Contra Cross
Contra Cross: Insurgency And Tyranny in Central America, 1979-1989 William R. Meara,
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 159114518X
DDC: 972.8
Edition: Hardcover; 2006-04-03
Summary:
This journey through the Central American wars of the 1980s is seen
through the eyes of a young American who worked on both sides of
insurgency in the region: in El Salvador he supported efforts to
defeat insurgents; with Nicaraguans he worked to keep an insurgency
alive. Bill Meara started out as a teacher at a Catholic school in
Guatemala, but went on to become one of the fifty-five U.S. military
advisors 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. One of very few
Americans to see both sides up close, he takes readers into his world
as an advisor struggling with cultural differences and human rights
violations while trying to stay alive in murderous El Salvador. We
join him on dangerous helicopter rides into contra base camps on the
Honduran-Nicaraguan border and into a U.S. Embassy under attack. From
Special Forces school at Ft. Bragg to Joan Baez’s back-stage party in
Managua to a contra POW camp deep in the jungle, we get a taste of
Meara’s world up close. But this book is more than a collection of
war stories. Meara explores the difficult moral, philosophical, 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.
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