There’s a picture that hangs just beside my bed. It’s a reproduction of a photo that was taken of me when I was eighteen. I keep it up there for a couple of reasons. First it’s a remarkable portrait. It was taken early one morning at the Shelburne Ontario Fiddle Festival. It features my head and shoulders: my hair is long and covered in a floppy hat that has Tim Curry’s signature scrawled across it and my hands are cupping a harmonica which I was trying to learn how and play(without any success).
I’m bleary eyed from lack of sleep and over indulgence but it really captures who I was at that time in my life. But aesthetic qualities aside its value is increased because it is the only memento I have of a friend who was killed nearly twenty years ago. As long as I have this picture I can not forget him and the reasons for his death.
His death was the only time that world affairs and political decisions have ever directly impacted on my life. I have never lived in a war zone, seen people killed under fire, or had to survive any of the traumas too many people in this world deal with as a daily existence. But the blame for the death of my friend can be laid directly at the feet of the men in Washington D.C. who decided to break the laws of their country and illegally supply arms to the terrorists trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.
The irony of his death was that he had actually come under fire from the “contras” while serving in a school house building brigade in Nicaragua . In the 1980’s a variety of groups in Canada, mainly church and other Non Government Organizations (N.G.O.’s) would send down groups to help outlying communities build things like schools, or irrigation systems. Do the little things that would help improve their standard of living. Help them help themselves.
These farming communities were usually targets of the brave contra’s, especially the one’s bordering Guatemala where the American run bases were. They would sneak across the border and rain mortar and machine gun fire down on these villages, killing anything they could and then run away before the army could show up. These were the people Ronald RayGuns compared to founding father’s of America.
He managed to survive those times in the bush. I never had the opportunity to talk with him about it to see how it felt. But I imagine he was pretty cool under fire. Not much ever seemed to faze him. The last time I saw him turned out to be shortly before his death. He was just finishing up his journalism degree and was preparing to go back to Nicaragua and start covering the story on the ground.
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Article comments
1 - CT
I was moved by the above story about the death of your friend. However, I believe that you should spend time with some of those so called "terrorists" that the U.S. helped. I married a man who lived through it and new what "propaganda" the Sadinista government could spread regarding their own actions and the actions of the contra. Have you ever lived in Nicaragua? Talked to those who were in the Contra? Lived in a communist country? Saw the poverty that came with it? Surmosa was a communist dictator too that the Sandinistas overthrew. Were they also "terrorists"? Or were they well-meaning rebels who ended up like their predicessors? It is advisable for writer to get into the shoes of those they attack before they write books about what they haven't thoroughly investigated. Feel free to write to me and dialog on this issue at the above email.