4. Rus Rus
The aircraft was a silver, twin engine C‑47 "gooney bird," the workhorse twin-engine aircraft which had been hauling cargo and passengers since before WWII. The plane belonged to Setco Air, a company which was said by the Sandinistas to be a CIA proprietary in the tradition of Air America, the so‑called "civilian airline" which had been wholly owned by the CIA and had done so much of its hauling ‑ and some of its fighting ‑ in Southeast Asia. Christopher Robbins wrote in his 1979 book Air America that at one time that airline was the largest in the world.
I was never able to nail down the precise pedigree of Setco Air. Flaco would only say that the company was "very, very cooperative... they try in their own way to help with what we're trying to do."
The plane was loaded with several large, heavy sacks. Stewart said they contained a thousand pounds of rice and beans which he was donating to the Indians at Rus Rus. Most of the Indians there were Miskito; some were Sumo. (The anti‑Sandinista military organization there, MISURA, took its name from the first two letters of the Miskito, Sumo, and Rama tribes. The Rama lived farther down the Nicaraguan coast.)
Flaco and I talked as we flew. He had called Shooter and Perico over to see if they remembered what UNIR meant. (It was being floated as a new name for the contra umbrella organization.) They didn't, but both stopped to chat. My notebook has this quote from Shooter: "You can call it UNIR, FDN, whatever the fuck you want. But if I don't get to kill communists, I'm out." This was the kind of blunt honesty that journalists later came to value him for. He was unapologetic about what he did for a living, thoroughly enjoyed it, and didn't much give a shit who knew about it, except for the kind of information that might shut down the operation.
Perico didn't have much to say. I asked him how he chose his nombre de guerra, which I knew as a common name for small parrots in Central America. He said it was the name of the village he'd come from in Cuba. I didn't learn until later that "perico" was a Latin American slang term for cocaine.
Flaco said that UNIR included the major contra organization, the FDN, as well as MISURA and ARDE, or Alianza Revolucionaria Democrática, the organization headed by the charismatic former Sandinista guerrilla hero, Edén Pastora. (“Arde” is also the third person singular of the Spanish verb “to burn,” while “unir” is the infinitive “to unite.”) Pastora had electrified the world in 1978 when he led an astonishing raid on the National Palace, right in downtown Managua, capturing so many influential hostages that he was able to demand a sizeable ransom, an exchange of the hostages for Sandinista prisoners held in Somoza's jails, and get away clean. But following their revolution's triumph in July of 1979, Pastora had become disenchanted with the comandantes' increasingly leftist policies and ties with the Soviet bloc. His critics would claim that his objections grew more out of having his nose bent by not being given a position in the new government appropriate to his heroic status as "Comandante Zero," Commander Zero.
In any case, Pastora had broken off with the Sandinistas in Managua, calling himself and his band the only true followers of Sandino, formed ARDE, and began conducting guerrilla raids out of Costa Rican sanctuaries, and southern Nicaraguan hideouts, against Sandinista government forces. He managed to cause serious discomfort to the Sandinista leaders, though his small units were not as serious a military threat as the FDN operating out of Honduras. Managua was forced to allocate scarce resources along its southern border to deal with Pastora, a tiny version of the problem faced by Hitler in WWII when he tried to add the Soviet Union to his list of conquests, resulting in his having to fight a war on two fronts.
For the CIA, Pastora was a pain in the ass. They liked the idea of harassing the Sandinistas from two directions; what they didn't like was not being able to control Pastora. For Pastora's part, he needed recognition, arms, and money from the interna-tional community; but not, he claimed, at the price of the independence of his movement. He insisted that alignment with the two elephants playing Cold War politics with their country was what was hurting Nicaraguans most.
As Flaco spoke with me on that C‑47 from Tegucigalpa to Rus Rus, he was particularly animated about the issue of Pastora. His manner seemed to indicate that a decision was then being made about how to deal with Pastora, and that some sort of showdown was imminent. Months later, I would have cause to regret not having taken more notes during that part of our conversation aboard the plane. In my notebook, I have two direct quotes from Flaco regarding Pastora. One is "They've made a dozen attempts, and he just don't cooperate." "They" was understood, in the context of our conversation, to mean some unspecified people calling the shots in Washington regarding Central America.
The other direct quote regarding Pastora from Flaco's comments on the plane is that the unspecified situation then playing itself out between Pastora and whoever "they" were in Washington constituted "Pastora's last chance." Terrell repeated those words, or others to that effect, several times during the week. Adams would make similar comments. All this took place, of course, only a few months after the attempt to assassinate Pastora with a bomb at a press conference on May 30 of the previous year at La Penca, in southern Nicaragua. Besides injuring Pastora and some of his guerillas, that bomb had killed three journalists and wounded more than a dozen others.
The C‑47 banked steeply; I looked down the wing at a small cluster of wood‑framed, metal‑roofed buildings beside a red dirt road, and had a startling flashback of flying into the Special Forces camp at Mangbuk, in the Vietnamese highlands, over sixteen years before. Someone said it was the village at Rus Rus. At 11:03, less than five minutes later, we touched down on a straight stretch of the red dirt road a few miles away. "Suave," someone said: soft landing.
We climbed out and piled our gear off to the side of the road. We were immediately approached by a patrol of 3 or 4 Honduran soldiers, but they seemed neither surprised nor alarmed by our presence. I made a questioning motion with my camera, and one soldier stood obligingly at attention alongside the C‑47 while I took his picture. He seemed unconcerned that he was giving me photographic evidence of his government's knowledge of activities taking place on its soil which it claimed were not.
The area was a grassy savannah, flat to gently rolling, sprinkled with sparse young pine trees. We sat on our duffel for nearly three hours waiting for a vehicle ‑ our circling over Rus Rus had been the signal for them to start toward us. We brushed aside cartridge casings (M16, AK47, and .308, which is the civilian equivalent of the 7.62mm NATO round used in the M14 rifle and M60 machine gun), stetched out, napped, talked, took pictures of one another. Maco Stewart was perched on his duffel bag reading Robert Heinlein.
Larry Pino was saying he remembered stories of his people, generations earlier, taking journeys as long as ten years to this part of the country in search of parrot feathers. I heard Shooter talking with a couple of the Indians, saying "I love it down here. There's no law..." except the gun, or except strength: something like that. Flaco told us we were only a few kilometers from the Nicaraguan border.
We were driven to a camp where we were directed to a large olive drab tent and told to claim a cot. I looked the place over and immediately grabbed a cot nearest one of the two tent openings.
"You got a thing about doorways too, huh?" It was Shooter, dropping his gear onto the other cot near the opening. We began to chat, discovering that we were both ex‑Marines and Vietnam vets. He said he'd been there for a short time in the early 1970's. As we talked, he picked up an expensive‑looking black and chrome briefcase, set it on top of his gear, and snapped it open. Inside, in its custom‑fitted velvet nest, was an Israeli‑made 9mm Uzi submachine gun, along with a folding stock and two long magazines. He took it out, snapped the heavy wire stock into place, slid a magazine into the receiver, slapped it home, and pulled back the bolt, chambering a round. He did all this with the easy dexterity of an experienced secretary dialing a touch‑tone phone. He also took from his duffel bag a pistol belt with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol in a black nylon holster with a Velcro flap. He loaded the pistol and strapped it on. Good system, he explained: two weapons firing the same cartridge. Easy resupply.
Before we'd settled in, it was decided that we shouldn't stay there after all. Back in the pickup, back on the red dirt road. We came to another, larger camp comprised only of tents, save one tiny pole structure with a barred door which had obviously been a jail cell. This was one of several such camps slightly removed from the Rus Rus river, but generally referred to by its name. The Indians thereabouts pronounced the name "Roos' Roos'," with a softly rolled initial r and a sibilant, near ‑ "sh" sound at the end. I took it to be an onomatopoetic mimicry of the sound of the river flowing.
The camp was unoccupied when we arrived. On the way in we passed a small sign that read HOGAR DEL TEA (HOME OF TEA). I remembered reading an article in Soldier of Fortune magazine about Tropas Especiales Atlánticas, which the article had said was MISURA'S version of Special Forces.
Fiske, Stewart, the four Indians and I were given a military surplus pyramidal tent with canvas army cots. The three mercenaries moved into a nearby tent with steel‑springed bunks. They all changed into camouflage fatigues, and all were now armed. Shooter had his Uzi and pistol, Flaco had a similar pistol, and Perico carried an M16 rifle.
Stewart immediately grabbed an entrenching tool, went outside the tent, and began energetically digging at the hard, rocky ground. He said that he had been in the Marine Corps – late in the Korean War, I believe – and was digging himself a fighting hole, just in case. Several Miskito Indians gathered around and looked on with bemused expressions. We came outside the tent to watch. Shooter walked up and stood with folded arms. He turned and said to me in a stage whisper, "This is better'n TV. They never saw a millionaire dig a hole before." He chortled. "Come to think of it, neither have I."
We were treated to a canned speech by "Comandante Raúl," a twenty‑nine‑year‑old MISURA officer named Raúl Tobías. I copied the speech, then translated it for the others. It began "We are here in the Republic of Honduras, 37,000 refugees. There are young volunteers with the idea of returning to their country, Nicaragua. Then the young men put forth their sacrifice and their last drop of blood to regain their lands. It is a difficult war against communism, but we are making that war...." and so on. It was obvious that he hadn't written the words, and that his delivery was rehearsed. Over the next several days, we would hear a number of such speeches, some totally canned, with crude prompts from behind by armed MISURA officers. Though much was canned, it was also obvious that these people had some genuine complaints about the Sandinistas, who had indeed killed some Indians and driven many from their homes and burned whole settlements and killed or run off their livestock. Sandinista claims that they had been forced to clear the area because of CIA‑sponsored FDN and MISURA raids across the border had some base in fact, but didn't cut much ice with the Miskito and Sumo people who had been driven from their homes.
At dusk someone cranked up a small red Kawasaki generator, illuminating a single bulb in each tent. We ate whatever we could scrounge from our own packs. One of the Indians had brought pemmican, a traditional food for traveling. In one corner of the tent, I noticed several silhouette targets and about half a dozen LAWs, the Light Antitank Weapon that had replaced the earlier "bazooka," or 3.5" rocket launcher, used during WWII and Korea, and with which I had trained before Vietnam. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was watching a large grey spider, over two inches in diameter, crawling upside down along the underside of the tent roof. With that, the smell of the canvas, the putt of the generator, the feel of the canvas cot... it was Vietnam revisited. I felt strangely at home.
Life in the camps reeked of the presence of the old "special operations" network of CIA officers and agents, military intelligence types, Special Forces people, "civilian" adventurers of various stripes, even the odd civilian fresh off a plane from Washington with a briefcase and secretive manner. Somewhere in the camp at Rus Rus I had noticed a slogan which was clearly an attempt to translate into Spanish one that was drummed into our heads when I went through Marine Corps boot camp, and which has been used to motivate generations of US recruits: "The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer." But in Spanish it had come out "Si es imposible lo haremos," or "If it is impossible we will do it," which to my ear sounded so odd that I imagined it evoking quizzical expressions among the Indians it was supposed to motivate.
5. The Tape
We spent a good part of that week riding in the back of Toyota pickups with teenage Miskito and Sumo warriors armed with AK47 and M16 automatic rifles. They climbed in and out of the trucks with no regard as to where their rifle muzzles were pointing. By the end of the week I'd looked down so many rifle barrels that I began to have the physical impression my torso was perforated, that breezes were passing between my ribs, that I was breathing in and out directly through my chest. Meeting young Miskito and Sumo Indians who'd been wounded in combat, and showed us their scars, intensified that feeling.
One of the Miskito we rode with in the back of a pickup was Alejo Teofilo Barbera. He was older than most of his fellow warriors; I'd say in his mid‑30's. He was from Puerto Cabezas, the Nicaraguan Caribbean port I'd flown out to in late 1983 to interview people after a contra raid, possibly conducted by some MISURA warriors in a speedboat supplied by the CIA, had damaged a freighter docked there and injured a few people.
Teofilo said that he'd been fighting against forces of the government in Managua since 1973, which meant that he had fought first against the Guardia Nacional, then since 1979 against the Sandinistas. He echoed a common Indian complaint: that "los españoles," the Spaniards, as they called the European‑derived culture and political structure in the nation's capital, mostly ignored the indigenous people who lived in their country; and when they did pay some attention, that attention was typically racist and exploitative. He gave examples: there were three major gold mines, he said, in what was traditionally Miskito territory: Bonanza, Rosita, and La Luz. "The Sandinistas promised that 80% of what richness come from Indian lands would be for Indians; 20% for the government. But it is not like that." Teofilo was speaking in broken but clear English, unlike most of his comrades, who spoke mainly their own languages and Spanish.
I took notes as we bounced along in the truck. My notebook still has mud splotches in it, and the writing makes it clear when we were moving and when we weren't. Most of this information came from Teofilo as he was conversing with Larry Pino. I was seated on my pack at arm's length from the two of them.
After the talk of the gold mines and the broken promises and the Indian elections, their conversation took a shift, and they began to compare older Indian stories. They weren't exactly current news, but they were interesting, and things I hadn't heard before. And it was becoming harder to take notes, with the jouncing of the vehicle. I turned on my tape recorder and set it between Larry and Teofilo. Both noticed it, and didn't seem to mind. They continued with their stories.
Suddenly Larry remembered something he'd wanted to ask Teofilo about. Following is an unedited transcript of the next portion of my tape:
DM: Larry was asking Teofilo if their people came down from the north as well. He [Teofilo] said yes. That's when I turned the machine on.
(Saying the above, I stepped on the first part of Larry's next sentence, when he'd said something about white men, or about Columbus):
LP: ...discovered the Indians. Bullshit.
TEOFILO laughs.
DM: Teofilo, what was the name of the reverend who knows all your history in Tegoosh [Tegucigalpa]?
TEOFILO: Molling Stellet (phonetic).
DM: Molling Stellet?
TEOFILO: Mm‑hmmm.
DM: How do... how does a person find him?
[A few words where LP, TEOFILO, DM all speak at once.]
LP: Miskito office.
TEOFILO: MISURA office.
LP: Oh, MISURA office.
TEOFILO: ...there's ... other reverend, Silvio Díaz. Him too.
LP: Did you hear a story about two months ago, about American paratroopers coming here, landing seven miles into Nicaragua? Have you heard that story?
TEOFILO [guardedly eyes red light on my tape recorder]: Yeah.
LP: 'Cause one of my cousins was in there.
TEOFILO: Oh yeah?
LP: He parachuted into Nicaragua. He didn't tell me anything 'cause it was top secret, he said. The government won't let him talk about it.
TEOFILO: Top secret?
LP: Yeah.
TEOFILO: Top secret. Only for them. [laughs]
LP: He says, 'Just know I was there. And don't ask me no more questions, 'cause I'm gonna have to tell you to shut up.'
TEOFILO: Mmmm. [laughs]
GARY FIFE: You can tell him you were there too, and you can ask anything you want....
[DM laughs.]
[Here GF and LP both speak at once: GF says "...providing we have a propeller tomorrow.' as LP says something about "...rangers....' The propeller remark refers to the broken shear pin which had stopped us from crossing the Coco earlier the morning of this conversation.]
At that point the conversation shifted to something else. Larry Pino hadn't seemed to realize the newsworthiness, or political significance, of what he'd said, or the fact that he'd spoken directly into a tape recorder with its red on light clearly visible. Or his nonchalance might be explained by the fact that he was a Native American, that he had a certain built‑in disdain for the political shenanigans of the white men's nation, the United States; it was clear that mainstream journalists were included in that disdain.
Alejo Teofilo Barbera was different. I could tell by his body language that he immediately knew the ramifications of what was being said, and particularly that a U.S. journalist was listening in. And, most particularly, that the red light on my tape recorder was glowing. His first reaction when Larry mentioned the paratroopers was to look down at the red light. Teofilo had already demonstrated his political savvy in his long discourse about Miskito troubles and alliances. He would obviously know about the Boland Amendment, and, whatever he might privately think of the ongoing tug of war between Congress and the Reagan Administration over Central America policy, he would realize that if what Larry said were true (and he seemed to be admitting that it was), and if it were proven and published in the mainstream US media, the whole Central America equation might be changed, likely in the direction of even less aid getting to his people to fight the Sandinistas.
I couldn't believe my luck. I fervently hoped that the recorder was working properly (it was), and that the growling of the truck's engine hadn't drowned out the critical parts of the conversation (it had not). I resolved that, no matter what else happened, my most important task now was to get that tape back home in good condition.
Over the following six years, I would spend hundreds of hours of unpaid time, at least four thousand dollars of my own money in travel expenses and long‑distance phone bills, and travel something like eighteen thousand miles (about a third of that in my pickup), chasing that story. I started out using my status as correspondent for Pacific News Service([1]); then, from the summer of 1987 through the Spring of 1991, I worked on a Special Correspondent's credential with Doyle McManus of the Washington, DC bureau of the Los Angeles Times.
[1] PNS was an independent international news service based in San Francisco. Sandy Close was Executive Editor, a tough-minded ex-Southeast Asia hand, and my boss. After I made several trips to Central America with her credential, she was awarded a Macarthur “Genius” grant for her work at PNS.
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