Letter from Muscogee County Jail (Part I)

By Joseph Mulligan, S.J.

Columbus, Georgia

February 9, 2004

Today I had the joy of receiving my first letter in jail. Judith Kelly, a friend who was arrested at the November 2002 School of the Americas demonstration and served 90 days at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, included a little card with her letter.

The message read:

"Whatever you can do must be done" -- Ben Linder (28), "Contra" victim, Nicaragua, 4-28-87

School of Assassins: Shut It Down

Ben Linder

Ben Linder, an engineer from Portland, Ore., was killed a year after I arrived in Nicaragua. His joy, his love of life, and his commitment to help the Sandinista revolutionary process have inspired many Nicaraguans and many foreigners working in solidarity with the Nicaraguan struggle for justice.

"Whatever you can do must be done." Ben could entertain children as a clown on his unicycle; it had to be done, and he did it with love and joy.

And as an engineer, Ben knew how to install hydroelectric generators to bring light -- and better education, medical care and economic possibilities -- to impoverished rural areas. It had to be done, so Ben designed and worked with local people to install a small hydroelectric plant on a river near a village in northern Nicaragua.

"Whatever you can do. . ." no matter how small or seemingly insignificant -- if it will open some new possibilities for some peoples -- is worth the effort. Ben was delighted with his first success -- the illumination of the town was a ray of light on the path of the revolutionary process under the Sandinista government.

Ben could do it again at another northern village, and so he tried. But there he was assassinated by the Contras -- the Nicaraguans who were trained and equipped by the U.S. government to sabotage the revolutionary process. The young engineer gave his life for a cause he believed in and for the people he loved.

Many Americans have sacrificed their lives in the struggle for justice in Latin America, as well as in the struggle for civil rights, worker rights, and other goals here in the U.S. A 90-day sentence for protesting against the School of the Americas (SOA, its former name, is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHISC) and against the arrogance of U.S. foreign policy is a small price to pay in comparison to the cost of discipleship paid by so many struggling for justice around the world.

Ben Linder and U.S. Foreign Policy

The card Judith sent me also proclaimed: "School of Assassins: Shut It Down." The SOA/WHISC is called the School of Assassins because many of its graduates have returned to Latin America to be assassins, torturers, and even dictators. Historically, the U.S. government has supported right-wing conservative regimes and their brutal armed forces to suppress movements for revolutionary change. Over the years, the SOA has been an important instrument in this strategy.

But in those rare instances when a progressive movement comes into power and begins to challenge U.S. political and corporate interests, the U.S. has relied on either of two reactionary strategies. In 1954, the CIA promoted a coup by the Guatemalan army that toppled the democratically elected Arbenz government after it had started to nationalize the unused plantations of the United Fruit Company. In the ensuing years, whether under military dictatorship or under ostensibly civilian regimes, SOA graduates have helped to repress movements for social justice and for indigenous rights.

In 1973, the Nixon administration supported Gen. Augusto Pinochet and his collaborators in the bloody coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Dr. Salvador Allende.

This first strategy -- to use the native armed forces to overthrow the progressive government -- obviously cannot be implemented if the new administration neutralizes the old armed forces and develops a new military supportive of the new government. When this happens, the U.S. uses a strategy of forming and/or supporting counter-revolutionary groups, or "Contras," as they were known in Nicaragua.

When Fidel Castro and his revolutionary movement overthrew the Batista dictatorship and initiated socialism in Cuba, the U.S. very soon began to support anti-communist Cubans to assassinate Castro and restore capitalism to the island. President Kennedy's weak support for these Cuban "Contras" earned him their undying hatred.

The U.S. strategy of "low-intensity warfare," relying on the Contras as ground troops, was designed to erode the people's support for their government. The Contras spread terror by attacking farm cooperatives, schools, health posts and other civilian efforts (including Ben's little generator).

Now we come around to Ben Linder and the Nicaraguan Contras. When the Sandinista revolutionary movement seized governmental power in Nicaragua in 1979, President Carter seemed to accept it, but candidate Ronald Reagan vowed to dislodge the Sandinistas. As president, he struggled tenaciously and through a variety of strategies to achieve his goal.

His major weapons were the Contras -- Nicaraguans, disaffected for various reasons with the Sandinista government, who were trained, financed and directed by the CIA. The first Contras were former National Guard officers and soldiers of the old Somoza regime, naturally seeking to recover their position of power and privilege. Later, other Nicaraguans were recruited to join them.

It was these Contras who assassinated Ben Linder because his success in installing electrical power (as an expression of his support for and collaboration with the Sandinista government) reflected well on the revolutionary government. The U.S. strategy of "low-intensity warfare," relying on the Contras as ground troops, was designed to erode the people's support for their government. The Contras spread terror by attacking farm cooperatives, schools, health posts and other civilian efforts (including Ben's little generator).

This kind of terrorism was mentioned by Kathy Kelly, one of my co-defendants, in her statement just before being sentenced to three months in prison: "In 1985 I traveled to San Juan de Limay, in the north of Nicaragua. Children there were radiant and friendly, many of them too young to understand that during the previous week U.S.-funded Contras had kidnapped and murdered 25 people in their village."

Along with the U.S. diplomatic pressure and the economic embargo, the Contra war wore down the people and led the majority to reject the Sandinista government in the 1990 elections. (A cease-fire had suspended the Contra war in 1988, but the Contra troops remained armed, organized, and in uniform -- ready to resume military activity if the Sandinistas were re-elected. And there was no guarantee that the George H.W. Bush administration would have recognized a Sandinista victory at the polls and would have called off the Contras.)

Nicaragua

This indeed is the meaning of "freedom" in the words "Liberal" and "neo-liberal": complete license for corporate capital to invest, exploit workers, damage the environment, and take out profits with little or no government regulation or participation in the economy.

Since 1990, conditions for the majority of Nicaraguans have deteriorated steadily under three economically conservative administrations. The fact that former President Arnoldo Alemàn and the current president, Enrique Bolaños, are of the Liberal Party does not mean that their economic policies are not conservative: they are totally dedicated to the unfettered functioning of the "free market." This indeed is the meaning of "freedom" in the words "Liberal" and "neo-liberal": complete license for corporate capital to invest, exploit workers, damage the environment, and take out profits with little or no government regulation or participation in the economy.

This kind of "freedom" was described by Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton in 1962 in New Seeds of Contemplation as operating within a context of false peace:

To some peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

The administration of Violeta Chamorro, elected in 1990, operated on the "neoliberal" philosophy; Arnoldo Alemàn continued it while availing himself as president of his freedom to enrich himself at the people's expense.

(To be continued)

Fr. Joseph E. Mulligan, a Jesuit priest from Detroit, works in Nicaragua with Christian base communities. He is presently serving a 90-day sentence for his participation in the Nov. 23, 2003 protest against the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Joe is the author of The Nicaraguan Church and The Revolution (Sheed & Ward, 1991) and The Jesuit Martyrs Of El Salvador -- Celebrating the Anniversaries (Baltimore: Fortkamp, 1994). Prayers for Joe and others arrested for their SOA/WHISC protests are deeply appreciated; he is currently fasting. Until May 2004, the best way to contact him is through Judith Kelly at silverdove@verizon.net.