Download or read book Blood on the Border written by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human rights activist and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been described as “a force of nature on the page and off.” That force is fully present in Blood on the Border, the third in her acclaimed series of memoirs. Seamlessly blending the personal and the political, Blood on the Border is Dunbar-Ortiz’s firsthand account of the decade-long dirty war pursued by the Contras and the United States against the people of Nicaragua. With the 1981 bombing of a Nicaraguan plane in Mexico City—a plane Dunbar-Ortiz herself would have been on if not for a delay—the US-backed Contras (short for los contrarrevolucionarios) launched a major offensive against Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, which the Reagan administration labeled as communist. While her rich political analysis of the US-Nicaraguan relationship bears the mark of a trained historian, Dunbar-Ortiz also writes from her perspective as an intrepid activist who spent months at a time throughout the 1980s in the war-torn country, especially in the remote northeastern region, where the Indigenous Miskitu people were relentlessly assailed and nearly wiped out by CIA-trained Contra mercenaries. She makes painfully clear the connections between what many US Americans today remember only vaguely as the Iran-Contra “affair” and ongoing US aggression in the Americas, the Middle East, and around the world—connections made even more explicit in a new afterword written for this edition. A compelling, important, and sobering story on its own, Blood on the Border offers a deeply informed, closely observed, and heartfelt view of history in the making.
Download or read book Washington s War on Nicaragua written by Holly Sklar and published by South End Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of U.S. policy from the Sandinista revolution through the Iran-contra scandal and beyond. Sklar shows how the White House sabotaged peace negoatiations and sustained the deadly contra war despite public opposition, with secret U.S. special forces and an auxiliary arm of dictators, drug smugglers and death squad godfathers, and illuminates an alternative policy rooted in law and democracy.
Download or read book Dark Alliance written by Gary Webb and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, "Kill the Messenger," to be be released in Fall 2014 In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities. Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.
Download or read book The Real Contra War written by Timothy Charles Brown and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Iran Contra written by Malcolm Byrne and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything began to unravel on October 5, 1986, when a Nicaraguan soldier downed an American plane carrying arms to “Contra” guerrillas, exposing a tightly held U.S. clandestine program. A month later, reports surfaced that Washington had been covertly selling arms to Iran (our sworn enemy and a state sponsor of terrorism), in exchange for help freeing hostages in Beirut. The profits, it turned out, were going to support the Contras, despite an explicit ban by Congress. In the firestorm that erupted, shocking details emerged, raising the prospect of impeachment, and the American public confronted a scandal as momentous as it was confusing. At its center was President Ronald Reagan amid a swirl of questions about illegal wars, consorting with terrorists, and the abuse of presidential power. Yet, despite the enormity of the issues, the affair dropped from the public radar due to media overkill, years of legal wrangling, and a vigorous campaign to forestall another Watergate. As a result, many Americans failed to grasp the scandal’s full import. Through exhaustive use of declassified documents, previously unavailable investigative materials, and wide-ranging interviews, Malcolm Byrne revisits this largely forgotten and misrepresented episode. Placing the events in their historical and political context (notably the Cold War and a sharp partisan domestic divide), he explores what made the affair possible and meticulously relates how it unfolded—including clarifying minor myths about cakes, keys, bibles, diversion memos, and shredding parties. Iran-Contra demonstrates that, far from being a “junta” against the president, the affair could not have occurred without awareness and approval at the very top of the U.S. government. Byrne reveals an unmistakable pattern of dubious behavior—including potentially illegal conduct by the president, vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the CIA director and others—that formed the true core of the scandal. Given the lack of meaningful consequences for those involved, the volume raises critical questions about the ability of our current system of checks and balances to address presidential abuses of power, and about the possibility of similar outbreaks in the future.
Download or read book The Contras written by Dieter Eich and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains primary source material.
Download or read book The Contras War written by Luis Moreno and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by Luis Moreno (known as "Mike Lima" during this decade long conflict) the author examines in his book Principio Y Fin de la Guerra de los Contras (The Contras War: From Beginning to End) the armed struggle and the strategy that may have cost the lives of more than 6,000 Contra fighters and a total of some 15,000 anti-Sandinista supporters and family members in and out of Nicaragua. The armed conflict took place between the Nicaraguan Resistance (the Contras) and the Sandinista security forces (over 100,000) who helped govern Nicaragua in the 1980's. Moreno provides an inside perspective of the manner in which the Contras developed as a small force of less than 1000 in the early 1980's to over 20,000 that would demobilize after the Violeta Chamorro election of early 1990. A significant study by Moreno that should be read along with those books by Stephen Kinzer--Blood of Brothers, Christopher Dickey--With the Contras, Glenn Garvin--Everybody Had His Gringo, Sam Dillion--Commandos, Timothy Brown--The Real Contra War, and other publications that seek to explain the Nicaraguan Resistance and the extent it was seen as a failure or a success in the politics of the Nicaraguan nation and United States foreign policy. What makes this study important and distinct is that Moreno provides a detailed insight into the creation of the Resistance by folding together two major forces: the Milpas (anti-Sandinista farmers and peasants), former Sandinista insurgents and remnants of Somoza's army and EBBI--survivors of the 1979 fight against the Sandinista insurgents. As both a field commander inside Nicaragua and a member of the Strategic Command after tragically losing part of his right hand and arm in a training accident Moreno is able to talk about Resistance personalities, thinking within the Resistance, and the decisions that the Resistance faced. In addition, Moreno, the Resistance "Operations Director" in the Strategic Command discusses the strategy, plans, and institutional relations of the Resistance--especially with the Hondurans and the Americans. Why read this book? The detailed picture of the Nicaraguan rural areas of conflict; how an insurgent movement is organized; the importance of the rural population support to the Resistance. Caesar D. Sereseres Profesor de Ciencia Politica y Estudios Internacionales Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad de California, Irvine"
Download or read book Everybody Had His Own Gringo written by Glenn Garvin and published by Potomac Books. This book was released on 1992 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Garvin, who covered the war in Nicaragua for the Washington times from 1983-1989, presents a partisan but not uncritical account of the contras: who they were, why they fought, how their US allies helped and hindered them. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book With the Contras written by Christopher Dickey and published by Touchstone Books. This book was released on 1987 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nicaragua 1961 1990 written by David Francois and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2019-06-19 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Sandinista takeover of this Central American nation and the uneasy decades leading up to it, with maps, photos, and illustrations. In the wake of the US invasion of Nicaragua in 1912, the country came under the rule of the Somoza family, which imposed a brutal, corrupt military dictatorship. A low-scale insurgency of students, supported by peasants and other anti-Somoza elements of the society, had developed already in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the country was embroiled in revolt. Supported by Cuba, a coalition of students, farmers, businessmen, clergy, and a small group of Marxists launched a major war in 1978, which resulted in the downfall of the Somozas a year later. The Sandinista government established in Managua in 1979 found the country ruined by the long war and natural disasters, and nearly half the population homeless or living in exile. Attempting to restructure and recover the underdeveloped economy, Sandinistas introduced a wide range of reforms and a cultural revolution. Drawing on extensive studies of involved armed groups, and their insurgencies in the 1960s and 1970s, Nicaragua, 1961-1990, Volume 1 provides in-depth coverage of military history during the first phase of one of major armed conflicts of Latin America in modern times. Moving meticulously through the details of involved forces, their ideologies, organization, and equipment, this book is an accurate, blow-by-blow account of the Nicaraguan War, illustrated with more than 120 photos, maps, and color artworks. Also available is Volume 2 of this series, which focuses on the new war that raged through Nicaragua for most of the 1980s after the US, considering the Sandinistas “Cuban-supported Marxists” and thus a major threat to US domination of Latin America, began supporting the creation of the Contrarevolutionary forces (better known as Contras). “A lavishly photo-illustrated and detailed chronological account of the Somoza military dictatorship in Nicaragua and its overthrow in 1979.” —Perspectives on Terrorism
Download or read book Comandos written by Sam Dillon and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts how the American government financed and orchestrated the ten-year civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras
Download or read book A Call to Conscience written by Roger Craft Peace and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike earlier U.S. interventions in Latin America, the Reagan administration's attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua during the 1980s was not allowed to proceed quietly. Tens of thousands of American citizens organized and agitated against U.S. aid to the counterrevolutionary guerrillas, known as "contras." Believing the Contra War to be unnecessary, immoral, and illegal, they challenged the administration's Cold War stereotypes, warned of "another Vietnam," and called on the United States to abide by international norms. A Call to Conscience offers the first comprehensive history of the anti?Contra War campaign and its Nicaragua connections. Roger Peace places this eight-year campaign in the context of previous American interventions in Latin America, the Cold War, and other grassroots oppositional movements. Based on interviews with American and Nicaraguan citizens and leaders, archival records of activist organizations, and official government documents, this book reveals activist motivations, analyzes the organizational dynamics of the anti?Contra War campaign, and contrasts perceptions of the campaign in Managua and Washington. Peace shows how a variety of civic groups and networks?religious, leftist, peace, veteran, labor, women's rights?worked together in a decentralized campaign that involved extensive transnational cooperation.
Download or read book Powderburns written by Celerino Castillo and published by Oakville, Ont. : Sundial. This book was released on 1994 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The truth about the remaining dark secret of the Iran-Contra scandal- the United States government's collaboration with drug smugglers. Powderburns is the story of Celerino Castillo III who spent 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration. During that time, he built cases against organized drug rings in Manhattan, raided jungle cocaine labs in the Amazon, conducted aerial eradication operations in Guatemala, and assembled and trained anti-narcotics units in several countries. The eerie climax of Agent Castillo's career with the DEA took place in El Salvador. One day, he recieved a cable from a fellow agent. He was told to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the ilpango air force base. Castillo quickly discovered that Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States - using the same pilots, planes, and hangars that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the Direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras.
Download or read book Commandos written by Sam Dillon and published by Owl Books. This book was released on 1992-10-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts how the American government financed and orchestrated the ten-year civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras
Download or read book Out of Control written by Leslie Cockburn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. This book was released on 1988 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last two years, the author has been investigating the secret funding of the Contras by the White House. Here, she identifies the network of National Security Council staff (led by Colonel Oliver North), CIA operatives and ex-agents who set up this illegal support system, after the passage of the Boland Amendment in October 1984 made it illegal for the US government to give direct and indirect aid to the Contras.
Download or read book Blood Brothers written by Steve J. King and published by . This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes all the different feelings I have felt throughout my life about love. Times when I thought I was in love and times when I was in love. These feelings for me started as a teenager and continued during my life. Sometimes we can't explain to our love ones what we need to say, and since I have that gift, I want to share it with all the lovers and friends throughout the world.
Download or read book Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran Contra Affair written by United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 1380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
