Blood on the Border

by Dunbar-Ortiz, Margaret Randall (Foreword)

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.

Genres: History, Memoir, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, Race, Politics

308 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the most breathtakingly arrogant author I have read in my life.

Despite being an American from Oklahoma who never advanced beyond being a teaching professor in the CSU system, the author imagines herself to not only be fully capable of plunging into the Miskitu War, but of actually having valuable insight to contribute. By her own admission, her Spanish was rusty to the point that she did not understand “mono” (79); she learned no Miskitu (78); she spoke no French (203) even though half of her self-ordained mission was to represent various causes to the UN. Thus, for the entirety of her supposed help for the MIskitu cause, she was unable to communicate with the Miskitu, with the Pacific Nicaraguans, or with most of the international organizations in the region. What a scholar! In addition, the author made many mistakes. She cited Quiche as being “the language of a majority of Mayans”, which is incorrect (117). She slandered Jose Barreiro as a possible CIA agent, which she admitted was wrong in a footnote (128). She described MIguel D’Escoto as a “former priest”, despite the fact that he never stopped being a priest and celebrated Mass with the blessing of Pope Francis (145). She also keeps describing Pacific Nicaraguans as “Latinos” which is an entirely foreign American idea; more accurate would be the native “mestizo” or the regional “ladino” (132). Of course, this is probably due to the fact that for the decade she was in Nicaragua, she had no idea what anybody was saying.

Boundless ignorance never diminished the author’s sense of self-importance. Upon hearing some Canadian Natives talking about the Miskitu, “I quickly realized that they did not know much about the situation and had been reading from a report the had received from Nicaragua”, which is the moment she knew her life would change forever (52). She wanted to “try to get the International Indigenous Treaty Council and other North American Native organizations and individuals to rally support for the Miskitu with the revolutionary process and try to help the Sandinista leadership understand indigenous aspirations,” (81). And what prepared her for this work? “I would concentrate on the Miskitia, doing the work I was most prepared for. I felt the study I had done in the mid-1970s on the history of land tenure in New Mexico provided a template for me to analyze the issues of people . . . “ (95). Just to be clear, an Oklahoman thinks that a book she wrote about New Mexico would prepare her for Caribbean Central America, a region she has no personal, official, or academic connection to and where she speaks no relevant language.

Of course, she stumbled along throughout this entire journey. She admitted arguing with a Tamil lawyer about the possibility of civil war in Sri Lanka, which she thought was inconceivable; she was proven wrong a year later when that same lawyer became a leading insurgent (168). Her bright idea to prevent the US invasion of Grenada was to go there with a bunch of US citizens; no one agreed with her, and she was proven wrong when the US actually used the presence of US medical personnel as an excuse to invade (172). The Sandinistas restricted access to war zones for foreign reporters. The author “thought this was a mistake, but the Sandinistas argued, rightly as it turns out, that the mainstream US media was easily manipulated by the Reagan administration” (172). The Sandinistas were apparently more savvy than she was, since her interview with “Time” was turned into an anti-Sandinista piece. “How could I be so naive as to trust a Time reporter? I will never again trust my judgment . . . ” (194). She did, to the continued detriment of all. As one critic stated, “She has done more damage to the Miskitu cause - and the Sandinistas - than any other person.” (237). If only she had taken that criticism to heart.

At every step of the way, anyone who disagreed with her vision is out to get her. “Is someone in charge of discrediting me at the CIA or the FBI?” (241). On that same page, the author took issue with an article by Penny Lernoux in a magazine called “The Nation”, where Penny, the official Latin America correspondent who focused on liberation theology and was a devout Catholic, was critical of the Sandinistas. The author wrote a 14-page response which she “truly believed that they would publish the full text” (241); she is perplexed when she is asked to resubmit an 800 word letter to the editor because they never explained “why the didn’t give me a full opportunity to reply” (242).

The best example of this is with Brian Wilson, the man who laid on a train-track to block US military supplies and lost his legs as a result. “Brian saw himself as one of hundreds of thousands of maimed Nicaraguans . . . Although my wounds were not anywhere close to Brian’s, I felt the same” (253). The upshot is that when Brian Wilson told her to focus on her alcoholism so that she could "be alert and contribute to the struggle", she was "resentful" because of his "self-righteousness" (254). She has the temerity to regard a man who lost both his legs for the cause as "self-righteous" because he told her to put down the bottle. “Hope was palpable across Nicaragua, although everyone was war-weary, including me” (257). This is all coming from someone whose sole contribution to the Revolution was to visit as an American and then go to some conferences at the UN. She never fought in the war, she never brought supplies, she never mediated between political figures, she contributed no useful skills to alleviate the physical or mental suffering of Nicaraguans. She never put her life, money, or even career at risk. She sacrificed nothing, contributed nothing, and lost nothing, but is still somehow a victim.

The author perpetuates the same sort of colonialist mentality that she criticized with the US, viewing the Miskitu as benighted people whom she can enlighten with her insights. As noted above, the entire premise is that she went to Nicaragua despite having no background, language ability, or practical skills. She described the Miskitu as “brainwashed by US missionaries” (93). She takes a cold view towards both the Catholic and Moravian churches, describing the Moravians in particular as acting “swiftly to bring their Miskitu worshippers into the circle of US influence” (99). According to her, “the king and the Miskitu Kingdom created by the British continued to define modern Miskitu aspirations for self-determination”; however, this was all part of a “colonized mentality” (206). At no point does Roxanne ever ask WHY so many Miskitu supported a kingdom, or were interested in working with the Americans, or distrusted the Sandinistas. At no point does she examine the deep divides within the Sandinistas in the Pacific region, in particular the power struggles between the military generals and the more social/cultural leaders. Despite Nicaragua being an officially Christian socialist republic for the past 40 years, she does nothing to analyze either Marxism or revolutionary Catholicism in the minds of the populace. In her mind, nobody in Nicaragua has their own ideas, or agenda, or agency - everyone is the pawn of the Moonies or the CIA or is just part of a big misunderstanding, and she is the savior who will bring peace and harmony by raising awareness.

In fact, the author speculates that she personally stopped a US invasion of Nicaragua. When she published a paid ad (paid by someone else) about the Miskitu Contras in the NY Times, “I believe this ad could well have been a factor in the Reagan administration’s decision to continue to fight the war through proxies instead of sending US troops” (174).

This book is actually a fun read, if you want to read either genuinely intriguing anecdotes from the Contra War, or probe the depths of a narcissist’s delusions of self-importance and grandeur.

[James Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's an excerpt of an interview I did with Roxanne when "Blood on the Border came out:

(Find the full thing at www.reddirtsite.org)

JT: I remember you saying at a speaking engagement that you fell in love with the Sandinista revolution? What made it so special in your eyes? What set it apart from other revolutionary projects?

RDO: What I liked about it, was that they were people just like us. I knew so many of them here in San Francisco. At the time it had the second largest Nicaraguan population outside of Managua. After Augusto Cesar Sandino was assassinated in 1934 and the Somoza dictatorship was put in, they really wanted to export Sandinistas, get them out of the country. That was a really large part of the population, since it was quite a popular movement. The United States set up a very different system for Nicaraguan workers to immigrate here. Remember, there were only two million people there, even if 100,000 or 500,000 people came, the U.S. figured it wouldn’t be a stress on immigration. They had so much experience working for U.S. corporations, in mining and fruit; there were no restrictions put on them, unlike workers from most other countries. They could come as they wished. The main place they settled was San Francisco, the Noe Valley neighborhood was almost all Nicaraguan and our Mission is still largely so. I knew a lot of them. I knew the poets Roberto Vargas and Alejandro Murgia, who is Chicano, but married to a Nicaraguan. They went down to fight in the revolution., they also founded the Mission Cultural Center here.

The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were disorganized! Just like any leftists here, it seemed! It was like the youth revolution here had won. They were kind of bumbling in some ways, but they were sincere, they were so sincere. I fell in love with that even before I went there, but more so when I went there. But I fell in love with what they were doing there, they produced a huge literacy campaign, they were so idealistic in what they were doing. They went out into the countryside and taught people how to write poetry, this got everyone wanting to be a poet. It is the only country in the world where being a poet is the highest thing you can be. So the aspiration was to know the language so you could write poetry. All over there were poetry workshops, it was the most amazing thing.

Then there was this damn contra war, eating away at that. Seeing that deteriorate, it was just heartbreaking.

JT: Yes, it seemed as if the Contras really target the best parts of the Sandinista revolution.

RDO: Especially in those really poor rural areas. Any kind of development workers trying to bring electricity in, any little thing like that they attacked. Most of these people were people form the communities themselves. My favorite story was in 1980, the Sandinista government needed a helicopter, a civilian helicopter, they needed to drop supplies in flooded areas. Somoza's National Guard had destroyed all of the military equipment. A Nicaraguan living in San Antonio said, “I can buy one for you from Bell Helicopter.” The Sandinistas checked on how much it would cost to ship it, and the cost would have been more than the helicopter. So they sent two people who could fly airplanes, never a helicopter, up to Texas to get it! This is the crazy scheme you and I might think of! They got up in the air and they were intercepted by US military jets. As far as I know the pilots are still in prison. They lost the money, the helicopter was confiscated.

They had no experience in constructing a government, and Somoza left nothing to work from. Most of the Sandinistas were poets, journalists, and teachers. There was a lot of guerilla activity, but it was symbolic as many guerrilla movements are in Latin America. It really was a mass revolutionary movement, the Sandinistas would have never have won militarily without the people!

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some passages from Blood on the Border:


The deputy director of the CIA, Bobby Ray Inman, one of the weirdest of that cast of spook characters, was featured at a press conference exhibiting grainy photographs that resembled Rorschach inkblot tests. In a seeming parody of a TV meteorologist, he pointed his white stick at various parts of the photograph and recounted a narrative that had nothing to do with the picture, which he then described as unassailable evidence. The story he told was of a massive Cuban occupation of the northeast region of Nicaragua. He claimed that the landing strip at Puerto Cabezas was being prepared for fighter jets to land and that a Cuban military base was being built; the most telling detail of all, he said, was the appearance of a baseball diamond, which proved the Cubans were there to stay. This caused amusement in Nicaragua, where baseball had been the national sport ever since the US Marines had first occupied the country in the 1890s.

I never figured out if Inman was completely insane or quite crafty. In any case, he resigned in March 1982, and his boss, William Casey, was even loonier. At times, it seemed absurd to try to counteract this nuttiness with rationality. But it was not only the spooks; General Alexander Haig, Reagan’s secretary of state, held a press conference at the Dupont Circle Hilton Hotel in Washington in which he pointed to another photograph (blown up almost two stories tall) and described what he termed as widespread massacres. The photograph showed human bodies enveloped in flames. Haig claimed that these were Miskitu Indians being burned alive by Sandinista soldiers. Newspapers featured the photograph with headlines screaming of massacres and atrocities against the Nicaraguan Indians. During the following days, tiny correction boxes appeared in newspapers - why it wasn’t a big story itself I couldn’t figure out - reporting that the photograph was the property of the conservative French daily Le Figaro, and was taken in 1978, before the Sandinistas took power. The photo actually showed the Red Cross burning corpses of the victims of Somoza’s bombing of civilians in Managua in 1978. The irony was that such massacres were actually happening in nearby Guatemala as Haig spoke, massacres about which the administration said nothing. To my knowledge, no reporter ever questioned Haig about his allegations and misrepresentation of the photograph, nor did he ever admit his deception. The administration was that brazen. Even when corrections were printed, the lies created a kind of populist genocidal logic, in which “exaggerations” were then acknowledged, but people assumed that there must be some core of truth to the charges nevertheless.

*

I understood, but could not forgive, the temptations of celebrity hunger. I had my own “fifteen minutes of fame” in 1968-70 in the women’s liberation movement. Such attention can replace a fragile sense of self, so that only more attention can fill the void that remains, and more attention is never enough.

*

Writing was a kind of release and relief. I had worked on the subject so long that writing the book was more like reading, the words almost forming themselves. My mind and body became a kind of word processor, disappearing into the work. I loved - I still love - the way writing allows me to put pieces together into meaningful wholes, or at least ones that give meaning to me. I cannot function without trying to see the whole.

[Bart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is perhaps a tad overenthusiastic at times. Her praise for two Sandinista cops who conduct conflict resolution between a fighting couple, which although this took place I highly suspect that such "goodwill" is not representative although the praise suggests the actions are representative, is one such example. Blood on the Border is a well-written account of one Western/Native American woman's experiences in Nicaragua and especially important for recording indigenous women's perspectives on the conflict and otherwise.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dunbar-Ortiz's insider account of the grueling US war on Nicaragua includes new (to me, anyway) insights into and documentation of disinformation campaigns that parallel what Washington did in Haiti in "softening up" liberals and leftists to accept the 2004 coup.

[Shena Cavallo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more. I really did but I was expecting more content on the details of policy decisions and US involvement in Central America. She spent far too much time talking about meetings, UN committees, and other things that felt very in the weeds to me. I get it was also a memoir but it also felt strangely inpersonal even when she discussed deeply personal things like addiction, relationships, etc.

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the last book in roxanne dunbar-ortiz's trilogy of political memoirs, covering her life in the 70s & 80s--especially the period of time when she got really involved in indigenous solidarity work with the indians in nicaragua during the war there. it was definitely super-interesting to read about this war, this region of the world, & the people that lived there, during a war for which i was a really young kid. i was dimly aware of the war at the time, because my parents subscribed to newspapers & i read them, & sometimes i watched the news (yeah, even when i was like seven years old), but obviously i didn't really understand what was going on. this book is a pretty good introduction to what was going on with the war, although there are probably more exhaustive & detailed accounts, because this is first & foremost a memoir of dunbar-ortiz's life at the time, & she had more going on than just the work she was doing in nicaragua. sadly, i can't really remember details of what that other stuff was. i think there was a marriage in there somewhere. & there was something about not getting along with some other really prominent folks that were involved with various american indian groups. at one point, she even suggests that one of them (i wish i could remember who! someone really well-known) isn't even actually indian, which i thought was kind of a low blow. there were a few things like that in her book, that kind of made me question her reliability as a narrator & took me out of the memoir space & put me more in the way of thinking that maybe partly she was writing the book because she had an axe to grind with regard to a few different people who have crossed her. & all of her books are like this. but they're still really engaging, & really, at the end of the day, dishy beats boring, so it's all good.

[Charley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this book. I found it to be a rambling, unfocused, tour of the author's travels and work. Throughout much of the book there seems little of interest to the average reader but rather a litany of references to various UN committees, conferences and people without much context of their importance or relevance. I would have given it one star if not for a chapter describing a harrowing boat trip up a river in Honduras to distribute pictures and letters to the Miskitians in order to provide news from their relatives on the Nicaraguan side which provided one of the few tidbits of interesting and well written text within an otherwise incoherent book.

[Lboogiepeace · Rating 4 out of 5]

she's amazing - a first hand example of how america has a history of imperialism - and not just to defend ourselves!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

p. 46, reference to Gramsci's dictum: pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will..

[Torellana1014]

I was excited to read this book but there were a few questionable phrases I noticed when I skimmed through the book. I'm going to give it a chance but I approach with caution.