The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua

by Timothy C. Brown

The Contra War and the Iran-Contra affair that shook the Reagan presidency were center stage on the U.S. political scene for nearly a decade. According to most observers, the main Contra army, or the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN), was a mercenary force hired by the CIA to oppose the Sandinista socialist revolution. The Real Contra War demonstrates that in reality the vast majority of the FDN’s combatants were peasants who had the full support of a mass popular movement consisting of the tough, independent inhabitants of Nicaragua’s central highlands. The movement was merely the most recent instance of this peasantry’s one-thousand-year history of resistance to those they saw as would-be conquerors. The real Contra War struck root in 1979, even before the Sandinistas took power and, during the next two years, grew swiftly as a reaction both to revolutionary expropriations of small farms and to the physical abuse of all who resisted. Only in 1982 did an offer of American arms persuade these highlanders to forge an alliance with former Guardia anti-Sandinista exiles--those the outside world called Contras. Relying on original documents, interviews with veterans, and other primary sources, Brown contradicts conventional wisdom about the Contras, debunking most of what has been written about the movement’s leaders, origins, aims, and foreign support.  

350 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2001

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brown writes an eye-opening account of the formation of the Contras prior to US involvement in the conflict. Based on interviews with surviving Contras, Brown shows that the earliest Contras were former Sandinistas who were opposed to Somoza but also opposed to the collectivization of their farms by the Coastal elite. I was struck by the similarity of what Ortega's government tried to do to the Chibchan highlanders in Nicaragua and what the Soviet Union did to the Kulaks. He also references a similar collectivization that occurred in the mountains of Cuba following Castro's revolution.

During the conquistador period, the Nahua people on the coast were virtually entirely replaced by Spanish and other outsiders and intermarriage. Brown points out that the Nahua and the Chibchan highlanders fought each other prior to the Spanish invasion and that the Chibchan highlanders continued this through the 1920s. Brown asserts that the highlanders were looked down upon by the Nicaraguan elites both before and after the Sandinista revolution.

Relevant to US involvement, Brown offers evidence that covert aid began during the Carter Administration before becoming ramped up to a high level under the Reagan Administration. This book is not about that activity, and the subject is dealt with through the eyes of surviving Contras.

This book is about the experiences and organization of the highland Contra movement. It does not deal with atrocities that may have been committed by highlanders, nor does it provide battle details. It is not a book that I think most people would choose for casual reading unless they were very interested in the subject. If you are looking for something that challenges your view on the events in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1996 this is a good book to read.

[Rhuff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Brown tries hard to advocate the peasant base of the Nicaraguan Contra movement. In comparing it to previous "contra" insurgencies he neglects one factor - the movements he cites did not grow like the Contras, nor last ten years, and the reason is obvious, although discounted in Mr. Brown's book. And that is because the original hypothesis - of being financed and controlled by the CIA and rich exiles - is still valid. Without the Somocista command structure, the money coming in from Miami and Washington, these Segovian highlanders would have been flattened like their predecessors and reduced to mere academic footnotes.

As a CIA IO, Brown was part of the first Reagan administration's military "rollback" strategy, rehashing early cold war ops like the Baltic Forest Brothers, the UPA of West Ukraine, etc. These predecessors also had to be whitewashed for home consumption as "democratic freedom fighters" (despite their members' past Nazi collaboration and involvement in war crimes) exactly as Brown does here. Brown downplays the break of genuine MILPA leaders within the Contra movement over its Somocista leadership; a fact that negates much of his "peasant movement" thesis. Like Jonas Savimbi's UNITA, the Hmong Army of Laos, or the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Contras were not self-sustaining and could not have existed without the US feeding tube pumping fresh, ongoing American cash and arms.

Brown's breathless style should ring a note of warning: he makes a convincing partisan presentation, but like a good lawyer omits the details that challenge his case.