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PARTISAN REVIEW
ity and let them fail. The end result would be an armed American
invasion, a tragedy that would isolate the United States, lead to un–
necessary deaths, and once again return our nation to Vietnam. Mr.
Davis does not want to film a sequel to his film,
Hearts and Minds .
It is the stock argument of the anti-interventionists, one that
fails to consider the reports of the many
campesinos
who are becoming
a solid social base in support of the
contras,
and who are aiding them
in their military effort. Mr. Davis did not seek to interview or find
any of them, or to inquire as to why so many former Sandinistas,
even socialists, have defected and become supporters of those who
are supposed Somocistas. Nor does he let his readers know that after
the State of Emergency was declared in 1985, six of the major opposi–
tion parties- from Communist to Social Christian, asked for am–
nesty for the rebels and immediate negotiations with them, sug–
gesting the path of reconciliation and democratization as the only
practical way out of continual warfare. In response, Managua made
it a criminal offense to even refer to the fighting with the
contras
as a
"civil war." When he discusses the opposition parties, he suggests in–
stead that they are as
anti-contra
as the government.
Quoting Milan Kundera, Davis asks whether it is possible
Nicaragua will end as Czechoslovakia, a Stalinized country where
those who hold doubts were "squashed between the fingers like an
insect." He acknowledges at one point that from one perspective, the
Sandinistas might appear not just as a "feisty band of patriots strain–
ing for independence from the American imperium, but also a group
of leaders as susceptible as any other to the fatal contagion of
power." But Davis lets us know such is not the case: Daniel Ortega
assures him that his country is different, although he says that
freedom is "not for the individual," and that "your freedom, sir, is a
monster." In his own words, Peter Davis tells us he agrees: "The
other freedoms Americans prize had never had a place in
Nicaraguan life anyway. Foremost among these is freedom of ex–
pression." At any rate, whatever limits on freedom exist are clearly
America's doing. Would the United States, Davis asks, if faced with
an army invading us from Canada and Mexico, "leave in place all
the civil liberties we are so' proud of?" Mr. Davis suggests we would
not, and that we have great nerve to "insist that Nicaragua's censor–
ship is totalitarian."
So Mr. Davis talks of the "missed opportunity" the United
States had to "befriend revolutionaries with anticapitalist roots
before they became dependent on the programs and ideology of the
