Bearing Witness, Building Bridges: Interviews with North Americans Living & Working in Nicaragua

Here 17 people from the United States discuss their experiences living and workingmost as teachers or engineersin Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. Many are either former or current ministers, priests, nuns; others were previously involved in the civil rights and antiVietnam War movements. Together they portray a society very different from the totalitarian one regularly criticized by the Reagan administration. The Americans' focus is on the meager hopes and fears of the campesinos, the beneficiaries of the revolution. They talk of Nicaraguans who can grumble in public for the first time, who don't fear the police, who are proud of their independence, and who wish our government would leave them in peace so that their country can develop. This book makes a significant contribution to the debate about Central American policy. January