Bearing Witness, Building Bridges

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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

Library Journal

The raging controversy over U.S. policy in Nicaragua is complicated by a dearth of firsthand information. Here we have the testimony of 17 long-term American residents who have given up comfortable lives in the United States in order to help the campesinos. Though not entirely happy with the Sandinistas, these engineers, teachers, and religious workers all decry as unconscionable the U.S. support of the Contras, whose main objective they see as the destabilization of the country through terrorism. There is also information for those wishing to do more to help or even visit. A remarkable book about a remarkable group of people, highly recommended for general collections. Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Lib., Gainesville