All day long we squatted under the grapefruit tree, listening to the dull thunder of the artillery on the other side of the mountain, and wondered what the Sandinistas were shooting at. They might be firing at random–sometimes they did that, launching their expensive Soviet rockets out into the trackless jungle to pulverize monkeys and coconuts–but the shelling had been going on for hours now. It seemed more likely they were blasting away at the contra patrol that was supposed to meet our little group of journalists here but was now 36 hours late. Finally, in the late afternoon, the artillery stopped. And a few minutes later, six figures in dusty olive green appeared at the top of the ridge and headed down the crusty dirt road toward us. Even a mile away we could see the sun glinting off the cruel curves of their rifle clips. There was just enough time for us to panic.
“If they’re Sandinistas,” asked Sue Mullin, a free-lance photographer, “what will they do?”
As the soldiers trudged on, Ambrose walked over to a nearby peasant shack, where a toothless old woman had been watching our encounter. “Senora,” he asked, “do you know if those soldiers were Sandinista, or contras?”
But what the war lacked in military majesty it more than made up for in bizarre sideshows. There were addled armchair mercenaries and Mad magazine spies. There were sultry Mata Haris who stole secrets and sometimes sent men to their deaths. There were befuddled old Indiana farmers who found themselves managing secret CIA armies. There were intrepid millionaires with fruitcake dreams of empire.
Now Nicaragua is having an election and the contras are starting to wash up in Miami, where I live. They call me. Sometimes they are looking for jobs, or the whereabouts of mutual friends, or explanations of some tortured paragraph in an INS pamphlet. And sometimes they just want to talk about a war that, they are certain, they almost won. Although most of them are only in their late 20s or early 30s, sometimes I see something in their eyes that makes me think of the stooped old Cuban men who sit in the sun along Eighth Street in Little Havana, playing dominos. And I remember a craggy old Nicaraguan who, a few years ago, outraged a roomful of men from the State Department and the CIA when he told them he didn’t want any part of their project.
The meeting took place in a suite at a downtown hotel. Comandante Juan Carlos was doing the talking, assuring the exiles that politics was a waste of time. They should join his army instead, and get Nicaragua back on the road to monarchy. In the middle of his speech, one of the comandante’s young assistants entered the room, clicked his heels, and saluted.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
About a month later, the Argentine government offered to help fund an anti-Sandinista guerrilla movement. And a little over a year later, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. And the day they heard the news, every one of those five Nicaraguans thought of the interview with the tape recorder.
