Reviews
Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 by William M. LeoGrande, The University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 790 pp., $39.95 (hardcover). This exhaustive account of...
...The Iran-Contra scandal and the end of the Reagan years resulted in a chance for diplomacy to end the conflicts...
...As LeoGrande points out, the final settlements reached were essentially identical to the peace proposals undermined by the United States in the early 1980s...
...In the end, Reagan and his lieutenants proved so unrelenting in their pursuit of military victory that they repudiated all attempts at diplomacy and peaceful resolution...
...I've been here 12 years and I'm barely starting to understand...
...Eight months," is the off-camera reply...
...Peace was finally achieved, but at great cost to the people of both nations...
...With vivid portraits of characters ranging from "the Gipper" himself to Al "I'm in Charge" Haig, to the redoubtable Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the book provides a riveting blow-by-blow account of the ensuing battles...
...And while it clearly has a point of view, it does not tell viewers what to believe, making it an excellent tool for discussion and education...
...The film vividly illustrates the plight of ordinary villagers who sympathize with the Zapatista cause but who live outside of Zapatista jurisdiction and are therefore protected by no one...
...The film's excellent cinematography and contemporary musical score should make it attractive to a general viewership...
...The exchange is comical, yet it illustrates the underlying truth to the complexity of the shifting political and social landscape in Chiapas...
...There's no border here...
...They were willing to disregard the will of the Congress, violate the Constitution and engage in criminal acts-like running arms to the Nicaraguan Contras-in their zeal to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and keep the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) from power in El Salvador...
...Towards the end of Nettie Wild's A Place Called Chiapas, the elusive Subcomandante Marcos makes an appearance in the pre-dawn hours before the Day of the Dead...
...What have you been doing all this time...
...Off camera, we are told that they threatened to kill Mexican members of Wild's crew, and in a village they controlled, sent rocks showering on the crew...
...Cold War adventure is destined to become a definitive source on the subject...
...He confronts the Canadian film maker directly...
...Marcos laughs...
...How long have you been here...
...A Place Called Chiapas A Film by Nettle Wild, Canada Wild Productions, 90 minutes...
...Bernardo Ruiz...
...This exhaustive account of the last major U.S...
...From the waning weeks of the Carter Administration through the tumultuous and bellicose Reagan years, to the seeming "normalcy" of the Bush administration, LeoGrande provides the in-depth story of the ideologically inspired battle to keep leftist insurgents from toppling U.S.-sponsored dictatorships...
...On camera they accuse the Zapatistas of refusing to use peaceful political means...
...This set the stage for a battle between moderate "pragmatists" in both Congress and the State Department and Reagan's team of hard-line anti-Communists intent upon rolling back these newest outposts of the "Evil Empire...
...While interviewing these villagers, Wild also films the ironically named paramilitary group, Peace and Justice, whose members threaten pro-Zapatista villagers with violence...
...Why a passport ?" she asks the police...
...The key to the puzzle of the U.S...
...Wild uses her foreigner status to skillful ends, maneuvering through the quagmire of Chiapas politics...
...Wild also interviews Jorge Kanter, head of the anti-Zapatista Ranchers Association, and, refraining from any prejudgement of the landowners' position, allows him to speak for himself...
...You've much to learn," he begins...
...When she and her crew are stopped at a checkpoint and asked for their passports, Wild uses her ingenuity as an outsider to ask a more probing question...
...obsession with events in Nicaragua and El Salvador was the election of Ronald Reagan, a president committed to reigniting the Cold War and determined to see the United States overcome the "Vietnam syndrome" in foreign policy...
Vol. 32 • January 1999 • No. 4
