RUS RUS (PART 3)

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 mid30'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 [of the dictator Anastasio Somoza], 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: Mmhmmm.

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.

!![NOTE]!!


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? [THE "COUSIN" OF WHOM LARRY PINO SPEAKS HERE WAS ACTUALLY AN APACHE  FRIEND WHO WAS A MEMBER OF A US ARMY RANGER BATTALION.]

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(); 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.