RONALD RADOSH
69
been echoed by more prominent and influential writers. Pete Hamill,
writing in the pages of
The Village Voice,
branded Christian "the best
friend the Nicaraguan contras [have] in American journalism." Ac–
cusing her of "taking sides," Hamill suggested that she should be
writing a column about Central America, not "posing as an objective
reporter."
It is not surprising Hamill is not receptive to Christian's work.
His own six-part series on Nicaragua, appearing in the
New York
Daily News,
heralded the Sandinistas for being "rock-'n'-roll revolu–
tionaries" and for carrying off the "only true victory of the New Left."
A
writer who characterizes a revolution on the basis of the music its
rank and file listens to thinks he has grounds on which to criticize
one of the best reporters writing on Central America. Perhaps it is
not surprising that Christian's detractors never seem to mention that
among her most vociferous critics is General Pinochet of Chile, who
has made Christian
persona non grata
as a result of her reporting in
that country.
When a writer comes under attack from virtually every major
left-liberal organ of thought in this country, it is perhaps a sign that
her book is so disturbing and thorough that one cannot help but deal
seriously with its contents. And it is the contents and revelations in
her book that must make the ardent defenders of the Sandinistas take
pause. Those who believe that only the FSLN and its followers op–
posed Somoza will be amazed to find that under the dictator's realm,
political space still existed in Nicaragua, and that the non-Sandinista
opponents of Somoza played as much and at times a greater and
more effective role than that of the advocates of guerrilla struggle.
One of the major mechanisms for maintaining power is the re–
writing of history, something at which the Sandinistas have become
adept. Since Shirley Christian sets the record straight, for this reason
alone her book is a necessity. It is a solid dispeller of major myths
propagated by Western supporters of the Sandinistas - that the San–
dinistas favor a democratic, pluralist and nonaligned nation, inde–
pendent of any of the superpowers, and that tough measures they
have adapted all would be withdrawn if not for United States aggres–
sion. Christian shows that, indeed, the inspiration and political voice
of the current generation of FSLN leadership came from the most
sectarian Marxist currents of the early 1960s. The martyred founder
of the FSLN, Carlos Fonseca Amadaor, she notes, "spent much of
1957 in the Soviet Union and East Germany." His subsequent pam–
phlet,
A Nicaraguan in Moscow,
"depicted the Soviet system as a future
