Contra Cross: Insurgency and Tyranny in Central America, 1979-1989

by William R. Meara

Why does the United States have such difficulty dealing with insurgency? A look back at the Central American wars of the 1980s sheds light on the problem. Contra Cross presents one young American officer's journey through Central America's violent decade of revolution and counterrevolution. Bill Meara started out as a teacher at a Catholic school in Guatemala, but he went on to become one of fifty-five U.S. military advisers assisting the Salvadorans in their fight against communism. By the end of the decade, he was in the U.S. Foreign Service working as a liaison officer to the Nicaraguan contras. Meara was one of very few Americans to work on both sides of insurgency in the in El Salvador he supported efforts to defeat insurgents; with Nicaraguans he worked to keep an insurgency alive.
Contra Cross takes readers into the world of an American adviser struggling with cultural differences and human rights violations while trying to stay alive in murderous El Salvador. We join Meara on dangerous helicopter rides into contra base camps on the Honduran-Nicaraguan border, and learn what it's like to be in a U.S. embassy under attack. From Special Forces school at Ft. Bragg, to lunch with Communist defectors in El Salvador, to a contra POW camp deep in the jungle, we get a taste of life on the cutting edge of America's controversial Central America policy.
More than a collection of war stories, Contra Cross explores the difficult moral and ideological issues of the Central American wars. Meara's experiences with insurgency and counterinsurgency allow him to provide critically important insights on why the United States has such difficulty dealing with ragtag armies of third-world rebels.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2006

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a army special operations officer and then state department employee who worked for about 10 years in Central America in the 1980´s, this book was an easy, at-times funny and also enlightening read from the perspective of a cold-war warrior. The dispassionately presented point of view of this book provides material for examining US foreign policy decisions. Did our support of Salvadoran government forces eventually stop their tendency to massacre its civilians, to reduce its human rights abuses? Did our support for contra fighters in Nicaragua stem the Sandinistas´ moves to authoritarianism?

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book as soldier that has spent a great deal of time living and working in Latin America. I think Meara's insights from his experiences in Central America as a Special Forces soldier working in the field of psychological operations and then again as a State Dept foreign service officer give him a unique perspective on the challenges facing this region during the Cold War Era. It's an interesting read and definitely a good addition to your collection for any student of Latin America.