when Congress renewed aid in 1986 by moving into Nicaragua...
...Last spring's offensive had shown off their new skills: three schools, two health centers, some 90 homes torched...
...Ambassador to Honduras, Everett E. Briggs...
...Philip Habib, Reagan's special Central America envoy, resigned abruptly in late August...
...It is the emblem of the great promise of solidarity at the continental level, the most significant blow to the Monroe Doctrine since its creation...
...The Canal Treaty negotiations and Panama's sucess in animating Latin American support were poignant lessons...
...starting to fight...
...Reporters travelling with the combatants have described them in feudal terms, with groups of fighters loyal to a single commander...
...It had been exactly 13 months since their last hit...
...gUMAN BEINGS DO TERRIBLE THINGS "iout of fear," D'Escoto said...
...They should tell them it's not the end of the road...
...Ambassador to Honduras...
...the rest ignited...
...By the time he left office, Jimmy Carter had perhaps begun to understand this desire for a new relationship...
...The Americas south of the Rio Grande are no longer willing to remain backyard nations with limited rights to independence and sovereignty, to paraphrase Father D'Escoto...
...And in considering the contras' three-pronged mandate: The guerrillas have moved into northern Nicaragua in large numbers, but in Tegucigalpa a foreign human rights and relief worker told us that the men and their families are also moving into UN refugee camps in Honduras in large numbers...
...And judging from our brief visit, by focusing on civilian targets, the contra have made even less progress in "reestablishing links" with the peasantry...
...attack on May 25...
...I know we're vulnerable to the charge that we are against the Arias plan, but it's simply not true," he told us...
...government is frightened...
...The "pitched battle" was "the first time the contras went together operationally and went after a single target," another diplomat said...
...and "reestablishing links with the local population...
...And the U.S...
...It demonstrated a willingness to fight...
...diplomats in the region still weigh contra performance against the most minimal standards...
...We do pose a threat...
...Manuel Salvatierra, commander of Region 6, told us the counterrevolutionaries were better equipped and coordinated, their officers better trained, their fire power and intelligence capacity greatly improved...
...Sandinista military men say the insurgents are showing no more readiness to engage in combat...
...The school and health center were destroyed...
...U MLD Martha Doggett has just returned from a trip to Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Belize...
...Father D'Escoto, recalling the waning years of the British Empire, wished the British would offer Washington some counsel...
...f' ONTADORA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT political phenomenon in the history of Latin America since the independence of our countries," Nicaragua's foreign minister, Miguel D'Escoto, told us as we met in a conference room off his office at MINEX...
...Perhaps the most revealing commentary on the Administration's commitment to the peace process came unwittingly from U.S...
...A young soldier gestured toward the lush, green hills where the contra had grouped for their 5 a.m...
...This time the victims numbered 11...
...Sloan, who heads up the 11-person Military Group in Tegucigalpa, was encouraged by the contras' recent and much-heralded attack at San Josd de Bocay in Nicaragua's northern Jinotega province, while allowing that "militarily it was a draw...
...Nobody has worked harder than Habib to promote Arias...
...Despite years of hostilities and U.S...
...portable medicines were carried away...
...Perhaps on some gut level, Reagan Administration officials have grasped the significance of Contadora and the Arias plan, the implications of growing unity and independence throughout Latin America and the Caribbean...
...tutelage, U.S...
...Rumor has it he was serious about letting diplomacy work...
...Perhaps this explains what could only be seen as an eleventh-hour attempt to wrest control of the peace process from the Central Americans...
...President Daniel Ortega posed it more starkly...
...The 38 families who live at the Mancotal resettlement above Matagalpa were less impressed with what Sloan had called the contras' "new level of confidence...
Vol. 21 • May 1987 • No. 3
